The seductions and fallacies of misogynistic influencer culture: Looking through the lens of social bulimia

Abstract

In recent years, educators, youth workers and professionals working in prevention of extremism roles have expressed serious concerns about the growing impact of online misogynist content on male adolescents. Via online portals and social media, a number of self-styled ‘influencers’, such as Andrew Tate, are melding patriarchal and sexist messages with promises of quick wealth, status and achievement of an ideal male body. Drawing from qualitative in-depth interviews with educators, practitioners involved in the safeguarding of young people and professionals involved in preventing extremism, in this article we excavate some of the key drivers that encourage participation in misogynistic culture for male adolescents. Deploying Jock Young’s concept of social bulimia we illuminate the attraction of male supremacist ideologies promoted by misogynistic influencers, whilst demonstrating the contradictory dynamics of simultaneous cultural inclusion and structural exclusion and the negative effects of turbulent experiences of ontological insecurity and precarity in contemporary society. In unravelling the gravitational pull of misogynist influencers for adolescent boys and young men, we present illustrative ‘bulimic applications’ as a mechanism for understanding the ideological mutuality between neo-liberal capitalist ideologies and misogynistic cultures. In emphasising the need to coalesce explanations for engagement with hateful online content that focus on individual vulnerabilities and susceptibilities with an appreciation of contextual and structural conditions, we explicate three illustrative applications: identity, technological cultures and ontological insecurity; aspirational capitalism and neoliberal ‘hustle culture’, and knowledge and relative ‘truths’. As we conclude, there is a disconcerting - but tangible - fit between capitalist neoliberal values and misogynistic beliefs that social media influencers seek to both exploit and nurture.

Introduction

In recent years, educators, youth workers, internet safety professionals and practitioners working in prevention of extremism roles have expressed concerns about the growing deleterious impacts of online engagement with misogynist content (see Lawson, 2022; Setty, 2023; Wescott et al., 2024). Via various portals and social media platforms, a burgeoning number of online ‘influencers’ are combining patriarchal, sexist and misogynistic ideologies with tropes that valorise powerful masculinity. Andrew Tate, arguably the most well-known actor in this sphere, promises routes to quick wealth and status, combined with lifestyle and fitness advice (Horowitz, 2024a). Tate offers his clients the opportunity to pay for courses taught by self-titled ‘Professors’ that promise an alternative education anchored in ‘The RealRorld’ and geared towards actualising the version of success and male prowess that he promotes. ¹ Tate’s hyper-masculine and anti-feminist views appear to have resonated with a virtual community of predominantly male adolescents, who lionise and emulate his language and attitudes. Unsurprisingly, the popularity of misogynistic influencers such as Tate has generated anxiety amongst parents, youth workers, social workers and teachers (Dimsdale, 2022; Garrity, 2023). Evidence suggests that it is not just male adolescents but also younger boys that are adopting his warped and toxic views on gender, contributing to rising levels of misogyny and harassment in schools (Weale, 2023). Educators have reported multiple incidents where boys have directly used Tate’s phrases and arguments to challenge female teachers and students, raising the troubling horizon of the normalisation of misogynistic rhetoric (Dimsdale, 2022). The fame/infamy of influencers such as Tate has coincided with an era in which in particular male adolescents are spending increasingly concentrated chunks of leisure time online, particularly on user-generated social media platforms which enable content to be disseminated widely and rapidly (see Horowitz, 2024b; Weimann and Masri, 2023). Here, the accelerative power of social media algorithms has contributed towards encouraging engagement and activity in the ‘manosphere’, a loosely connected online community within which contributors express and promote misogyny, violence against women and anti-feminist content (Thomas and Balint, 2022).

Drawing from qualitative in-depth interviews with educators, safeguarding practitioners and professionals working with young people to prevent extremism, in this article we seek, first, to unpack and unravel dominant discourses and fallacious narratives promoted by misogynistic influencers. Second, in order to understand the gravitational pulls and pushes that pave the way for the emergence and consolidation of misogynistic cultures, we utilise Jock Young’s theory of social bulimia (1999, 2003, 2007) as a lens for critical inspection. For analytical purposes, we prioritise three ‘bulimic applications’ (see Brotherton and Naegler, 2014): Identity, technological cultures and ontological insecurity, aspirational capitalism and neoliberal ‘hustle culture’, and knowledge and relative ‘truths’. In deploying the concept of social bulimia, we wish to illuminate the allure of male supremacist ideologies promoted by Tate and his contemporaries. In so doing, we elucidate the contradictory dynamics of simultaneous cultural inclusion and structural exclusion and the negative effects of turbulent experiences of ontological insecurity and precarity in contemporary society.

In considering the apparent seductiveness of misogynist ideologies for some adolescent boys and young men, we tap into a disquieting alignment between the goals of aspirational capitalism - embedded in this context in ‘hustle culture’ - ideologies of male supremacy ² and the search for ‘alternative’ models of knowledge acquisition outside formal education systems from which some young men perceive themselves to be excluded. We conclude by advancing a gendered criminological perspective geared towards generating deeper understandings of the connections between a prolonged period of identity crises, feelings of status frustration and the proliferation of harmful and hateful misogynist ideologies and cultures. To fully understand the draw of misogynistic influencers for male adolescents, it is important to situate individual vulnerabilities in the context of structural and cultural push and pull factors. As we will argue, this involves raising awareness of the roots of misogynistic perspectives and, moreover, shining a light on the (un)comfortable fit between mainstream capitalist ideologies of success and achievement and the harmful discourses peddled by online misogynistic influencers. While we are conscious not to accept nor explain away individual motivations and choices that are damaging we do wish to challenge person-centric explanations for misogynistic hatred that concentrate solely on the pathologies of the individual. To this end, we aver that a balance needs to be struck between challenging and educating those promulgating hateful ideologies and focusing on the wider social, political and economic climate and facets of neoliberal capitalist culture that not only allow such viewpoints to survive, but encourage them to thrive. Prior to providing a capsule account of the methodological design of the empirical study that we draw on, we outline both the theoretical compass for this article - provided by the late Young’s (1999, 2003, 2007) pioneering work on social bulimia - and contextually ground the article with reference to the evolution of the ‘manosphere’ and the growing prominence of misogynistic influencers. ³

Social Bulima, the ‘manosphere’ and misogynistic cultures

As Young (1999, 2003, 2007) observed, Western capitalist societies are characterised by conflicts and tensions arising from drives towards wealth accumulation and status on the one hand and social exclusion on the other. In Young’s vista, economic globalisation and the cementation of neo-liberal capitalist ideologies has intensified inequalities and disparities between the have’s and have not’s. Cultural globalisation - most notably transformations generated by internet technologies - has facilitated ideational mobility, hyper-pluralism and the relativisation of norms and values. The ‘spatial, social and moral overlap’ (Young, 2003: 390) that globalisation engenders, entwines with processes of economic marginalisation that propagate and catalyse feelings of ontological insecurity. In unstable and unsteady conditions of ‘vertigo’, biographical disruption, challenges to identity formation and disembeddedness are exacerbated by experiences of structural inequality (Young, 2007).

Drawing on Merton’s (1938) strain theory, Young defines social bulimia as a dynamic that derives from contradictory invitations to cultural inclusion and alienating and exclusionary forces of structural exclusion. Individuals in contemporary Western societies are ‘included’ in manifold and comprehensive ways: for example, via mediated, familial and educational socialisation promoting meritocratic norms and values and associated versions of the capitalist ‘good life’ (Young, 2003, 2007). These tenets are embodied in the ‘universalism of consumer culture’ (Brotherton and Naegler, 2014) and its promises of instant gratification, swift status and validated identity. Such messaging is reinforced by all-encompassing advertising machines and apparatus geared towards constantly generating new marketable desires. These processes are intensified with the expansive range and impacts of the Web 2.0 and social media, increasing not only the exposure to different lifestyles, but encouraging comparison and competition. In the bulimic society, individuals binge on cultural messages, fads and images of what is considered desirable - and measure themselves against accordant markers of success (Young, 1999, 2003, 2007). Nevertheless, the bulimic society not only swallows up and devours, it also expels and excludes it’s ‘members’. While all citizen-consumers are exposed to universal and inclusive messages of what is valued and should be aspired to, individual resources and the means required to achieve these ends are uneven and unequal. Structural exclusion follows on from increasing economic and social stratification and the resultant unpredictable and precarious conditions that systemically block economic possibilities and upward mobility (Young, 1999, 2003, 2007). The bulimic condition here results in paradoxical and ostensibly contradictory tensions. It is not based on exclusion and inclusion, but, rather on simultaneous processes of inclusion/exclusion, manifesting in bulimic push and pull factors that replicate and reproduce the unceasing and iterative dynamic of competitive capitalism.

For Young (1999, 2003, 2007), the education system plays a central role in the bulimic process, embedding ideas of meritocracy, equal opportunity and individualism. Through hard work and dedication to the demands of the labour market, wealth and success can be achieved by all. This promise does not hold up in reality: 31.7% of young people who come from communities calculated as least likely to participate in higher education, actually progress on to higher education study (Department for Education, 2024). In fact, the education system constitutes one of the strongest forces in the reproduction of inequalities (Tahir, 2022). The promise of meritocracy and the just reward of hard work are strong pull factors of the bulimic society, but when fractured by structural exclusion, can foster disenfranchisement and resentment. Feelings of frustration can encourage alternative ways of seeking ideals of success and wealth, including criminal and transgressive behaviours. This, as Young (1999) point out, is not the result of a lack of culture or socialisation. On the contrary, it is the result of simultaneous exhortations to cultural inclusion butting up against contradictory experiences of structural exclusion. Here, what is central to Young’s concept of the bulimic condition is that it is experienced as distinctly visceral and emotional. In a society that places primary value on economic success, wealth and the ability to consume, economic deprivation can be experienced as marginalising and humiliating (Young, 2003, 2007). Thus, economic deprivation is married in a symbiotic relationship to ontological deprivation, encouraging individual privatised ‘solutions’ to systemically generated conditions of precarity and uncertainty. Amidst the push and pull dynamics of the bulimic society, people engage in and create ways to cope with structural inequalities, powerlessness and alienation, exploring new avenues for reasserting identity.

As we shall illustrate, the concept of social bulimia provides an entry point to understanding the diverse range of processes and practices that are crystallising around misogynistic cultures in general and the evolution of the ‘manosphere’ and associated anti-feminist and misogynist male influencers more specifically. The ‘manosphere’ is a loosely connected online community within which people express and promote toxic masculinity, misogyny and anti-feminist content. In recent years, the impact of the manosphere on young men and boys has become a subject of growing societal concern. It includes groups such as Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) who canvass against the alleged legal discrimination of men (see O’Donnell, 2022); MGOTWs or ‘Men Going Their Own Ways’ - a separatist male supremacist organisation that rejects any intimate relationships with women and encourages men to engage in self-improvement in order to reject a ‘gynocentric’ social order (Jones et al., 2020); Pick Up Artists (PUAs) who develop and share (often pseudo-scientific) dating advice and strategies with the aim of manipulating and coercing women to engage in sexual encounters (Knutson, 2024); and incels or involuntary celibates, sexually disenfranchised men whose nihilistic take on the ‘sexual market’ – conceived to be skewed unjustly towards women – who express hostility and hatred towards women (see Ging, 2019). Despite evident differences in composition and orientation, those operating in the manosphere share common ground in expressing disdainful attitudes towards feminism and women’s rights (see Ging, 2019; Marwick and Caplan, 2018), position gender equality as a threat to men (DiMuccio and Knowles, 2020) promote harmful ideologies about male supremacy and entitlement to subordinate and denigrate women (Chang, 2022). Manosphere spaces often combine these perspectives with homo/transphobic and white supremacist views. Further, many groups and organisations acting in the manosphere promulgate toxic ideas about gender roles, express anxieties and/or anger around purported romantic rejection by women (Chang, 2022) and justify and encourage sexualised violence against women (Gosse et al., 2024). This melange of ideas, attitudes and beliefs are often interlaced with concerns about economic instability for men, the decline of ‘masculine’ industries and a perceived loss of male status in society (Maloney et al., 2024; Whitehead, 2021). To this end, although the main interests of subgroups and strata within the manosphere may differ, commonality and community congregate around notions of devalued and excluded male roles and identities and antagonism and hostility towards women (see Tranchese and Sugiura, 2021).

An emerging body of research exploring the underlying reasons that (predominantly) male adolescents choose to ‘join’ the manosphere has focused on incels or involuntary celibates - a highly misogynistic online community of young men who feel sexually rejected by women. These studies suggested that participation is a result of experiences of marginalisation and relative deprivation (Baele et al., 2021; Hoffman et al., 2020; Sugiura, 2021) and forms of social exclusion indexed to education or employment (Jelodar and Frank, 2021). Struggles with mental health (Glace et al., 2021; Jaki et al., 2019; Sparks and Papandreou, 2023) and experiences of loneliness and hopelessness (Maloney et al., 2024; Maxwell et al., 2020; Sparks et al., 2024) also feature in such accounts. The misogynistic - and imagined - communities of the manosphere may thus be providing young men who feel excluded with a sense of belonging and a space to share grievances and receive validation. Given the plentiful supply of narratives that allow attribution or shifting of blame from self to others, such engagement may be both catalytic and reproductive (see Helm et al., 2024). Cognate academic research has centred on emotional experiences of humiliation, shame and resentment, and how young men and boys who come to feel emasculated may then be attracted by misogynistic attitudes that express a desire for violent retribution (see Cottee, 2020; Kalish and Kimmel, 2010; Kimmel, 2013; Thorburn et al., 2023). Here, Kimmel (2013) explain participation in the manosphere as a response to aggrieved entitlement: the highly emotional reaction to the gradual loss of dominance and privilege of men that comes with greater gender inequality. For example, women’s and girls’ growing success in education and in the workforce leads to some young men who are unable to match these achievements feeling they have been ‘left behind’ and not provided with equal opportunities (Setty, 2023). Here, the frustration that universal aspirations of success in education and in the workforce cannot be achieved, and the feeling of ‘betrayal’ of the belief that one is entitled to this success simply by virtue of being born male necessitates ways of coping with these perceived grievances and experiences of humiliation (Young, 1999, 2003, 2007). To some extent, then, participation in the manosphere can be understood as a strategy to ‘take back’ a lost sense of manhood (Kimmel, 2018; Lawson, 2022) as a ‘response to a gendered sense of ontological insecurity’ (Maloney et al., 2024: 2) experienced by young men and boys struggling with their identity and ideals of masculinity. By promising men answers, justification and a sense of identity and belonging, the manosphere offers a concrete - and essentialised - masculine identity, expansive opportunities to interact with a defined community of ideationally supportive peers and a safe place in which otherwise difficult experiences such as (perceived) exclusion, ostracism and suffering of personal abuse can be expressed (Lawson, 2023).

Accordingly, the manosphere increasingly attracts those who aim to profit from it as social media influencers offering ‘solutions’ to men’s issues (Horowitz, 2024a). Among young men and boys, these social media influencers are increasingly growing in popularity. Famous figures, such as Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer turned social media influencer, has as substantial internet following with over 6.9 million followers on X (BBC News, 2024), and with his various entrepreneurial training enterprises (interchangeably called Hustlers University ⁴ or The Real World ⁵ ) having over 200,000 paying members (Hope Not Hate, 2024).While Tate promotes attitudes and values that resonate with other manosphere groups - such as an orientation towards self-improvement promoted by the MGTOW, a focus on ‘dating advice’ amongst PUAs followers (Jones et al., 2020; Knutson, 2024) and reference to the ‘Red Pill’ as an overarching metaphor pervading misogynistic online spaces (Ging, 2019), he has established their own profitable channel within the manosphere. Tate’s content combines self-improvement advice with messages of male supremacy, positioning himself as a ‘role model’ of masculinity characterised by wealth, power and the domination and a leading advocate in promoting the subordination of women (Artsy, 2023). Opposing feminism and feminist informed notions on consent and women’s sexual agency, Tate aggressively champions ideas of men’s sexual entitlement (Nicholas, 2024); tapping into - and symbolically ‘resolving’ - young men’s anxieties surrounding sexuality (Setty, 2023). Tate has further gained notoriety not only for his lavish lifestyle fuelled by enterprises aimed at recapturing male supremacy, but also for the criminal legal charges against him. He and his bother Tristan Tate were arrested and are under investigation in Romania for allegations of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, rape and organised crime (see Rainsford, 2024; Williamson and Wright, 2023). While investigations are ongoing, the 2-year travel ban for the Tate bothers has recently been lifted and they currently reside in the United States (BBC News, 2025). Despite the severity of the crimes under investigation, Tate’s influence, especially among young men and boys, continues to grow. A poll by Hope Not Hate (2024) of over 2000 16–24 year olds in the UK, found that 95% were aware of him, a quarter of whom had a favourable opinion. 22% of those polled concurred that Tate ‘wants men to be real men’ and 20% agreed that ‘he tells it how it is’.

Despite these concerning trends and the growing body of research on the manosphere, research on the particular questions of what makes misogynistic influencers attractive to young men and boys is relatively sparse. As one of the few studies focusing particularly on Tate and similar figures, Wescott et al. (2023) identify a resurgence of misogynistic behaviour among Australian male students, who are increasingly adopting anti-feminist attitudes and male-supremacists views; attitudes than can often be directly linked to the narratives populated by misogynistic influencers, in particular Tate. While mostly concerned with the negative impacts on male and female students and teachers, Wescott et al. (2023) anchor male students’ openness to influencers’ narratives in their awareness of the privileges, resources and power attributed to a hegemonic masculinity (Connell, 2005). The type of masculinity promoted by Tate here is understood as attractive to male students because of its association with extreme wealth in combination with hard work - in other words, wealth that is earned not gifted - as well as the dominance over women as an expression of ‘gendered power’ (Wescott et al., 2023: 168). Haslop et al.’s (2024) study focusses on the affective and emotional dimensions of hegemonic masculinity as a form of ‘homosocial capital’ (3), or the relational bonds between young men that can be actively reproducing a competitive masculinity, for example by pressuring men to prove their heterosexuality and sexual virility via the objectification of women. Further, fear plays a central role in these homosocial enactments. This includes ‘men’s fears about their place in the order of hegemonic masculinity’ (8), financial anxieties, and the additional fear of other men detecting these emotions. Tate’s monetised online content then offers the alleged ‘solutions’ by promising young men that they can learn how achieve the standards of a masculinity that is characterised by hard work, economic and sexual success, heterosexuality, and achieving the status of the ‘alpha’ dominating other men and women. In this sense financial insecurities and fears surrounding masculinities are seen as intricately linked, thus allowing Tate and similar figures to exploit these fears, spread hateful ideologies, and gain notoriety in the process (Haslop et al., 2024).

Project design and research methods

Prior to coalescing primary empirical data from a study oriented towards understanding the underlying factors that have contributed to the emergence and apparent growth in forms of composite or ‘mixed’ extremism with the theory of social bulimia, it is first necessary to provide a capsule account of the project design and trajectory. The Conceptualising, Understanding and Preventing Mixed Forms of Extremism (CUPMFE) project was created to engage with a range of experts and practitioners to increase knowledge about and understanding of problematic mixed ideologies, such as misogynistic, Incel, far-right and conspiracist. Participants interviewed came from a wide range of stakeholder constituencies and communities, including professionals involved in extremism prevention, youth and social workers, educators, policy makers, NGOs, think-tanks, academic researchers, security experts and the police service. The project was peer reviewed and gained ethical approval from the home University. 120 qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted, following a semi structured topic guide oriented towards the nature and origins of mixed forms of extremism, the dilemmas faced by practitioners involved in safeguarding and prevention roles and the ethical and methodological challenges involved in acquiring knowledge in the area. A purposive sample was gathered via utilising networks and trusted gatekeepers to access participants and snowball sampling was operationalised to boost the sample size. A participant information sheet was shared with prospective participants outlining the purpose of the study and the parameters of involvement. Informed consent was given by participants prior to the commencement of interviews. All interviews were transcribed and NVivo 12 software was utilised to organise and code the dataset. Post transcription, pseudo-anonymisation and data entry thematic analysis was deployed following constructivist grounded theory principles (see Bryant and Charmaz, 2010; Charmaz, 2014). Phases of initial, focused and categorical coding facilitated recursive analysis with constant comparison of data being deployed throughout the process (Charmaz, 2014; Clarke and Braun, 2013). Post completion of the manual coding process - including processual exploration of connective possibilities and interrogation of categories - salient themes were determined by the project team and prioritised for both policy-related focus and theoretical development. These included themes coded as ‘media, self-identity and insecurity’, ‘gendered patterns and trends’ and ‘contemporary knowledge contests’.

In the following section, we utilise the concept of social bulimia to both elaborate and extend prominent processes emerging in data analysis, mapping the data derived themes to component parts of Young’s framework.

Bulimic applications: Understanding the push and pull of misogynistic cultures

Identity, technological cultures and ontological insecurity

As Young posited (1999), Young posited (2003), Young posited (2007), the turbulent, uncertain and unstable conditions created by hyper-capitalism, impact on processes and practices of identity formation as individuals strive to create and maintain a stable sense of self. Practitioners participating in the study, frequently flagged the struggles that some young males experience with identity formation and their desire for both status and belonging. Such struggles were seen to open up a gap that misogynistic influencers could exploit. While the target market for misogynistic influencers for monetisation is predominantly male adolescents, several participants working with young people interfacing with such content believed that the age of engagement had slipped downwards over time, regardless of motivation:

You get younger children, aged 10, 11, and 12, who are getting introduced into that kind of misogynistic world online.

(Tina, Youth Social Worker)

In primary schools young boys are having really bad attitudes towards female teachers and towards female students. It’s clear. It’s the influence of some Youtubers and online influencers, saying stuff like ‘I’m not listening to the girls’. They were doing some ‘If I was prime minister’ type of thing in a school I visited, and one of the Year 5 boys said: ‘If I was Prime Minister I would send all the girls to the army, so they could go to war and die’.

(Louise, Counter-Extremism Education Officer)

A variety of factors were deemed to be instrumental in the proliferation of online platforms and portals that subordinate, denigrate or promote hatred towards women. In relation to individual susceptibility, participants raised a range of individual vulnerabilities as potential risk factors, including disrupted or dysfunctional caring backgrounds, childhood trauma and mental health problems. Some participants also drew attention to the facilitative capacity of social media and its concomitant technological affordances - such as algorithmic connectivity - for the promotion of misogynistic cultures and advancement of the manosphere. This accords with preceding academic studies that have emphasised the importance of digital infrastructures in the growth and spread of misogynist ideologies online (see Ging and Siapera, 2018; Jaki et al., 2019). Participants also reflected on the ways in which influencers’ knowledge and digital skills allowed them to target audiences effectively:

Influencers basically make money online, but they really know how to use the internet to monetise their online behaviour or their social media. They’ve just really learned how to use Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and then they just take advantage of some underprivileged people who don’t really have access to what they have and are aspiring to become something like that.

(David, Serving Police Officer)

As Young (1999, 2007) points out, the technological revolution of the Web 2.0 and user-generated social media plays a major factor not only in the process of cultural globalisation, but in the dynamics of cultural inclusion. Social media here in particular creates desires, encourages competition, and exposes young people to aspirational lifestyles. At the same time, algorithms allow for content to spread quickly and widely - an advantage for those, as David points out, who possess the know-how to utilise and manipulate social media and its technological functions and features for profit. However, aside from technological affordances, to attain a fuller understanding of the bulimic dynamics underlying the appeal of misogynistic influencers, it is necessary to drill down into the ways in which processes of cultural inclusion are accompanied by exclusionary logics. In this context, participants’ reflections and experiences suggested the impact of a wider cultural conflict that can be conceptualised and interpreted in Young’s (1999, 2007) terms. This conflict stems from the tensions that derives from the coming together of aspirational ideas and structural barriers, which proselytises young people’s struggles to achieve a centred state of self and a state of ontological security. Lack of belonging was flagged by participants as an Achillies heel, rendering some adolescents vulnerable, particularly when coupled to idealised body and gender expectations:

I think a lot of times it is that young people want to belong to something. You know, there’s that sense that they have nothing. And then someone reaches out to them and says: ‘You know, why don’t you come and do this? Why don’t you be part of our group? We’ll look after you.’ And it’s that sense of wanting to belong that is important.

(Susan, Educational Awareness Practitioner)

I wouldn’t say young men are attracted to Tate because of a crisis of masculinity, but part of it would be looking for a kind of identity. “How do I fit in here?” That definitely impacts people. You know, it doesn’t have to be masculinity. Although it can be masculinity as well, but even like body image and things like that. Things like social media being curated, all those beautiful pictures. That definitely has an impact on young people’s identity and mental health and things like that.

(Louise, Counter-Extremism Education Officer)

As argued earlier, young men and boy’s desire to belong, and the manosphere’s promise of a strong community and collective sense of identity, is often mentioned as a significant factor in explaining the popularity and growth of misogynistic ideologies (Maloney et al., 2024; Maxwell et al., 2020; Tranchese and Sugiura, 2021). Here, young men’s experiences of lack of belonging, loneliness and social isolation are perceived to be significant in journeys into the manosphere (Botto and Gottzén, 2022; Tietjen and Tirkkonen, 2023). For some, existing vulnerabilities are accompanied by a sense of aggrieved entitlement that men are ‘owed’ friendship, sex and affection by women (Kalish and Kimmel, 2010; Kimmel, 2013). As Mark reasons:

I do think that some boys and men feel like they’re not getting as much interest or, you know, the kind of relationships or sexual activity that they might have done in the past. So there is a sense of entitlement and a sense of something that has shifted in society. That means that they’re suffering relative to the past. So I think, you know, anyone that can kind of give a clear answer and be very masculine and seen as Alpha, and has, you know, all these attractive women and you kind of think, well, that maybe that is something that I also deserve? There’s that entitlement.

(Mark, Independent Global Security Expert)

In addition to identity and belonging, other underlying explanations for engagement in misogynistic cultures were identified that accord with Young’s (1999, 2007) theorising on ontological insecurity and the precariousness of identity. In this vein, participation in the manosphere was considered to be linked to sense of ontological insecurity that is distinctly gendered and tied to the uncertainty and anxieties surrounding ideals of masculinity among adolescent males (Haslop et al., 2024; Maloney et al., 2024). However, as the quotes above suggest, for some young men being seen as successful and powerful is indexed to capacity to flaunt the extravagances of consumer culture - including possession of status symbols - and adherence to physical ideals of male attractiveness. This aspect of young men’s feelings of precarity around identity seemed to be equally, if not even more, central in explanations than struggles surrounding ideas and ideals of masculinity - at least in relation to initial engagement with manosphere content. As Young (2007) points out, economic deprivation accompanied by invoked but denied cultural inclusion - hereby exposure to online consumer and lifestyle cultures - can be experienced as deeply humiliating, further exacerbating a pervading sense of self uncertainty and marginalisation. The feeling of ‘having nothing’ - in Susan’s words - morphs into the experience of ‘being nothing’, driving some young men and boys to look for ‘solutions’ and alternate coping strategies.

Aspirational capitalism and neoliberal ‘hustle culture’

For Young (2007), the underlying instabilities and challenges that arise in relation to identity issues and the maintenance of a coherent sense of self in the ‘vertigo’ of late modernity are connected to neo-liberal capitalist ideologies about achieving the ‘good life’, via acquiring wealth, status and success. In this context, acquiring the kinds of aspirational lifestyles and socio-economic gravitas presented by misogynistic influencers was seen to serve not only as a gravitational pull but also a hook for boys and young men, drawing them deeper into the miasma of misogynistic ideologies and cultures:

Andrew Tate knows how to show young people “look how successful I am, I’ve got all these millions, all these sports cars. If you want to be like me, you need to do A, B and C”. And sort of like, a lot of young boys will look at that and go “Yeah, actually, I do want to be like you. I want to have these sports cars. I do want to have loads of money”. And then they may go into that initially, thinking, you know something different, but then they’re drawn into it, into these type of ideas and behaviours about ‘this is how you treat a woman.’

(Susan, Educational Awareness Practitioner)

I think it’s about if you want to be successful, this is the way to do it. Young men are seeing success as having what they class as a beautiful woman, having sports cars, having lots of money, smoking cigars, drinking champagne while having these gorgeous beach holidays. And Tate’s got it, and they want it, so why can’t they have it?

(Ingrid, Youth Worker)

They become attracted to the persona that’s presented online. And they want to live that lifestyle that they present online, because especially when you come from a deprived background, I think they are attracted to the lifestyle, to the money and the lifestyle that they show. They think these things will make them more able to present as more male than they really are. They have that male persona in their mind, that if you don’t treat women in fairly then you’re more masculine or you’re more male. That’s kind of what I think attracts them. Wealth and masculinity, yeah.

(Paul, Youth Probation Officer)

The lifestyles projected by influencers, and the assurance that young men can achieve these by following their methods, promises not only a tool for escaping economic deprivation, it also ideationally restores, the promise of meritocracy that underpins the discombobulating push and pull dynamics of the bulimic society (Young, 2003, 2007). It is then also associated with a masculine identity characterised by status, wealth and the domination of women - and other men - thus in turn feeding further into providing a sense of ontological security (Haslop et al., 2024; Wescott et al., 2023). Chiming with Young’s (1999, 2003, 2007) observations about the interconnectivity between dominant notions of the ‘good life’ in western capitalism and social malaise, Peter, a community cohesion officer, suggests the aspirations of influencers such as Tate should not necessarily be viewed through the deviant lens of ‘extremism’, but rather as conforming with prevalent aspirations and values espoused in Western capitalist societies:

This is a global issue. We’ve created a world where status and respect is linked to your car and the amount of money you’ve got in your bank. Then we get surprised that young people want to have a Rolex and they’ll do lots of things to get that. It’s really depressing. It’s like, what have we prioritised? And I think they’re responding to that in their own sort of ways. How, as a young person in [large UK city] - an area that has been like economically deprived through policy for decades, how am I going to get a piece of the action? And then there’s a man coming along and saying, actually hustle culture and, you know, reasserting your identity as a man and going out there and getting it. It’s a bit American dream, isn’t it? You work hard at this, you play the system.

(Peter, Community Cohesion Officer)

The ‘hustle culture’ mentioned here by Peter describes a lifestyle is characterised by the glorification of professional success, status and wealth as the result of maximum productivity and a full dedication to working life (Garrity, 2023; Horowitz, 2024a; Malkoc, 2021; Thorburn, 2023). Those ascribing to hustle culture adopt a highly individualistic and aspirational attitude that celebrates working long hours and ‘being busy’, whilst shunning leisure activities and the idea of work-life balance (Tonietto et al., 2021). Professional and financial success is here seen as the result of ‘putting in the labour’ working under the assumption of a meritocracy that rewards those most dedicated (Carnegie, 2023). Hustle culture can be seen both as a result of neoliberal capitalism and the accompanying precarious, uncertainty and instability of work (Allen and Finn, 2024), as well as a response to it: it ‘both normalizes and affirms experiences of uncertainty’ (Thieme, 2018: 529). A culture of overwork and the constant striving for success here becomes a way of coping with anxieties surrounding economic marginalisation and self-worth, in which an all-consuming ‘hustling’ is turned into a source of pride and accomplishment (Carnegie, 2023).

The aspirational and motivational narratives promoted by misogynist influencers and monetised by them via entrepreneurial training courses or online materials distinctly mirror the values of this hustle culture (Garrity, 2023; Horowitz, 2024a; Thorburn, 2023). As several authors have pointed out (O’Neill, 2018; Thorburn, 2023; Van Valkenburgh, 2021), neoliberal capitalist imperatives scaffold the logics that drive the manosphere. Misogynistic discourses and ideologies trade on fictitious, partial or incomplete accounts of the makings of and priorities within what Tate dubs ‘the Real World’. In the manosphere, dating strategies commonly draw on and reproduce pseudo-scientific notions of a sexual marketplace in which men - the ‘buyers’ of sex - compete for the attention of women as the ‘sellers’ of sex (Cannito and Ferrero Camoletto, 2022; Thorburn, 2023; Van Valkenburgh, 2021). In this distorted application of neoliberal capital logics to sexual relationships, women and men are both ascribed a ‘sexual market value’. For men, this market value can, so the argument goes, be increased by ‘investment’ in the triumvirate of ‘Look, Status, Money’ (Cannito and Ferrero Camoletto, 2022); in other words, by achieving financial and professional success, increasing one’s economic and social capital and improving one’s physical attractiveness through exercise or plastic surgery. Influencers such as Tate, who monetise lifestyle advice and sell training courses for men to enhance their (sexual) status, not only privilege economic success as central to sexual success, they also reproduce flawed - and often unachievable - standards of masculinity, that are based on erroneous and intrinsic principles of male superiority. Once young men and boys are immersed in engaging with these ideas, another pressure point is added to the already existing experiences of ontological insecurity within neoliberal capitalist societies. Influencers then present fabricated ‘solutions’ to achieve the aspirational ideals which they promote, thus capitalising on the vulnerabilities of young men who may struggle with societal pressures and be unable to conform to the peak masculinity that misogynistic influencers peddle (Haslop et al., 2024; Thorburn, 2023; Thorburn et al., 2023):

It’s like a really weird heterosexual cisgender format that we’re talking about. “The girls are going to be impressed by me. The boys are going to respect me and I’m going to have some self-respect and I can, like, pay for my mum’s electricity if I can game the system, because I know the system’s against me”. And I think what people like Tate promote is just an ideological version of that.

(Alison, Youth Education and Support Worker)

These reflections chime with Susan’s earlier observations about how male adolescents can become ‘drawn into’ misogynistic attitudes via seeking out advice about how to achieve status and a lavish lifestyle. As Van Valkenburgh (2021: 98) argues, the manosphere takes the ‘commodification fetishization of women’ to an ‘extreme’ by reducing them to objects to be consumed and assigning a quantifiable sexual market value. Misogynist influencers often display narratives that equate consumer items and status symbols such as cars or expensive holidays with the ‘possession’ of women classified as conventionally attractive. For example, Tate’s websites ⁶ show footage of the influencer partying with women on a luxury yacht in front of the Dubai skyline, and feature AI-generated images of scantily-clad women draped over sportscars. Within this ‘fantasy’ mirage a seemingly casual ideational transition is made from desired consumer commodities to the objectification of women (see also Naegler and Salman, 2016). To some extent then, what is sold here is an exaggerated version of hustle culture that feeds off precisely the precariousness and uncertainty created by neoliberal capitalism itself, including the paradox of finding pride and a sense of accomplishment in one’s own exploitation. While hustle culture acts as a magnet to draw boys and young men into the lifeworld of misogynistic influencers’, within the online space they are encouraged to apply the same neoliberal capitalist logics to sexual and romantic relationships. This not only expands the influences of harmful misogynistic ideologies among targeted audiences, but also provides Tate and similar figures with the notoriety that they require to be economically successful.

Knowledge and relative ‘truths’

In as much as neo-liberal capitalist dynamics and pressures to conform to ‘high-value’ identities can be seen to underpin the world-building of misogynistic influencers, a further interlinked element oriented towards education and the search of a ‘truth’ via the acquisition of knowledge emerged as significant in several participants’ accounts. Here, participants observed that influencers are increasingly presenting their content as educational materials. While this may be, in part, a protective strategy to circumvent stronger regulation of social media platforms and banning of content (see Miranda, 2022), the trend towards monetising education appears to be gaining traction. For instance, two of Andrew Tate’s companies The Real World and Hustlers University each sell ‘educative’ packages that promise to provide the tools and techniques required to achieve cultural status and economic wealth. Tate’s TheRealWorldPortal.com is promoted as a ‘global community’ allowing ‘like-minded individuals’ to achieve ‘their financial goals’ through paid training courses and mentorship around subjects such as e-commerce, cryptocurrency and stocks, but also personal development and health and fitness. This website assures audiences that ‘there is a version of you that is living the exact life you want. A version that has:  The Money. The Freedom. The Lifestyle’. The provocative enticement that follows advises: ‘The only way to get there is by taking action with the right knowledge’. ⁷ This knowledge is taught by ‘multimillionaire mentors’ ⁸ which ‘are hand-picked by Andrew Tate’ and gained wealth ‘using [his] methods’ ⁹ . Significantly, Tate’s websites refer to these mentors as ‘Professors’ ¹⁰ . While the title is doubtless intended to imbue authority and legitimacy, the USP of Tate’s modern day academy of grifters and grafters is that their ‘teachings come from experience, not theory’. Such street-smart credentials thus allow ‘tutors’ to teach customers ‘how to make money through action, not a textbook’ ¹¹ . Axial in promotion is the denigration of traditional government approved schooling. As Tate boasts on one of his many websites, ‘The modern education system is designed to make you poor’. ¹² Here, a juxtaposition is created between formal education systems based on abstract theoretical teachings that have thwarted young men in achieving their dreams of wealth and a luxurious lifestyle, and an ‘unmatched education system; anchored in ‘reality’ and linking ‘like-minded people’ together to ‘bring real results’ ¹³ .

The bulimic push and pull of such promises rely on addressing and correcting the broken dreams of meritocracy and equal opportunity. Tate’s companies vow to provide young men with the tools needed to escape economic deprivation and trade of his self-styled rags to riches biography. He ‘grew up broke’ but is now ‘a world champion billionaire’. While the tools to achieve are accessible at a price, success depends on hard work and application, as personified in Tate’s promise that he ‘will tell you what to do, but you still need to do the work’ ¹⁴ . Here the values of neoliberal hustle culture are foregrounded, but also combined with another bulimic dynamic, that of redemption for those excluded by formal education systems. Tapping into this seam of thought, David discussed the case of a young man considered vulnerable to extremism that he was working with who had subscribed to the ‘Real World’ website and was considering enrolling and paying for the training courses:

And I asked him, do you know, what’s their background? I mean, why are they called ‘Professors’? Are they? Do they have a degree or something? The thing that I don’t understand is why people say that they don’t really like school and they don’t want to have access to education. But at the same time they will go and pay someone like Andrew Tate to educate them. It’s a bit, yeah, it’s a bit controversial, isn’t it? The thing is that they create that false mentality and the false idea that you are in the University and the education that you get is at University level.

(David, Serving Police Officer)

Here David pinpoints the illusion created by the ‘Real World’ promises to provide an education that removes the imposed barriers of traditional higher education, but is at least of the same, if not better quality. He expresses surprise about the apparent contradiction between rejection of formal education and investment in alternative education of questionable worth. The prime target market for these companies is arguably those who have experienced exclusion from the formal education system and/or may not be able to either access or afford university education. The alternative Tate and others present is not only branded as an alternative way of acquiring knowledge. Moreover, it presents an experiential opportunity that is better and more suited to achieve aspirations of status, wealth and luxury.

The anti-intellectualism exhibited in Tate’s advertising narratives is paraded as a badge of honour. He boasts, for example, that ‘Reading books is for losers who are afraid to learn from life’, describing this practice as ‘a total waste of time’ ¹⁵ . Such brash comments lean into an anti-establishment stance that positions target audiences as heroic rebels resisting the loaded dice of the status quo. Here, the promise of alternative education and the knowledge it provides offers young men and boys not only an outlet route to success, but also a sense of superiority and certainty. In presenting such narratives influencers such as Tate promise a nirvana of finding purpose and unlocking universal ‘truth’:

I think they’re giving them hope. And I think they’re giving them a clear path to navigate it through. It’s like they’re giving them, like some sharp weapons to cut through. This is all crazy. And it’s really difficult to understand. But I’m going to show you the truth. And the truth is simple and the game is hard. And these are the tools that I’m giving you to beat it. You can be given some sort of almost like a magic tool, and it’ll unlock your bad situation. You see, you know, you take that Red Pill and you see that the world is unfair and set against you.

(Alison, Youth Education and Support Worker)

This notion of discovering the ‘truth’ - finding out how and why the system is rigged and designed against the needs and desires of men - permeates the manosphere. It is most evident in the ‘Red Pill’ metaphor mentioned by Alison. Adapted from the 1999 movie The Matrix (Wachowski and Wachowski, 1999), the manosphere version of this analogy is based on the idea that the majority of men are being lied to by society, living a life of delusion of their own captivity and exploitation, which can only be overcome when the harsh ‘truth’ is uncovered (Ging, 2019; Glace et al., 2021; Maloney et al., 2024). This idea of discovering the truth is readily apparent in influencers’ narratives. Fittingly, Tate’s websites urge followers to ‘Escape the Matrix’ ¹⁶ by rejecting flawed meritocratic routes to success, practising hustles and constructing a clearly defined masculinist identity. Returning to Young, it might be argued that processes of ontological insecurity caused by the coming together of the humiliation of economic deprivation, combined with the lack of anchoring of identity in systems of universal ‘truth’ in the face of hyper-pluralism (Young, 1999, 2003, 2007) are symbolically solved by investing in the solves offered. The ‘magical tools’ described by Alison in the quote above are not only protective patches but also ‘magical solutions’ that symbolically fix the gap between aspiration and actualisation. . They provide an answer to contemporary dilemmas of the bulimic society, stemming from the plurality of identities and the inescapable pressures of decision making and lifestyle choices that determine futures. The ready and ‘easy’ answers suggested to resolve knotty and complex problems such as this are pivotal to the success of what is being sold. As Alison puts it, misogynistic influencers pledge to provide a ‘clear path to navigate’ using ‘sharp weapons’ of ‘truth’. In a context in which some young men and boys may feel blocked from validated routes of achievement in neoliberal capitalist societies, adopting misogynistic mythologies enables them to mercurially - and miraculously - transform ‘stigma into pride, humiliation into resistance, adversity into success’ (Young, 2003: 169). This source of pride, success and resistance, however, is fundamentally misguided. Rather than rebelling by having ‘one over the system’, the adherence to neoliberal dogmas and practices including self-exploitation and the embracement of a highly fragmented and insecure hustle economy integral to influencers’ entrepreneurial ‘visions’ only pulls young men and boys deeper into realms in which harmful and hateful ideologies are normalised.

Conclusion

In this article we have mobilised vignettes offered by practitioners’ involved in monitoring, supporting and advising young people to advance understandings of the - sometimes hidden -subterranean dynamics that underpin male engagement with the ideas and values of misogynistic influencers in the manosphere. At a theoretical level, our contribution advances Young’s work on the bulimic society to extend cultural criminological conceptualisation of the gendered impacts and effects of dynamics embedded in neo-liberal capitalist ideologies. We have argued that Young’s framework offers not only a lens through which the rise of online misogynistic cultures can be viewed, but moreover a means of deepening theoretical knowledge about a disquieting and escalating social phenomenon. The novelty of our approach lies in the deployment of Young’s (1999, 2003, 2007) theorising to identify and analyse three interconnected bulimic applications apparent in the labile and evolving context of online misogynistic cultures: those associated with identity and ontological insecurity; aspirational capitalism and the production of relational ‘truths’. As we have argued, the interplay of these applications demonstrates the ongoing salience of Young’s theoretical enterprise which serves, in this context, to elucidate the contorted appeal of popular misogynist influencers. Here, the destabilising vertigo of capitalist societies (Young, 2007) and the tensions deriving from aspirational ideals, neoliberal ideologies and relative economic deprivation must be considered as explanatory factors in understanding why young men and boys – who are at once geographically disparate and virtually connected - are attracted to the manosphere and its assemblage of influencers. It is important to remain attuned to - and cognisant of - the risks of explaining away the damaging actions of men and boys that engage with and promote misogyny –and, moreover, reproduce and enact harmful ideologies in ‘everyday’ practices. Nevertheless, it is equally vital that explanations for endorsement and validation of misogynistic values and beliefs in online spaces in particular are not reduced down to problems related to individual susceptibilities or proclivities. Volition and the possibility of doing differently are ever-present, but decisions and choices arise out of–and are themselves rooted in - specific cultural and economic contexts. We have argued here that, for many young men and boys, the articulation of peak economic aspirations and deep-seated ontological insecurities is a potent brew that can produce toxic effects. As we have shown, this murky mingling is important in understanding the factors that may motivate initial interest in the content provided by misogynistic influencers and may be reinforced by insistent algorithmic design. In instances in which male adolescents become immersed in prolonged and extensive engagement in the manosphere, influencers’ deceptive narratives, quick-fix ‘solutions’ and ‘education’ programmes, encourage and promote investment in and vocalisation of misogynistic values and beliefs, with deleterious consequences for gender relationships and the wider social fabric. Seemingly prevalent tendencies towards understating the significance of structural forces and overstating individual vulnerabilities should, in our view, be questioned. Rather, lateral and deeper understandings of misogynistic culture that transcend immediate temptations to individualise and pathologize and instead foreground the symbiotic relationship between embedded, systemic cultures and personal issues, motivations and proclivities are required. While political short-termism and policy expediencies have historically led to a pronounced tendency to direct attention for emergent social ills away from structural causes and towards individual acts of psychopathy and deviancy, a proper holistic reckoning is much needed. As we have elucidated, lurking beneath the apparent paradox of knowledge-sharing advanced in and by capitalist ‘development’ and attitudes and values that denigrate and subordinate women, there is a discomforting, comfortable articulation ‘fit’ between capitalist neoliberal values and the misogynistic beliefs that social media influencers such as Andrew Tate seek to exploit and nurture. Due recognition of the overlaps and nodes of reinforcement between gendered ideological formations that are materially engrained in societal institutions and individual commitments to misogynistic attitudes and beliefs - simultaneously cultivated and enacted in online spaces and beyond - is both a precursor and a prerequisite for not only fully comprehending, but, more vitally, tackling the escalating problem we face - and must face.