Mortified documentarian James Blake meets young men who have drifted towards misogynist influencers – and finds them lonely, heartbreaking and on ‘semen retention journeys’ to control their sex drives
Just as you can accurately measure the quality of a documentary about pornography by the number of examples of its subject that it does not show, so too you can judge a programme about “incel” culture/the manosphere/toxic masculinity by the amount of time it does not devote to the noxious leaders of the subculture. Porn documentary makers often seem to use their commission to indulge their own murky fascinations, or at the very least fill the screen with naked women as an easier way to hook viewers than constructing a decent programme. Similarly, stuffing any programme with footage of the poster boys’ diatribes, generally about pussies (female, metonymically; males metaphorically), power and the need for men to wield one over the other is a titillating opportunity and an easy shortcut to engagement.
Belfast broadcaster James Blake admirably avoids this trap in his hour-long film Men of the Manosphere. It has snippets of the loudest, vilest voices, doing their loudest, vilest thing, telling young, disaffected, vulnerable men what they want to hear: that the problems in their lives are the fault of women, feminism, woke society, beta men and anyone who is not full of ambition, independent spirit and willing to subscribe to the influencer’s latest course on how to be a successful man. If you have spotted any inconsistencies here, you are probably a blue-pilled cuck and not the target market, so please move along.
