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@ 𝕊é𝕚𝕞í 𝕄𝕒𝕔 𝕊í𝕠𝕞ó𝕟
2024-04-23 07:56:47The most striking finding overall was the dominance of influencer-centred content, which accounted for the vast majority of videos in the dataset. Significantly, most of this material originated from regular users or micro- influencers reposting clips of influencers, rather than from the influencers’ own accounts. This demonstrates the extent of both user-led and algorithmic amplification of influencer content, and was especially evident in the case of Andrew Tate, who was by far the most recommended influencer on both platforms, despite the fact that his accounts were inactive at the time of data collection. The dominance of these ‘ideological entrepreneurs’ (Jurg et al., 2023) marks a significant new shift in the manosphere, whereby male-supremacist influencers are not only accumulating considerable wealth but are also using the practices of influencer culture for metapolitical goals, a phenomenon noted by Maly (2020) in the context of the Far Right in recent years. By adopting less overtly gender- political rhetoric, and instead mobilising discourses around mental health, motivation and money-making, these influencers are strategically monetising men’s financial and emotional insecurities (Bujalka et al., 2022). This was evident in our dataset in the prevalence of content coded as ‘alpha masculinity’ (12.7% on TikTok and 32.5% on YouTube Shorts) over that coded as ‘anti- feminism / misogyny’ (8.3% on TikTok and 23.9% on YouTube Shorts). ‘Manfluencers’ have thus effectively replaced pick-up artists and the seduction industry with a significantly more lucrative, popular, and ostensibly well- intentioned venture, which purports to give men purpose, confidence and control.
Linked to this new development has been the revival of the notion of stoicism, reappropriated from ancient Greek philosophy, whereby self-help influencers such as Ryan Holiday and Jordan Peterson advocate traditional masculine values of courage, self-discipline, andorder as an antidote to the alleged chaos and narcissism of ‘woke’ modernity. Aleks Hammo (2023) refers to this phenomenon as the ‘stoic industrial complex’ and maintains that its appeal lies in its promise of taking control in an age of hyper-competition, secular disenchantment, and consumerism. However, this military-style neo-stoicism is underpinned by the repression of emotion, a return to strict gender roles and simplistic, individualistic accounts of complex social phenomena. It is also used to discredit the concept of structural or systemic disadvantage, and to reinforce the message that anyone can make it if they work hard enough. Many of the influencers in our dataset actively promote this message, urging men to ‘pull themselves up by the bootstraps’ and to try harder as ‘no one cares about the men who fail’. For example, an account reposting this type of content using the hashtags #motivation #mindset #advice
inspiration features retired US Navy SEAL
David Goggins urging, ‘You need to fking work harder, you need to fking discipline your mind better…all the time you’re complaining, you could be instead hustling’.
In tandem with this focus on neo-stoicism was another, ostensibly incongruous, theme which we termed ‘wealth porn’. This involves influencers bragging about their wealth and possessions, showing off their car collections and, in some cases, purchasing expensive cars and wrist watches on a whim. It also frequently involves disdain for poor people (‘brokies’) who are deluded to believe they can make money ‘inside the matrix’, which refers to mainstream, ‘blue-pilled’ or ‘normie’ society. Videos featuring Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate accounted for most of this content, and they frequently refer to the disciplinarian and frequently cruel parenting style of their father as responsible for their ‘sheer indefatigability and unmatched perspecacity’. Many of the Tate brothers’ motivational clips also double up as advertisements for Andrew Tate’s businesses, in particular the Real World, the War Room, and Hustlers University