What “Manosphere Bros” and OF Girls Have in Common
Trent Horn | 4/13/2026
26m

In this episode, Trent breaks down Louis Theroux’s Netflix documentary on the manosphere and exposes the uncomfortable truth behind red-pill influencers and OnlyFans culture: both sell fantasies to vulnerable young men. Whether it is promises of wealth, status, sex, or intimacy, these industries prey on dissatisfaction and turn despair into profit.

 

Trent Horn (00:00):

Recently, I watched a Netflix documentary hosted by Louis Thoreau about the Manosphere, a loose collection of influencers who promised to help young men escape the Matrix and get lots of money in girls.

Jim Gaffigan (00:11):

For a small fee.

Trent Horn (00:13):

While watching the documentary, I noticed an uncanny similarity between red pill Manosphere influencers and the OnlyFans women they both insult and often monetize. What is that similarity? Both of them do not subscribe to the Council of Trent. So if you want to be the opposite of these people, hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss out on all of our great content. And you can help us share the good news of the gospel and help people escape the true matrix, the flesh and the devil by supporting us at trrenthornpodcast.com. Second and more importantly, what the Manosphere and OnlyFans women have in common is that they use fantasies to prey on vulnerable young men. Only fans women prey on young men who desire not just sex, but sexual intimacy. In a world of nearly unlimited free online explicit material, only fans thrives because users end up in a parasocial, one-sided relationship with these cornographers that create the illusion of an intimate sexual relationship.

(01:12) In fact, about 90% of male users on OnlyFans are married. And so many of them see OnlyFans as an escape from what they consider to be an unfulfilling relationship. In contrast, many of the Manosphere’s audience members tend to be unmarried men who see this as an escape or tutorial for navigating an unfulfilling life. In fact, a recent study found that 42% of all young men between the ages of 18 and 29 think, “All in all, I am inclined to think I’m a failure.” Although among men who are married with children, only 26% of those men think they’re failures. Now to be fair, many of these young men have legitimate grievances towards society’s persistent, anti-male bias and today’s unique hardships. Getting a job, for example, isn’t just about walking up to the factory owner and betting on a firm handshake to seal the deal. Now it’s about using AI to code your resume so it will get past AI filters, hoping that a real person will see it.

(02:09)
And you’re also hoping that person is not a woman in HR with a gender studies minor who wants to fight male privilege, even though women outnumber men in college and they have longer lifespans than men. And then after your resume gets rejected, you start swiping on a dating app where the odds of getting a decent match are almost zero. And so you just doomscroll on the internet to hear people endlessly cry about toxic masculinity while Sabrina Carpenter calls men stupid and routinely kills them in her music videos. As I said, there are legitimate grievances, and in that context, manosphere influencers are popular, partly because they often just give good common sense advice about how to be in shape or how to be confident. There’s nothing wrong with that, but honestly, nothing will ever top the motivation of simply being told-

Shia LaBeouf (02:54):

Just do it.

Trent Horn (02:55):

Thank you, Shaia. But on top of that, manosphere influencers funnel these men into expensive courses that provide the secrets to getting money, good looks and confidence so they don’t have to feel like failures anymore.

HSTikkytokky (03:10):

You’re watching this and you want to level your life up. You want to be free. Send a message to the app along.

Trent Horn (03:15):

But it’s all a fantasy. For example, in the documentary, Myron from Fresh and Fit confidently talks about one day being in a polygamous marriage and his girlfriend is clearly not into the idea.

Louis Theroux (03:26):

I don’t want to mix things up between you, right? Yeah. But we were talking about in the future that maybe there’s a world where you would have more than one wife, right?

Myron (03:34):

She understands that. She knows that that could potentially come down the future.

Louis Theroux (03:37):

What did you say about that?

Myron’s (ex)wife (03:41):

I don’t know. I mean, he has said that in the past. I think when … I’ll see when it happens. I don’t know how that will work.

Louis Theroux (03:50):

Was that okay? By the way, I always feel weird.

Myron (03:52):

No, no, no.

Louis Theroux (03:53):

It’s awkward though.

Myron (03:54):

No, no, no.

Louis Theroux (03:55):

Did you feel a little awkward? No, not at all.

Myron (03:57):

No. Angie, she’s with me. I think she’s

Louis Theroux (03:59):

As on board as you are.

Myron (04:04):

Onboard with what specifically?

Louis Theroux (04:05):

You would know what? Just the idea of other ladies.

Myron (04:09):

No, we’ve had these discussions.

Louis Theroux (04:10):

I saw a little bit of pain in her. No. No, definitely.

Myron (04:13):

No, no, no.

Louis Theroux (04:13):

Yes.

Myron (04:14):

No.

Louis Theroux (04:14):

Definitely.

Myron (04:15):

No, no, no, no.

Louis Theroux (04:16):

Yeah.

Myron (04:16):

You just

Louis Theroux (04:17):

Think if I said to her like, “You would have Myron all to yourself, would you rather have that? ” You don’t think she would say, “Yeah, 100%, of course.”

Myron (04:23):

She’ll say whatever makes them happy.

Trent Horn (04:25):

And shocker, she’s no longer with Myron. And when it comes to the secret of making money, these guys just teach men how to exploit women to make porn for them, like Andrew Tate, who taught other men to do the same thing.

Andrew Tate (04:36):

So yeah, on corporatetate.com, I have my PhD program, and PhD is a pimp and hose degree that I’m …

Andrew Tate (04:45):

That teaches basically how I got girls, how I met girls, how I got girls to like me, how I got girls to fall in love with me to work on webcam for me, because that’s what I did. That was my MO was find girls, make them love me and make them work for me. And that’s how I got rich.

Trent Horn (05:00):

Or they shill investment strategies that entities like the British government have warned about. And as Thoreau showed in his documentary, don’t pay off.

Louis Theroux (05:08):

I looked into his investment group. The broker firms he promoted received terrible reviews.

HSTikkytokky (05:14):

Don’t ever say that I’m a scam.

Louis Theroux (05:17):

HS takes a cut of whatever you put in, even if you lose money. I opened an account and put in 500 pounds. I’d once taken 500 pounds and joined HS’s investment group, making trades with its advice, hoping to join the ranks of those who’d leveled up. With its help after two months, my money is mostly gone.

Trent Horn (05:38):

And when it isn’t practical advice that any decent man could give you, what they sell to boost confidence is just a facade that gets exposed when people try it in real life. Like this kid doing his best Andrew Tate impersonation at his school.

Alpha Male Student (05:51):

This punishment stuff is going to stop.

Teacher (05:55):

You’re not going to tell me what I’m going to do and not

Alpha Male Student (05:58):

Do. I am now the alpha.

Teacher (06:01):

Well, not how this works. I am the teacher.

Alpha Male Student (06:06):

The alpha takes priority over the teacher. The alpha takes priority over everything. Do you not know how that works?

Teacher (06:13):

The teacher is telling the alpha to sit in the seat

Alpha Male Student (06:16):

Right now. And the alpha doesn’t have to listen.

Trent Horn (06:19):

What these young men end up buying is not real masculinity, but a straw man that I call cargo cult masculinity. Here’s a video of the most famous incel of all time, Elliot Roger, where he expresses confusion about why women don’t like him.

Elliot Roger (06:34):

I do everything I can to appear attractive to you. I dress nice. I’m sophisticated. I’m magnificent. I have a nice car, a BMW. Well, it’s nicer than 90% of the people in my college. I’m polite. I’m the ultimate gentleman. And yet, you girls, you never give me a chance.

Trent Horn (07:05):

Roger ended up killing six people because he felt the system was rigged against men like him who did everything right and still couldn’t get the girl. But men like him don’t understand true masculinity. They only understand cargo cult masculinity. Here’s what I mean. During World War II, the allies in the Pacific airdrops supplies on the Melanesian islands, which were also shared with the indigenous population. After the war, the supply drops stopped, but the Islanders believed the cargo were gifts from their ancestors or the gods. And if they just imitated cargo-bearing soldiers by building wooden rifles, airship towers, and performing signaling drills, then the precious cargo would return. Of course, they failed to understand that these things weren’t the cause of the cargo, but effects associated with the delivery of the cargo. Likewise, men who embrace cargo cult masculinity think that if they just imitate the outward appearances of successful men or men they idolize like Andrew Tate or Clavicular, things like their nice clothes, cars, their pravado, or hitting their cheekbones with hammers, they will obtain the cargo those men have, i.e. Beautiful women.

(08:13)
But those outward signs aren’t the cause of women’s attraction. They are just signs that these men have traits that generate those accessories, traits like intelligence, confidence, and charisma that are the true source of attraction for the women. Trying to attract women with just the outward signs apart from the inward disposition is as useful as getting cargo with a straw runway. And to be honest, I get why the shortage of male role models in the church to give these tools to young men, especially the shortage of role models among fathers. In this context, boys will go to the manosphere to try to get these things, which is a bad idea because as the documentary shows, people like Andrew Tate, Justin Waller and Harrison Smith, AKA HS Ticky Talkie, and others are the product of absent or abusive fathers. They just end up perpetuating the same cycle, but making a profit in the process.

(09:05)
Their approach resembles a pyramid scheme where a few people at the top become successful only because everyone at the bottom who tries to imitate them fails and just hands over their hard-earned time and money. The money comes in the form of purchasing courses from influencers or just giving them money through things like Super Chats. And time, which can be as valuable as money comes through obsessed fans generating ad revenue for these influencers by binge watching them or performing free labor for them by reposting Manoshere clips all over the internet. And just as Manoshere men sell a fantasy to their audience, only fans women sell the same thing. For men, these women sell the illusion of masculine success, an intimate relationship with a beautiful submissive woman. The fantasy is maintained by things like overseas minimal wage labor, responding to the messages sent by these male users.

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