Anatomy of the Modern Manosphere

A look inside the living structure of the manosphere.

What’s up man.

In the above image - a thumbnail for my 2019 speech at The 21 Convention in Poland titled The Manosphere - you see a power point slide in the background. (You can also click it to watch the full keynote address).

In that slide was my first take on outlining the basic structure of the manosphere. Essentially its a large circle representing the “general manosphere”, and within it are four sub-tribes where men at the time tended to gather and rally around.

• Pickup Artists

• MGTOW

• The Red Pill

• Men’s Rights Activism

Some manospherians held no allegiance to a particular tribe, others held fierce loyalties to a specific group, and others still had interests in multiple gangs within the space.

In many cases that I’ve seen over the past 20 years a lot of men would migrate from one tribe to the next depending on their circumstances. For one reason or another (e.g. divorce) a man over time might go from the PUA group (got a girlfriend), to Men’s Rights Activists (got divorced), to MGTOW (fuck all women), to the Red Pill (I will now fuck all the women as an alpha male).

I bring this up because Netflix just dropped several million dollars publishing a new propaganda series titled Adolescence that directly names and targets the manosphere. It’s making waves right now across mainstream news from the BBC to CNN, etc.

The Wikipedia article on the show states:

According to The Guardian, the show highlights the ways in which the manosphere has affected adolescent boys, with characters directly naming Andrew Tate and the "red pill" community as key influences on Jamie and other boys his age.

I have my own thoughts on “the red pill” just published you should read here.

The Red Pill Was Always a Lie

In short, this metaphor was abused since day one by the manosphere. At no point in The Matrix was the red pill intended to represent objective truth. It’s thematic purpose was to be the illusion of a bitter truth, rather than a more obvious and sweet lie aka the blue pill.

I don’t think its a coincidence that the red pilled manosphere became a blue pilled fraudulent shithole in the end given this large of a mistake. Seems more like destiny if anything.

Now with the manosphere hitting the news this hard, there’s a lot of nonsense flying around. As

GLO

puts it here:

At this point they are just saying words. They have no idea what the Manosphere even is.

Which is correct. The “manosphere” is basically a buzzword to mainstream news that they can stuff random things into that they don’t like. It’s strange yet rich history, cast of characters, tragedies, and events is of little to no interest to them. It’s more like a baseball bat they can hit things with.

However as the Manosphere’s first, former, and only POTM I feel obliged to comment and set the record straight. Not much exists about it’s history or shape as a loose coalition of men, movements, and ideas. The few takes I’ve seen by NGOs, DHS, or shit tier YouTubers has never impressed me.

With that in mind, here is my crude yet updated outline of the manosphere’s basic anatomy. None of this is to scale, and I’m not claiming its perfect. It’s simply my take in 2025, off the top of my head.

In the middle we still have the 4 tribes. In this edition they overlap, which has always been the case. Their sizes and locations on the internet have fluctuated and changed over time, especially since censorship took off around 2018.

/r/TheRedPill with over 300k members at the time was quarantined by Reddit in 2018, slowly choking it off and bumping the movement to a hybrid of YouTube/Twitter. Previously the subreddit was the main breeding ground for this tribe.

/r/MGTOW of a similar size was outright banned around 2021 by Reddit.

I have Men’s Rights and PUAs in purple because both of their Reddit communities are still online including /r/MensRights and /r/Seduction. In this sense its my belief that they have been more amenable (subservient) to feminist sensibilities and less radical than the Red Pill and MGTOW wings.

My very good friend Andrew Tate as the king of toxic masculinity in my view undeniably grew from the manosphere but eventually became his own thing, achieving escape velocity and mainstream penetration. This is why his circle is independent of the old manosphere yet connected via an arrow.

Jordan Benzo Peterson (controlled opposition) has an independent circle because I believe he grew alongside the manosphere focusing on similar issues but did not directly come from it like Andrew. He’s auxiliary to the manosphere in other words.

The black pill/incel community like Tate is distinct from the manosphere yet came from it, much more closely than Jordan Peterpuffer. The incels are generally hostile to the manosphere - even at its best moments - and were primarily fed by the MGTOW tribe (Men Going Their Own Way). Even so I would think they picked up refugees from the wider manosphere as well.

Modern “dating coaches” in my view are an evolution on the old seduction community and PUA tribe. They are like half in, half out of the manosphere depending on how schizophrenic they feel on a particular day.

“Trad Cons” (traditional conservatives) and patriarchs (religious or secular) tend to also operate like this. Half in/half out, on the edge of manospheria depending if it benefits or harms them somehow. This headline by The Daily Beast sums it up quite well.

Finally the black manosphere on the top right - not to be confused with the black pilled retards - is notable as the only successful, organic, break away tribe from the manosphere. (Unlike Roosh’s failed neo-masculinity movement).

The black manosphere is a fiercely separatist movement for black men that consistently avoids working with “the white manosphere” as they call it in any way, shape, or form. They won’t even do podcast interviews about the black manosphere itself unless you yourself are black.

You may not agree with that but I’ll be damned if they weren’t principled and consistent about it. To his credit the leader of the BM Oshay Duke Jackson has spoken kindly of me on numerous occasions as an observer. For example on how well I’ve treated black speakers at The 21 Convention. He’s also stated plainly that he was tempted to speak at my 21 Convention in Poland while he was living there at the time (and was invited to speak).

In general black people have always loved me so this is cool. Not surprising I suppose, my name is Anthony Johnson for fuck’s sake. I sound blacker than most black guys. Personally I grew up around black guys on my football team. I found they consistently had a good sense of humor, unlike artsy fartsy middle class white boys with a stick up their ass. I appreciated that.

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The manosphere has been having some problems in recent years. I officially resigned as POTM in my farewell address last year, announcing formal intent to secede from the union, building a new manosphere for all, similar to how the black manosphere operates currently.

Will Spencer from The Renaissance of Metrosexuals also announced it was collapsing earlier this month (blaming most of it on Andrew Tate).

All things considered this newsletter does a good job outlining how the manosphere has looked and worked, and still does for the most part, without diving balls deep in to it’s ~30 year history on the internet.

/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson

P.S.

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