THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2026
It should be reported as such: Here at the heart of this sprawling campus, we'd like to see Jessica Grose sign up with her local cable provider.
After that, we'd like to see her start watching the Fox News Channel. We derive this desire from her latest column for the New York Times.
Headline included, the column starts like this:
The Manosphere Continues to Devolve
In the new documentary “Inside the Manosphere,” the English filmmaker and host Louis Theroux describes the buff, screen-addled U.S. and British influencers he interviews as creators of “the new world of men who are redefining what it means to be a man.” But I came away from the movie, now on Netflix, thinking that it eclipsed this framing.
Young men may finally be waking up to the utter emptiness of the manosphere’s messaging.
So begins Grose's new column—or is it really a "subscriber-only newsletter?" Until today, we had never tried to puzzle it out, and the arcana of that other sprawling enterprise can sometimes be overwhelming.
That said, Grose has been at her desk "for Opinion" since 2021, and her latest offering is about the manosphere. As to what that sprawling entity is, she is soon offering this:
[continuing directly]
The manosphere—a loose collection of male podcasters and social media stars who push misogynistic and ultraconservative views—is not new. The term is at least 15 years old and rose to a frequent topic of mainstream discourse during Donald Trump’s first presidential term.
The men Theroux interviews are pushing some of the oldest grifts and ancient hatreds in the book, even if they’ve been using new technology to beam those views out to a global audience. The creators Theroux follows—young men with handles like HSTikkyTokky and Sneako—share very familiar ideas of what it means to be a man, ones that predated the rise of social media: making money, having big muscles, driving expensive cars and sleeping with as many women as possible. Though Theroux does not talk to Andrew or Tristan Tate, the most prominent modern manosphere influencers, clips of the Tate brothers appear throughout the film.
Superficially, these men are selling their audiences bizarre and extremist ideas—women shouldn’t vote; covering one eye in a photograph is a reference to a satanic plot—against the backdrop of the babes and Lamborghinis they “possess.” There’s a whole section of the documentary in which it seems every conversation Theroux has devolves into an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving the Rothschilds, citing “the Jews” who control the one world government or the media or Theroux himself. These specific conspiracy theories have been appearing in pamphlets—the old-timey version of viral videos—since the 19th century.
It’s unclear if any of the men actually believe what they say, or if they’re just shouting the most outrageous nonsense possible in order to maintain the attention of their audiences and get a rise out of Theroux and other spectators. They are quite self-aware about their place in the attention economy. “If I’d just done good things, I would never have really blown up on social media in the first place,” one of the men tells Theroux.
Sic semper the so-called manosphere. Grose goes on to suggest that the influence of this unfortunate movement is lessening. Recalling President Kennedy in Berlin, we'll only say this about that:
Let her come to the world of cable TV and watch the Fox News Channel!
In short, we're begging Grose to extend her range beyond the realm of "male podcasters and social media stars." We're asking her to acquire rights to the "new technology" now dominated by the Fox News Channel.
If it's grifts she wants to cover, we're hoping she'll fire up the cable and watch several of that outfit's most-watched "cable news" shows—and that she'll then report the gruesome behavior she sees.
We've been waiting for Godot to do that—rather, we've been waiting for Kristof and Brooks and Stephens and Cottle and for someone, anyone, who's typing for The Atlantic.
(Helen Lewis, across the pond, please come on over and down!)
Mutts like them will never do it! Perhaps a relative newcomer will.
If Grose accepts this cable news challenge, she'll be arriving on the scene a bit late. Pete Hegseth is gone from Fox & Friends Weekend, where he co-hosted with Rachel and Will right through the last election.
He's now at the Pentagon, where he has, among other things, commissioned "a controversial pastor who supports repealing women’s right to vote" (see above!) to lead a worship service.
In our view, people are free to believe what they believe, even including what they believe about gender relations. Borrowing from Lincoln, "it may seem strange" to think that women should be denied the right to vote, "but let us judge not, that we be not judged."
(Full disclosure: Lincoln himself may have been a bit late to the game regarding the suffrage question.)
At any rate, even if Hegseth is gone from Fox, more virulent purveyors remain. Having abandoned our faith in Godot, we turn our eyes toward Grose.
At this point, we're going to try to restrict ourselves to purely descriptive language:
Each night, they pry the lid off the can at Fox and the swill comes slithering out. The Blue old liners at the Times refuse to report and discuss this remarkable fact. We're hoping a relative newcomer will—but also, with luck, Michelle Goldberg!
Whatever you think of the conduct in question, the fact that this conduct takes place is news! It should be reported, discussed.
