Inside the Manoshpere

When you are young, the opposite sex can be somewhat of a mystery. Both genders operate on different interests, priorities and timelines. Mutual critism seems part of the learning process.

Robyn Best is a graduate of Carleton University’s journalism program and currently a reporter at The Lindsay Advocate. Her essay ‘Inside The Manosphere” offers a peek into the mind of a young woman concerning how certain popular social media personalities affect the attitudes of young men.

Ms. Best describes the manosphere as a “loose network of influencers, podcasters, and online communities built around hyper-masculinity, resentment towards women, and a promise to teach men how to win back the power they believe they have lost. Influencers with millions of followers are trying to give other men the ‘cheat code’ to win at life”. The article goes on to mention ‘toxic masculinity’, ‘looksmaxxing’, “one-sided monogamy”, the patriarchy, misogyny, female subjugation by men, “tradwife” and more.

The Yellow Brick Road mirage.

Of course, men are not the only sex that uses online sources to find the Yellow Brick Road to life access and happiness. Dr. Jordan Peterson built an enormous following on the heels of his best-selling book ’12 Rules for Life’, a world-wide speaking tour, and a very popular podcast series. Jordan tapped into the vein of hopelessness felt by many young men today. There is nothing toxically masculine in his form of pedagogy. Robyn made no mention of Dr. Peterson’s positive influence on young men. Instead, she only mentioned the work of more unsavoury characters like Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan.

Smartphones

I am often impressed by how nimble young hands are when texting their friends on the tiny keyboard of an iPhone. Then an element of sadness sets in as I realize that this skill has come from endless hours of practice, likely at the expense of having real in-person conversations. Of course, others have already written much on this topic and the adverse effect that excessively social media capture has had on interpersonal relationships.

Today, when I meet young people of college age, I am genuinely curious about who they are and what they are doing to prepare for a future fraught with so much uncertainty. Their world is very foreign to my experience growing up in the 1960s and 1970s when the recipe was success was clear for young, middle-class men like me.

Priorities

Dating, for example, usually involved hanging out with someone I liked, often with other friends, and taking part in spontaneous activities that needed no money and involved no distracting digital devices. Looking good helped to attract female attention certainly, but to maintain that attention was more complicated. Having money also had advantages, but money was scarce in my peer group. Besides, I saved any money I earned for university which was a known key for future success. My parents had five children and could not afford to send all of us to university. I was fiscally responsible at an early age out of necessity.

Looking back, the young men of my era were not much different than those Robyn Best describes today. Socially, my attempts to attract the girls I liked were awkwardly self-conscious in the beginning, then cautiously selective as I matured. I knew that a good university degree was necessary if I was to be attractive to girls who also evaluated future mates based on compatibility on interests, values and goals.

Finding a good relationship match was not as easy as the popular romance novels read by girls and women suggested. As a young man, I also had immature ideas about successful relationships and had not yet acquired the kind of wisdom that comes only from life experience.

Timing

In my day, an older man’s advice may have been to get married “when you find the right one” regardless of your age or circumstances. He might have added: “Have faith that things will work out fine”. Such advice in 2026 would not go far given how much harder it is for young people today.

I waited until I was 29 when I married my first wife. By then, I had an Honours B.Sc., was employed by IBM Canada, and my career prospects were promising. Before then, I had refused to allow myself to commit to any girl until those goals were met and until I had acquired the confidence to take on marriage and family responsibilities. Conservative by nature, I sometimes look at young men today and wonder how ready I would be in their circumstances to consider marriage with a woman who wants a family.

Financial success was important to me.

Success fed my confidence, pride, and self-esteem. I was able to support my young family enabling my wife stayed home with our two daughters until school age and then return to the workforce after their formative years were well established.

The stay-at-home mom had been my experience when I grew up. My mother returned to work when I was eleven. Fortunately, I had achieved sufficient financial success to provide that luxury for my family – a “luxury” because I am acutely aware that it is financially out of reach for many young couples today. I wonder how many young men feel helpless and hopeless to achieve the kind of family dream that lay in front of me in the 1970s.

Of course, socio-economic norms and circumstances were much better for boomers like me than for today’s youth. I place the full blame for today’s high cost of living on too much government. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might think that this is by design — a long-term plot to create an egalitarian society in which “You will own nothing and be happy”.

The evidence speaks for itself.

After a 41-year career in the Information Technology industry, I know with certainty that productivity gains have been extraordinary over my lifetime thanks to modern technology. The competitive forces of capitalism have reduced the costs of product design and production by orders of magnitude. They provide consumers and businesses with much more and better-quality goods and services than were yet-to-be -imagined a century ago.

Governments have also applied the same technology advances but for the primary purpose to regulate us more and pass the costs on to taxpayers who allegedly benefit.

The rising costs of government policies and their enforcement are rarely discussed openly as a serious public concern. Instead, the political class, institution officials, regulation enforcers, and their partners in crony-capitalism (such as the public sector labour unions) all join in unison to cast blame on corporations and “greedy capitalists.”

Toxic attitudes

The Manosphere article left me wondering how many young women hold the views of young men discussed therein.

I empathize with all the young men who are simply trying to figure out what they must be and do to be successful in life. Clearly, trial and error are involved. I consider such experimentation to be normal for both sexes and best accepted as such without the controversial hype.

Are there online influencers who have found a way to earn a paycheque on TikTok - certainly? Certainly! But how is this any different from the ubiquitous influences that women consume?

Consider industries like fashion, cosmetics, bridal, lifestyle, feminism and other sources of advertising that target women.

These exert far more are influence on the life expectations and attitudes of young women than the comparable sources of influence on young men.

With age comes some wisdom.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is ages-old advice. Appearances are fleeting. They change day by day, year by year, and decade by decade whether physical or social in nature.

More enduring qualities like character, commitment and resilience are much harder to see and appreciate.

This is especially true during the “honeymoon” phase of every new relationship when both parties behave their best if they genuinely want the relationship to last. Unfortunately, only time together reveals if true compatibility is present. This rarely becomes known until well after the honeymoon phase ends and the challenges of sharing a life together arrive one by one, and sometimes in bunches. Divorce statistics confirm this reality.

Robyn Best, and most other girls of her age cohort, likely hope for happy marriage and motherhood some day. When those days arrive, their innate maternal instincts to love, care and protect their children will kick in — an overwhelming sense of responsibility that all mothers know so well. Hopefully, their husbands will have successfully navigated their passage into manhood to become the father and partner they always dreamed of.