Guiding boys away from the manosphere's dark edges

The diverse male online community—in the news for its part in Trump's triumph—comes with a sinister misogynist fringe that attracts young men, including in Singapore.

- Bhavan Jaipragas

First, let's get the caveats out of the way.

The American "manosphere"—that nebulous world of terminally online, mostly young, male influencers, YouTubers, pranksters, and UFC fighters, now making headlines for its role in Donald Trump's US presidential election win—isn't some inherently dangerous force.

To see this crowd as purely a rage-fueled rabbit hole of "toxic masculinity" and anti-feminist sentiment is to buy into a certain ultra-liberal piety. That's too easy, a bit too reductive.

Take a closer look at the personalities Trump aligned himself with in the final weeks of his campaign.

These are figures in a male-centric monoculture with millions of followers. They might sit on the fringes of mainstream culture in the US—and even more so here in Asia—but not all of them are peddlers of extremism.

They include personalities like pro-wrestler Logan Paul, comedians Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, Canadian pranksters the Nelk Boys, and Adin Ross, the controversial live-streaming gamer who was banned from the live-streaming platform Twitch for his homophobic and racist comments. Then there's Joe Rogan, the world's top podcaster, whose guests swing from the outright loony, like conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to the widely respected, like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Sure, there's a thread of masculinity running through it, but really, these engagements were mostly jokey, banter-filled conversations—what you'd hear in any "brodom" of boys and young men chatting idly.

There were some more serious moments, too, like when Trump shared with Theo Von, who has been sober for 10 years, how he himself stayed a teetotaler after losing a brother to alcoholism.

So, no, Trump's play here wasn't purely about flexing his machismo (though, let's be honest, this is Trump—there's always going to be a bit of that). Instead, ever the opportunist, he saw an easy, direct line to millions of young male voters.