If there is a king among the imitators of The Prince, it is Robert Greene. In The 48 Laws of Power, he selects episodes from history to illustrate his simplified maxims on manipulation, control and the acquisition of influence. As Stephan Joppich neatly puts it on his blog, the book’s underlying message can be summed up in a single sentence: “Trust no one. The only purpose of life is to accumulate power. So manipulate, betray and trample over whoever you need to, as long as you get away with it.” It is a self-help book that, as Joppich remarks, ought to have been called How to Abuse Friends and Exploit People. Perhaps that explains why it ranks among the most requested books by inmates in American prisons.
Another “guru” of manipulation and the pursuit of power is Ryan Holiday. In Trust Me, I’m Lying, Holiday describes the mechanisms through which digital media and the attention economy can be manipulated, feeding the modern fantasy that anyone sufficiently clever can control the public narrative. He is, in a sense, a Machiavelli for the age of clicks.
Then there is Rollo Tomassi (yes, the name comes from the unidentified murderer in James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential, later adapted for the screen). The Rational Male is one of the most influential books in the manosphere, alongside Greene’s. Tomassi puts forward a deeply pessimistic philosophy that encourages distrust and reduces complex human relationships to a series of strategic calculations built around concepts such as “hypergamy”. Drawing on the red pill from The Matrix, which supposedly allows one to “see the truth”, Tomassi offers what he claims are demonstrations of men’s importance.
Seeing is believing! (Logical inconsistencies and fallacies aside, watching this video may well provoke the Joker’s murderous laugh.)
For those with less time to spare, this BBC report examines why manosphere content holds such a strong appeal for many boys and young men. Through interviews with experts and an analysis of social media, this short documentary explores issues such as masculine identity, loneliness, social media algorithms, and the mechanisms of online radicalisation.
For those with more time to spare, British journalist James Bloodworth’s presentation of his five-year investigation into the manosphere is well worth watching. Drawing on interviews, fieldwork and direct contact with several of its communities, he seeks to understand, rather than caricature or simplistically condemn, the social, cultural and psychological factors behind the growth of the movement and its appeal to so many young men.
And then there is Louis Theroux’s recent documentary Inside the Manosphere, available on Netflix.
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