The internet can feel like a wild west nowadays, with more potentially harmful content than ever viewable at the touch of a button. For parents, it can be difficult to stay on top of what young people are consuming, especially when a harmless-looking YouTube video of a gamer playing Minecraft can conceal the fact that they are espousing misogynistic views. Here are some problematic manosphere influencers to be aware of.
Andrew Tate
The most famous manosphere influencer is a self-described misogynist who once said that “virgins are the only acceptable thing to marry” and described women who do not want to have children as “miserable, stupid bitches”. He is accused of rape by four women in the UK who have brought a civil case against him.
Tate is banned from YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, though this has little impact as his followers repost his videos across platforms. In his videos, he talks about the importance of masculinity, promotes hustle culture, and encourages fitness and discipline. He was unbanned from X by Elon Musk, where he has 10 million followers.
Adin Ross
24-year-old Adin Ross is an American streamer who films himself playing video games like Grand Theft Auto. He has kept some questionable company: he interviewed Donald Trump during his election campaign, and has hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes multiple times in his videos. He was banned indefinitely from streaming platform Twitch in 2023 after showing racist messages on screen. Ross has said that Andrew Tate was “doing God’s work before he got locked up for this nonsense” following his arrest in Romania on sex trafficking charges.
Myron Gaines
There are over 1,700 5-star reviews on Amazon for Myron Gaines’ book, “Why Women Deserve Less”. In the book, he writes: “The relationship between most men and women throughout all of history has been transactional. It has been prostitution. All men are Johns. All women are whores.” He also co-hosts the podcast Fresh&Fit which promises to transform men “from simps to pimps”. He is a loud proponent of the red pill theory, a Matrix reference which says that society has been built to disadvantage men and promote feminist ideals. Fresh&Fit has hosted Andrew Tate on its livestreams several times, and the co-hosts are staunch defenders of him.
Pearl
Known as Pearl or JustPearlyThings to her nearly 2 million YouTube subscribers, Hannah Pearl Davis is an American anti-feminist cultural commentator. The 28-year-old posts videos with titles like “Feminists only want equality when it benefits them” and posts incendiary tweets like “Was he really abusive or did you bring abuse out of him?”. She advocates for traditional, conservative values and has argued that divorce should be illegal. Pearl has been demonetized on YouTube but continues to post videos which rack up hundreds of thousands of views.
