The Incel Pipeline, Part 3: Alpha Males and The Manosphere
Declaring oneself an “Alpha Male” might just be the least Alpha thing anyone can do. Alpha Males define themselves as superior to other men in every way — they’re hustlers, impossibly attractive, and probably invested in Bitcoin back in 2010. Women want them, fish fear them. Most importantly, thousands of incels want to be them.
Many incels would never admit to this. Within the incel subculture, there is a general sense of jealousy towards “Chads,” who are broadly defined as men who have some degree of success with women. Alpha Males are worse than Chads. They’re the apex men, the top of the food chain. They take this very literally — some of them even eat raw meat, like the Liver King. Their goals are beyond your understanding. These men make up the ruling class of the Manosphere.
The Manosphere is an internet social movement that seeks to provide a sense of community to isolated men, and it often does this in some particularly cringeworthy ways. It’s that part of the internet where someone uploads a shirtless boxing video alongside the tune of “Eye of the Tiger,” and in the comment section, everyone’s profile picture is the same drawing of a muscular werewolf. It’s an online collective that encompasses hundreds of different forms of chaos, and Alpha Males are the oligarchs ruling over them.
Many people don’t view Alpha Males very favorably. If they haven’t been arrested for a pump-and-dump cryptocurrency scheme, most of these Alpha Males are hanging out on TikTok, showing off their exercise routines or using protein powder to bread chicken. If they’re more successful than the TikTok crowd, they’ve probably got a podcast. Some Alpha Males have their own websites where they sell self-help content, crypto investment tips, and crypto investment tips disguised as self-help content. Through the Manosphere community, many of them are now rich and successful, or at least they appear to be.
One might think the incel subculture and the rest of the world would unite against this common enemy, but incels themselves are a part of the Manosphere. Whether they realize it or not, they’ve been assimilated into the hive mind. After all, much of it is targeted towards them, with Alpha Males showing off their peak Chadhood. Many of them even sell courses to teach their fans how to do the same. For instance, the notorious Manosphere influencer Andrew Tate founded “The War Room,” an $8,000 chatroom that he describes as a “global network in which exemplars of individualism work to free the modern man from socially induced incarceration.” Tate often brags about his success with women, and his marketing scheme implies that joining his inner circle or his “PhD course,” Hustlers University, will teach incels how to become “winners” like him.
The majority of Manosphere influencers gain their notoriety not because of their relatability, but because they offer something to young men — secrets of success, pick-up artistry, and ways to drastically alter their looks. Though so many incels are genuinely irritated with Alpha Males and their messages, they are the primary audience being targeted by this content. The incel subculture relies on chatroom interactions and 4chan, but the Manosphere has absorbed these spaces. Many of the negative stereotypes of incels also apply to major Manosphere influencers — they’re gym-maxxed, red-pilled, and often express a hatred towards women. Even if incels don’t want to experience endless hours of misguided fitness advice, they’ll indirectly see the same messaging spread across their feeds, and even if they don’t mean to do it, they’ll wind up consuming the Alpha Male content.
For instance, there’s the “green line.” Rivelino the Artist is credited with popularizing the term after his series of “Don’t Lean In” tweets, which involve drawing a green line over the center of gravity of each person in a photo. This was used to indicate a relationship dynamic in photos of couples. The straightness of the line is supposed to show who holds the dominance in a relationship, so according to Rivelino, if a man’s line is more angled than a woman’s, he isn’t projecting dominance over his partner. Thus, the man is humiliated, emasculated, and can never be perceived as a true man. Yes, this was probably meant to be a joke.
It doesn’t seem to matter whether or not this was blatant satire. Either way, it’s been taken very seriously by some, particularly Andrew Tate, who popularized the concept for his audience, insisting that this really says something about a man’s manhood and his relationship with a woman. He claims men need to keep their green lines centered rather than tilted, especially with a woman beside them, because it denotes power. There are a lot of people who make jokes about the green line, but there are also many people who take it very seriously, drawing it over photographs of celebrities, Chads, or their crush and her boyfriend. There is a very literal line between satire and typical incel topics, but with the adoption of the green line, bonesmashing, and more, it’s getting harder to find that line and to figure out if it’s crooked or not. Alpha Male propaganda has become interwoven with the subculture’s discourse.
“All of the major Manosphere influencers have made lots of money off their incel viewers, as well as the incels who unknowingly perpetuate the same trends they’ve started, unaware they originate from the Alpha Males.”
Other rulers of the Manosphere don’t present as Alpha Males at all, but many of them spread the same messages beneath more likeable disguises. There are Manosphere scientists, doctors, therapists, and more. Some Manosphere influencers are simply outspoken men who viewers find funny and likeable. Others offer the answers to life’s big questions through psychology; for instance, some incels love the works of Jordan Peterson and Brian Gilmartin.
There’s a Manosphere influencer to trick any incel, regardless of how chronically online or genuinely intelligent they may be, and they’re constantly making it harder for incels to turn off the computer and move on.
Some Manosphere influencers are incredibly convincing. Though many incels dislike figures like Tate, there are other Manosphere influencers who use very different means to attract their audience. For instance, on the opposite end of the Manosphere spectrum, there’s the Mews, a father-son orthodontist duo, who claim there’s a way to improve one’s looks — specifically, the stereotypically weak incel jawline — through “mewing.” Their method appears to be backed by modern science and orthodontics, and this drew incels in, giving them hope that they could looksmaxx enough to fix their troubles with women.
Mewing is a common topic in incel communities, and some incels who normally avoid Alpha Males have voiced their support for John and Mike Mew, not realizing that they, too, are Manosphere influencers with a large social media following. It turns out the Mews have been discredited by peers in the field and sued. The /r/orthotropics subreddit is inspired by the Mews and their looksmaxxing suggestions, and several people in the community have posted about lasting jaw damage they’ve sustained as a result of mewing. Behind it all, the Mews were making a profit off of mewing, not only due to their social media popularity, but because they sold the Biobloc, a special mewing device that costs thousands of dollars.
All of the major Manosphere influencers have made lots of money off their incel viewers, as well as the incels who unknowingly perpetuate the same trends they’ve started, unaware that they originate from the Alpha Males. Some Manosphere influencers aren’t known as well, taking on names like “Toxic Rob” and releasing mixtapes. Others, like author Nick Adams, have sold countless copies of books and now maintain over five hundred thousand followers on social media, and they’ve got millions of people debating whether or not they’re just being ironic, or if it even matters.
Even if they started as jokes, the trends, advice, and questionable perspectives of Manosphere influencers have spread to every message board or corner of 4chan where incels lurk. Certain looksmaxxing techniques like bonesmashing wouldn’t be as notorious as they are today without the help of the YouTubers who once spread tutorials about them. And when viewers buy what they’re selling (often literally), their finances, self-esteem, and health are all at risk, and before long, they become trapped in incelldom. The relationship between the Manosphere, Alpha Males, and incels may be complicated, but it’s a relationship nonetheless, and if you look closely enough, you can see the green lines.