In a development that has sent tremors through the chattering classes, a Hollywood actor of middling talent but prodigious self-regard has declared himself the messiah of the manosphere. The gentleman in question, whose name I shall withhold to preserve what remains of his dignity, has launched a new 'philosophy' that appears to be a cocktail of stale pickup artist clichés, poorly digested Nietzsche, and the sort of self-help one might find on a lads' magazine website circa 2005.
From the sun-baked terraces of Los Angeles to the rain-sodden pavements of Islington, a transatlantic culture war has erupted. The actor's gospel: men are oppressed by feminism, society has emasculated the male, and the solution is to 'reclaim your inner alpha' through a regimen of cold showers, weightlifting, and the aggressive consumption of raw meat. It is, in essence, the same drivel one might hear from any jack-booted guru in a rented conference room, but now delivered with the full force of Hollywood charisma.
British observers, accustomed to a more genteel form of male grievance (the quiet grumble over lukewarm beer, the passive-aggressive letter to the Times), have greeted this American import with a mixture of horror and glee. For here is the naked absurdity of the manosphere, stripped of any intellectual pretence and paraded before the cameras. The actor's interviews are a masterclass in solipsism: 'I have been called to lead. The mainstream media, the woke elite, they want to silence me. But I will not be silenced.'
One cannot help but recall the words of the great British satirist, the late Spike Milligan, who once observed that 'the most beautiful thing in the world is a well-aimed custard pie.' The manosphere messiah is the embodiment of such a pie, if the pie were made of resentment and baked in an oven of narcissism. His followers, a motley crew of online goblins, have taken to social media to proclaim him a 'free thinker', a 'brave voice', a 'warrior for truth'. But truth, as any British schoolboy knows, is a slippery fish best caught with a net of scepticism.
The fault lies not in our stars but in our celebrities. In an age of collapsing institutions, we have elevated actors to the role of moral philosophers. The manosphere messiah is merely the logical endpoint of this trend: a man so convinced of his own importance that he mistakes his own personal grievances for a universal crisis.
Yet there is something quintessentially American about this spectacle. The American soul, as I have observed in my travels, is prone to grand narratives and messianic delusions. The British soul, by contrast, is more inclined to a quiet pint and a muttered 'bloody nonsense'. This culture war, then, is less a battle of ideas than a collision of temperaments.
What is to be done? I propose a simple inoculation: a regular dose of irony, a stiff gin, and the knowledge that any man who declares himself a messiah is almost certainly not one. The manosphere will continue to churn out its prophets, and the grateful masses will continue to lap it up. But in the end, as the great British philosopher George Orwell noted, 'sanity is not statistical.' One must simply muddle through with a sense of the ridiculous.
This reporter shall now retreat to the nearest pub, where the only messiah is the landlord, and the only gospel is the daily special. And if a Hollywood actor walks in proclaiming his divinity, I shall doff my cap and order him a pint of the house bitter. That, I suspect, will be the end of it.
