Who Really Profits When Misogyny Goes Viral?
It’s certainly not women or most men
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In an anonymous letter to The Guardian sent by a high school student in the US following Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, she writes:
It genuinely felt as though they [boys] viewed us as unintelligent or even inferior. During science lab our male lab partners read the directions aloud to us, and we had to remind them that we could actually read.
Of course, it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that the victory of Trump, whose presidential campaign was centred around a very specific brand of masculinity — loud, obnoxious, and domineering — would embolden and intensify misogynistic attitudes.
In fact, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) tracked narratives targeting women in the aftermath of the election and found that the use of derogatory and misogynistic language has increased exponentially. On the platform formerly known as Twitter, mentions of terms like ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ surged by 4,600%. A subset of posts went even further, explicitly threatening women with sexual assault and calling for the formation of ‘rape squads.’ The ISD noted that this rising tide of online hate has also translated into offline harassment.
But what we’re witnessing now has been years in the making. Misogyny has gradually but steadily seeped into our society, reframing openly discriminatory and sexist ideas that would’ve been dismissed as extreme just a decade ago into ‘interesting’ talking points worthy of further discussion. The online world, in particular, has become a hotbed for this sort of rhetoric. And yet, there’s little being done to stop it.
If anything, misogyny is allowed to spread unchecked across social media and the internet at large, taking on new, even more toxic forms.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of regressive thinking that would certainly make the average Victorian feel right at home, with women being told — once again — to embrace the role of all-sacrificing baby-makers and retreat to their ‘rightful’ place in the home and men being reminded that the world is theirs for the taking.
But the misogynistic messaging going viral today is often unlike anything we’ve seen in the past. Accompanied by seemingly ‘scientific’ language and ‘evidence’ — usually misunderstood, misquoted, or outright fabricated studies — and riddled with bitter personal narratives, it posits that women are nothing more than ‘brainless primates’ created to serve and obey men. Most importantly, though, it’s disseminated in ways it’s never been disseminated before. After all, at no point in history, not even after the publication of Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of the Witches’) — arguably the most misogynistic text ever written, whose popularity spread across Europe like wildfire thanks to the invention of the printing press — could people be subjected to hateful, misleading content for hours on end, day after day, month after month, without even realising what was happening.
Radicalisation in the digital age is a far more insidious beast. It begins subtly, with content that feels just a little off. But over time, it becomes more and more extreme, until you find yourself like the proverbial frog in boiling water that doesn’t notice the gradual temperature increases until it’s too late.
I’ve written extensively about this issue and the research conducted on it in recent years, particularly concerning online misogyny. One study I covered last year, done in partnership with UCL, the University of Kent, and the Association of School and College Leaders, found that within just two days of searching for TikTok content related to themes like loneliness or self-improvement, young men start being shown misogynistic content, including posts promoting objectification, sexual harassment, and the discrediting of women. After five days, the app’s algorithm increases the proportion of such content from 13% of recommended videos to 56%.
A similar pattern was identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which reported that young men searching on Google for topics like body image, unemployment, or loneliness are often directed toward deeply misogynistic content, including incel forums and websites. CCDH also found that in 2022, on TikTok alone, there were more than 100 accounts with a combined following of 5.7 million, solely dedicated to promoting the misogynistic ideology of Andrew Tate, one of the most prominent figures in the ‘manosphere,’ a network of online misogynistic communities. Among the content shared were statements like, ‘women should take some degree of responsibility for rape’ and ‘virgins are the only acceptable thing to marry.’
More recent studies reveal that not much has changed. This issue persists not only on TikTok and Google but across most major online platforms, including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram and Google’s YouTube. Irrespective of whether they actively seek out misogynistic or male supremacist content, young men and boys with internet access are quite likely to encounter it at some point anyway.
And such exposure is bound to have consequences.
According to research commissioned by Vodafone last year, which included a survey of parents, boys aged 11–14, and teachers, a majority (69%) of boys had encountered posts promoting misogyny online. On average, they are exposed to such content within just 30 minutes of being online. Additionally, 70% of teachers reported an increase in sexist language in the classroom over the past year, while 42% of parents said they had heard their sons make sexual, violent, or degrading comments about women and girls — clearly influenced by what they see online.
Vodafone’s study also highlighted, as the research above has, that it’s social media algorithms that often push misogynistic content to users searching for unrelated, innocuous material such as fitness or gaming.
The result of all this is devastating: droves of young men and boys being lured into hateful echo chambers where women are portrayed as their enemy number one and where aggression, emotional repression, and the relentless pursuit of dominance are not only normalised but glorified as the ultimate expression of ‘masculinity.’
This is even more worrying considering that while no one is truly immune to online extremism — especially when it’s drip-fed over time — adolescents are particularly vulnerable. Extremist groups of all kinds are well aware of this, too. And so are misogynistic gurus. One of Andrew Tate’s closest associates, Miles Sonkin, has admitted that their ‘prime demographic’ is ‘school-age boys, 12–18.’ In other words, kids who aren’t yet equipped with fully developed critical thinking skills or the emotional resilience needed to withstand such manipulation.
What then happens when an entire generation, or even two, of young men grow up being told that women are inferior and belong in the kitchen? That it’s acceptable — or even ‘masculine’ — to denigrate, harass, and subjugate us?
Women are already being silenced in politics, media, and other areas of public life as a result of this new wave of viral misogyny, which brings with it rape threats, death threats, unsolicited sexual images, and various other forms of online harassment. As one 2021 study in Norway found, ‘targeted women are more likely than targeted men to become more cautious in expressing their opinions publicly.’ This is because the harassment women face is gendered, yes, but also more frequent and severe. According to a European study from 2023, women are, on average, 27 times more likely to face such harassment than men.
The NGO Plan International has also found that online harassment becomes exorbitantly worse as soon as women and girls express their opinions freely or engage in activism. To be a woman is bad enough, but to be a woman with a mind of her own? Even worse.
Unfortunately, extreme misogynistic content can — and does — inspire offline violence as well. Although the causes of gender-based violence — including domestic and intimate partner violence — are complex and multifaceted, one of the key drivers is precisely misogynistic attitudes and beliefs, which are polluting our digital environments as we speak.
But men and boys who fall down the rabbit hole of misogynistic content aren’t exactly benefiting from what it teaches them, either.
Unfortunately, there’s still no shortage of people who fail to recognise online misogyny as a pervasive issue. Or who believe that its most prominent proponents aren’t ‘that bad’ because if you just ‘skip the misogyny,’ their content can ‘empower’ men and set them on the right track in life. Is that really so?
If you indeed ‘skip the misogyny,’ there’s little left. The remaining themes in manosphere-adjacent spaces revolve almost exclusively around maximising one’s own physical attractiveness — ‘looksmaxxing’ — as well as social status and income. Collectively referred to as LSM (looks, status, money), these are framed as the only determinants of a man’s value, especially in heterosexual relationships, and so, the only aspects men are encouraged to prioritise improving. Everything else, including qualities women do value in men — like kindness and emotional intelligence — is dismissed as unimportant or even ‘emasculating.’
Needless to say, these beliefs are deeply damaging. Psychologists studying men exposed to such content find they can heighten mental distress, reinforce a negative self-perception of being unattractive or too emotionally sensitive to appeal to women and harm their already existing relationships. Exposure to online misogyny can have a similar impact, too.
Hatred doesn’t empower or uplift. It deforms. It isolates. It pushes people into a state of perpetual hostility toward the world and, ultimately, themselves. Men and boys who are taught to blame their problems and the state of the world on half of its population are not being guided toward strength or resilience. Instead, they’re handed a narrative of victimhood that stunts their growth, damages their relationships, and perpetuates cycles of anger and alienation.
Women, girls and gender-nonconforming people obviously don’t benefit from the barrage of hatred against them everywhere either. Yet it persists.
And that’s not just because misogyny is woven into the fabric of virtually all religious, cultural, economic, and political institutions today, but also because it’s profitable. It’s profitable for men who disguise hate as ‘male empowerment’ to sell courses, e-books, and programs, and it’s profitable for tech companies because it generates high engagement and, consequently, advertising revenue. CCDH’s estimates reveal, for instance, that YouTube earned £3.4 million in ad revenue just from Andrew Tate’s videos, some of which openly condoned violence against women.
It’s no surprise, then, that social media companies fail to act to stop misogyny from being amplified. If anything, already limited content safeguards are only becoming increasingly loose. Just last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to ‘get rid of fact-checkers’ on both Facebook and Instagram, replacing them with ‘Community Notes’ — users themselves doing the fact-checking. He also promised to ‘get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender.’
Well. We’ve already seen where this leads when Elon Musk fired vast portions of Twitter’s content moderation and misinformation teams.
But the proliferation of misogyny — and hate speech more broadly — is not just great for engagement. It also ensures that we remain distracted, turning on each other instead on those most responsible for the many real, systemic issues so many of us struggle with today.
Our mutual hatred is their win. And so is our refusal to acknowledge that misogyny is hardly yesterday’s problem.
While it may feel overwhelming to confront the wildfire of misogyny spreading across our digital and physical worlds, let’s remember we are not powerless. There are steps we can take as individuals — starting with educating ourselves about this issue and how it’s perpetuated through algorithms and then engaging in open, honest conversations with the men and boys in our lives.
If you need a starting point, here are a couple of great resources:
‘Not Just a Joke: Understanding and Preventing Gender and Sexuality-Based Bigotry’ by Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab — this is a good overview of misogynistic content online and how to address harmful behaviour in real life.
Safe Phone Toolkit for families by The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children — this is a set of helpful guidelines to help children develop healthy digital habits and stay safe online.
Little wonder why a competent female candidate lost to a convicted felon also convicted of sexual assault. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in the US for a female President, for many decades at least.
It has been shocking to witness the tsunami of misogyny of the last few years and see it become so normalised. All the progress I thought we had made has been blasted away. It’s depressing.