How the manosphere found its way into the Black community

Many pundits in the manosphere believe that men need to embrace their traditional roles as protectors, providers and producers. L. Willinger/FPG via Getty Images by Steven Dashiell, Morgan State University In the summer of 2023, I read that YouTube had demonetized a podcast called “Fresh & Fit,” meaning that the show could no longer earn ad revenue. While YouTube didn’t point to an inciting incident, the podcast had recently come under fire for hosting White supremacist Nick Fuentes. During the episode, Fuentes had called women “baby machines” and denied the existence of the Holocaust. Until then, I hadn’t heard of “Fresh & Fit.” But once I learned that the hosts were two young Black men, Myron Gaines and Walter Weekes, I wanted to learn more about what they were saying on their show – and how they said it. The show is part of the “manosphere”: online places where men have conversations for, with and about men. Journalists and scholars generally describe younger White men as the most common audiences for manosphere influencers. As a researcher of male-dominated spaces, I wondered: Were Gaines and Weekes specifically trying to target Black male followers? And, if so, how were they pulling this...