Men can get out of the manosphere. Here’s what former incels say about why they left

Elisabeta Dirjan/Canva, X.com, TikTok, Wikimedia, The Conversation, CC BY-NC Louis Theroux’s recent documentary Inside the Manosphere, alongside Netflix’s 2025 hit drama Adolescence, has driven a spike in public discussion about the “manosphere”. The term refers to a loose ecosystem of anti-feminist online communities and influencers that promote male dominance and hostility toward women. Much of the public conversation about the manosphere focuses on how boys and young men fall into these spaces. A new study by the Australian Institute of Criminology asks a different question: how do some men manage to leave?

Real-world dangers Concern about this online culture has grown in recent years. Increasing attention has been paid to adolescent boys and young men going down toxic online rabbit holes, moving from the misogynistic worldview of manosphere influencers toward more extreme spaces. This includes “incel” (involuntary celibate) forums. These frame women as enemies standing in the way of men’s perceived entitlement to sex. Violent revenge against women is sometimes openly encouraged. These concerns are warranted. Earlier anxieties largely focused on incidents of lone-offender violence in North America perpetrated by men linked to the misogynistic incel movement. It’s a threat Australia’s security agency ASIO has also flagged. How boys get sucked into the manosphere

More recently, researchers and educators have raised alarms about the broader cultural impact of manosphere ideas. This includes their influence on young men’s attitudes toward women and relationships, resulting in growing rates of hostile sexism in Australian schools. Understandably, much of the attention focuses on radicalisation into these communities. However, far less attention has been paid to what happens when some men begin to disengage from them.

‘An unhealthy loop of depression’ The Australian Institute of Criminology study provides rare insight into this process. Drawing on surveys and interviews with former participants in incel communities, the research explores how men become disillusioned with these spaces and eventually step away. The findings add to a growing body of evidence suggesting many men first encounter these communities during periods of insecurity or loneliness. Participants frequently described anxieties about their physical appearance, social status, sexual experience or financial success. Incel and manosphere forums claim to offer explanations and solidarity for these frustrations. As one former incel in the institute’s study recalled, he initially felt “some togetherness with others” in the forums.

Yet the same environment often becomes corrosive. Another respondent described how the community functioned as an “echo chamber […] fulfilling their own prophecy”, fuelling what he called “an unhealthy loop of depression”. Over time, some participants begin to notice the gap between the ideology promoted in these spaces and their everyday experiences. Positive interactions with women, supportive friendships, or simply observing that relationships in the real world do not follow the rigid rules promoted online can begin to undermine the worldview. One participant in the study described the moment it “clicked that all of it was really wrong” when his peers, “regardless of gender”, treated him with kindness and respect. In another study of people leaving the manosphere, a former participant reflected that the movement’s claims about women collapsed when he realised he still had a happy relationship with his wife despite being “unfit and definitely not wealthy”. Research consistently shows leaving these spaces is a challenging experience. Disengagement is usually gradual and uneven. It often involves the slow rebuilding of identity, relationships and belonging outside the forums that once defined participants’ worldview.

Finding the pathways out The perspectives of people who have left the manosphere deserve greater attention in public discussions. For people currently within the manosphere (and for those vulnerable to falling into it) amplifying such stories can reveal how these communities ultimately harm many of the people who believe in them. These stories matter because public discussion about the manosphere often focuses almost exclusively on its harms. Those harms are real and serious. But we need to be hopeful the scale of the problem can be arrested and that the men who fall into these spaces are not permanently lost to them. Schools, policymakers and families all need these first-hand perspectives. They offer more than just insight into why boys and young men fall down the rabbit hole: they provide a crucial road map for how we might help pull them out. This is essential to violence prevention work focused on how to promote “positive masculinity”. Maintaining that cautiously hopeful perspective is important. Without it, we risk treating radicalisation as inevitable and disengagement as impossible. The growing body of research on men leaving these communities suggests something different. While the harms of the manosphere are real, understanding the pathways out may offer some of the most important clues for how to respond.

Joshua Thorburn completed his PhD with support from the Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separately from that role.