Hegemonic Masculinities and Manosphere Discourse on X: A Netnography of South Africa’s Podcast and Chill Network

This study examines how hegemonic masculinities and anti-feminist discourse circulate on X through the Podcast and Chill Network (@podcastwithmacg), a prominent South African podcast brand. Guided by Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity and scholarship on platformed visibility, it uses a qualitative netnographic single-case design that combines critical discourse analysis of posts and replies with descriptive counts of coded material, and distinguishes manosphere-specific content from general masculinity and anti-feminist discourse. Grok was used as a keyword-driven extraction tool to retrieve public posts, replies, quote-posts and reposts published between 1 and 18 June 2026. After manual verification (88 of 120 Grok returns) and screening, 58 items were retained and manually coded against an eleven-code codebook. The findings revealed that the network’s posts constructed masculinity around provider–protector roles and narratives of gender conflict, with conflict-oriented posts attracting the highest visible engagement. Manosphere-specific content, such as red-pill claims of innate female manipulation and MGTOW-style rejection of marriage, appeared embedded within more conventional talk about marriage, provision and reliability. Audience responses reinforced these narratives while discouraging dissenting views. The findings further showed that global manosphere narratives were adapted to the South African context through the incorporation of local cultural and social references. Because X’s ranking system cannot be observed, visibility is analysed through visible engagement metrics, not as evidence of algorithmic amplification or radicalisation. The study argues that, within this network, manosphere discourse is neither wholly imported nor purely local but emerges through the interaction of global misogynistic repertoires, local masculine anxieties, audience labour and platformed visibility.