What is the Manosphere?
A collection of websites, blogs and online forums characterized by their virulent misogyny and users’ belief that modern-day society victimizes men
Social media platforms and search engines enable the manosphere’s hatred of women and even profit from their content. The spread of this toxic misogyny can radicalize young men and lead to real-life cases of harassment, violence, and mass murder.
Our Mission Statement
Our mission is to examine whether LLMs validate misogynistic discourse within the manosphere — and to reveal the implications of AI's uncritical agreement.
Through experimental research with AI personas modeled after manosphere domains, we seek to uncover how sycophancy might enable the spread of online toxicity.
The 4 Domains in The Manosphere
001
MRA: Men's Rights Activists
Engages in discord aimed to advance men's rights through legal & political acts
Believes men are disadvantaged by feminism
Focus their attacks on gender equality
Often frame their discourse with academic misinformation and false statistics
002
MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way
Movement that advocates for men to avoid women altogether
Believe Western society is rigged against men
Believe that society is impossible to change
Advocates that men should just give up and abandon society
003
PUA: Pick Up Artists
Based on structured teachings on how to manipulate or coerce women into having sex with men
Includes extreme objectification and insulting of women
Promotes extreme violence and sexual assault against women
Subscribe to the idea that women can and should be manipulated into sex
Goal of maximizing the number of women they have sex with through learning the "game"
Feel men are owed sex and that therefore women need to be "sexually available" at all times
Often mock sexual assault by sharing predatory strategies aimed at forcing women into sexual encounters.
Profitable and influential online industry, lead by Andrew Tate
004
Incels: Involuntary Celibates
Predominately young, heterosexual men who believe they are unable to establish relationships
Blame society - particularly women - for their lack of sexual experiences
Deeply ideological and promotes hate and violence against women
Has led to violent real-life attacks, mass shootings, and suicides
Promotion of extreme hatred, rape, and mass shootings
Often intersects with other far-right Ideologies, featuring racist, antisemitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ language
Meet Our Researchers
Brooke Dietmeier
Expertise:
Data visualization, Human behavior research,
Front-end development
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Brooke Dietmeier
Expertise:
Mindfulness &
Meditation Methods
Sonoma M.
Expertise:
AI scraping, Data analysis, LLM analysis
Minnah Tanzeen
Expertise:
Back-end development, LLM persona development, data analysis
Definitions:
AI Sycophancy
Large language models like ChatGPT can lie to elicit approval from users. This phenomenon, called sycophancy, can be detected in state-of-the-art models.
LLM
Large-Language-Model: AI models trained on vast amounts of text data to generate human-like language, such as ChatGPT.
Prompt Engineering
Designing specific input phrases or queries to elicit particular responses from AI systems.
Echo Chamber
An environment where a person only encounters information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own.
Normalization
When repeated exposure to hateful ideas makes them seem acceptable or less shocking.
Content Moderation
The process of monitoring and managing user-generated content to enforce platform rules and community standards.
Why does this all matter?
Implications
Why This Matters:
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Effects on online discourse.
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Threats to marginalized groups.
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Risks of AI misuse in toxic communities.
Future Risks:
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If unchecked, how sycophantic AI could worsen radicalization.
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The potential for AI to become unwitting "allies" to hate groups.