This Huffington Post headline was pretty deceptive and the article following was ultimately pointless.

Jillian Wilson’s headline identifies a problem — one third of all teenage boys follow problematic influencers. Oh my. She then advises me that a new study can explain why. OK. I will bite.

Wilson starts with the problem. The manosphere supports traditional gender roles. Traditional gender roles are bad, so the manosphere is bad. The study then picked two manosphere influencers — Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson — and asked teen boys if they were following. The study found that one third of the boys are.

Except the study finds little evidence that the teens actually are influenced by the manosphere. When the boys were asked to name their top influencers, only 10% of boys picked Tate or Peterson. So, what does this mean? A minority of teen boys within a minority say they are influenced by the manosphere. Really? My worry is abating.

Then, to further calm my nerves, Wilson discusses that the teens mostly likely to follow these manosphere influencers come from families where traditional gender roles are already upheld. She writes, “the influence of a household was stronger than whether teens followed Tate or Peterson on social media. Boys with parents who adhered to strict gender norms were up to three times more likely to hold these same views and fall under the influence of the manosphere.” Unsurprisingly a boys opinion on gender roles comes largely from the boys family and not the manosphere. So influencers are not so influencing and families are. Is any of this surprising?

So maybe influencers aren’t so important but why do these young lads follow them? Given that the headline promises to tell us why (see above), I was dumbfounded to later learn that the boys weren’t even asked why they read these manosphere influencers. WTF. I thought that was the whole point of the article.

Don’t worry Wilson speculates on why and offers advice to parents whose boys are reading these influencers. But why bother? Good liberal parents with the right opinion about gender roles aren’t likely to find their sons under the sheets reading Tate and Peterson while conservative parents with the traditional ideas about gender roles aren’t likely to be concerned if they do.

I learned nothing new after wading through this confusing mess of reporting.