A Grift In The Manosphere: entrepreneurial masculinity in Danish influencer communities

The manosphere is widely perceived as a transnational digital ecosystem promoting narratives of gender crisis, reactionary masculinity, and entrepreneurial self making (Botto &amp; Gottzén, 2023; Ging, 2019). Although these dynamics are well documented in cultural, criminological, and information studies research, little attention has been paid to how entrepreneurial logics intersect with masculine identity performance (Bratich &amp; Banet-Weiser, 2019; Kompatsiaris, 2024). This paper investigates: “How do Danish manfluencers enact entrepreneurial masculinity to produce their twin objectives of ideological influence and individual economic advantage?”. Denmark’s welfare state model and high gender equality produce cultural conditions unlike the U.S., where dominant manosphere tropes are formed (Haslop et al., 2024), raising question on how manosphere tropes are locally adapted and translate into a Danish contexts.<br/>Our methodological approach draws on recent work into Estonian manfluencers (Lott et al., 2025), employing a critical discourse analysis, supported by ethnographically informed digital inquiry (Baker et al., 2024). This dual lens enables a close reading of discursive patterns, alongside a broader mapping of the influencers’ cultural positioning within the Danish media ecosystem. The study analyzes a selected corpus of Danish manfluencers across platforms, focusing on their rhetorical strategies, constructions of value, and the interweaving of entrepreneurship with gendered self improvement narratives.<br/>Concrete results are yet to materialize but preliminary findings indicate that Danish manfluencers draw on values, language, and economic logics associated with entrepreneurship, and adapt global manosphere tropes to a Danish context. With content blending local cultural reference points with imported narratives related to crisis, hierarchy, and self optimization, often monetizing men’s vulnerabilities through practices connected to grifting, finfluencing, and intimacy coaching.<br/>The paper contributes to understanding digital influence infrastructures by showing how entrepreneurial masculinity operates as a flexible ideological resource that can be adapted to local cultural conditions. In doing so, it expands current research beyond dominant Anglo American cases and highlights how platformed ideological actors’ function within smaller national ecosystems; an urgent concern given growing societal challenges surrounding opaque social media influence.<br/>