Rise of the sigma male: TikTok’s new gender divide

TikTok is playing a pivotal role in spreading toxic discourses associated with sigma masculinity, which advocates disinterest in and denigration of women as well as hatred and humiliation of other gender identities.

That’s the finding of a study by Université de Montréal criminology professor Samuel Tanner and Ph.D. student François Gillardin, who analyzed videos posted on TikTok and uncovered the disturbing trend.

Their findings were published in Social Media + Society.

The idea for the research project originated in the personal experiences of the co-authors, who were taken aback by the content of some of the videos that were showing up in their TikTok feeds.

“These videos may seem humorous at first glance, but they stage relationships between boys and girls in ways that betray outdated, anti-feminist gender stereotypes,” they report in their study.

Sigma masculinity positions itself as an alternative to traditional models of masculinity. Unlike the alpha male, the sigma male is a loner who values independence, self-confidence, pragmatism, determination, ambition, adaptability and non-conformism.

“The sigma male is defined as a self-centered, ambitious and disciplined individual who cultivates a cynical distance in relationships with women,” Tanner explained. “Underlying this image are toxic representations of gender relations, including male domination and control.”

195 videos analyzed

For their research, Gillardin created a TikTok account and, over the course of one month, identified 960 videos using the keyword searches sigma, sigmamale and sigmamalegrindset. He and Tanner then analyzed 195 of those videos to identify patterns of toxic communication.

Those patterns divide into three categories: specific practices, grammar and context.

• In their communication practices, sigma males featured dynamic video montages depicting men as victims in a society ruled by women, while presenting a contemptuous image of other genders, particularly women. “Humor is used to deliver a message that is toxic in content while softening the form,” said Tanner. “These messages also have a prescriptive dimension, encouraging viewers to adopt these postures.”
• The grammar of toxic communication in these videos was heavily influenced by film culture: images of protagonists such as Patrick Bateman, the Christian Bale character in American Psycho, are backed by a soundtrack of phonk music (a mix of hip-hop and trap). The goal of this audiovisual approach is to support messages promoting four types of sigma male attitudes towards women and other genders: disinterest, rejection, humiliation and hatred, according to Tanner and Gillardin.
• The context for these videos is the supposed “crisis of masculinity,” they add. Against this backdrop, sigma content serves as a “ready-to-think response to a reality whose contours are becoming increasingly unclear for men, offering traditional men a digital man cave,” they write.

Teenage boys targeted

Propogated online via TikTok’s algorithms and special features, these videos are particularly troubling because they target the platform’s main users: teenage boys under 17 years old, the researchers say.

“These videos propagate a kind of gender misinformation that polarizes relations between men and women, trivializes sexist behavior and normalizes violence by weaponizing stereotypical narratives,” they write.

Digital criminology holds promise for understanding and combating this phenomenon, they add. Approaches could be developed that go beyond detecting explicitly hateful content to uncover the subtle mechanisms through which gender stereotypes are constructed and disseminated.

“At a time when digital technology is becoming a major driver of socialization, understanding these mechanisms of the construction of toxic masculinities is becoming an essential societal issue,” they conclude in their study.

“Combating these representations requires in-depth understanding of how they are produced, disseminated and legitimized.”

Tanner and Gillardin plan to broaden their research as part of a transdisciplinary research program on disinformation and its impact on democracy, made possible by a posthumous donation to UdeM by former alumnus and top administrator Jacques Girard.