Men v gorilla v the rest of us: Why masculinity contests go viral

NZ Herald

04-05-2025

Jimmy 'MrBeast' Donaldson, a content creator who draws audiences in the hundreds of millions by staging elaborate stunts, joked on X: 'Need 100 men to test this, any volunteers?'
'Sure, what's the worst that could happen?' X owner Elon Musk replied.
Men v gorilla isn't the first debate about men's abilities – and limits – to blow up online. In 2019, Twitter ground to a halt to discuss whether an untrained man could beat a women's tennis professional like Serena Williams in a match. To the horror of athletes and experts, many thought they could. In 2023, a YouGov survey trended after it found many men without flying experience believe they could successfully land a passenger plane.
These viral hypotheticals have something in common, according to social scientists. All of them ask whether men could maintain dominance and control against incredible odds. You won't find viral memes asking whether men could collaborate with a gorilla – or whether women could do any of the above.
A preoccupation with battling gorillas, which can weigh 500 pounds, might reflect an absurd overconfidence on the part of human men, said Samuel Perry, a sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma who studies the connection between masculinity and ideology. But it more likely reflects a deeper insecurity, he noted.
Research increasingly indicates young men today fare worse than past generations in terms of educational achievement, employment and romantic relationships, Perry said. Combine that with the growing cultural and financial power of women and gender-non-conforming people, and you get a world where men are increasingly anxious about their place in society. According to Pew Research data from 2024, 31% of Republican men believe women's advancement in society has come at the expense of men. Some research, meanwhile, suggests men might behave more aggressively when they feel their masculinity has been threatened.
'This runaway meme of men fighting a gorilla and all of the similar memes that we've seen over the years, I think they land in the fertile soil of young men who are quite insecure in their masculinity,' Perry said.
A cultural reckoning with masculinity fuels more than trending memes, said Theresa Vescio, a psychology professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies gender and power. If gorilla fights are the tip of the iceberg, there's a larger battle swirling underneath, according to Vescio.
Online spaces, specifically for young men, have seen their influence balloon in recent years. Leading up to the 2024 presidential election, for instance, Donald Trump's social media team arranged appearances for him on a variety of podcasts and video shows with hosts that promote traditional views of masculinity. The strategy paid off, Trump strategists said: men between the ages of 18 and 29 shifted drastically rightward since 2020, network exit polls indicated.
Some of the biggest boosts to the online gorilla debate came from male conservative commentators and creators with largely male audiences, including Donaldson, Musk, Walsh and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) YouTube channel. It shows how quickly and broadly the so-called manosphere, like other powerful online networks, can disseminate information, said Jacob Johanssen, an associate professor at St. Mary's University at Twickenham who wrote a widely-cited 2021 book on the topic.
Much of the gorilla debate was lighthearted. But some onlookers still felt uneasy. Emma Gray, co-creator of the culture newsletter Rich Text, said she struggled to find comparable memes about women's strength and abilities. The closest thing she could think of was a trend from last year in which women debated whether they'd rather run into a man or a bear when alone in the woods.
'For men, viral debates are about estimating their own skills,' Gray said. 'For women, it's trying to assess what's dangerous to our safety. I think that tells us a lot about the state of gender at this moment.'
Hillary Lucas, a 47-year-old from Tennessee, watched the debate play out all week as she scrolled through TikTok, Facebook and X. She felt exasperated, she said.
'There's so much happening right now – breaking news, executive orders, attacks on women's reproductive rights – and these guys just want to fight a gorilla,' she said.
Not so fast, though, said Tara Stoinski, a gorilla expert and president and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Male gorillas may be big, strong and aggressive in some circumstances, Stoinski said, but at the end of the day they are gentle creatures who enjoy spending time with their families. Our fascination with battling them to the death may say more about us than it does about them.
'Gorillas form life-long friendships,' Stoinski said. 'They mourn the loss of family members, and they take care of their most vulnerable.'