Client: White Ribbon
White Ribbon has spent over 30 years working to engage men and boys in ending gender-based violence. Our 2025 insight? Boys are turning guidance from influencers who target them with the promise of confidence and success, then feed them misogyny and hate. We wanted to raise awareness of the alarming rise of misogyny in the “manosphere” — a term that was unfamiliar to 82% of parents with boys. So, we created our own online influencer, Max Hate, in the style of a puppet based on leading manosphere personalities. Max Hate came to life in a short film: My Friend, Max Hate. Using the same storytelling techniques as manosphere influencers, the film demonstrates how these influencers operate and how vulnerable boys can be manipulated into hate. To complement the PSA, White Ribbon created an online hub with actionable educational materials about how to recognize harmful online groups and help boys and young men escape the manosphere’s grasp. To reach our target, we embedded the Max Hate character into the content stream where boys and young men would find him: TikTok. Targeted social posts from the @max_hate_ account spoke directly to our audience, serving up information that exposed manosphere rhetoric in a style they would recognize. With a $0 paid media budget, the earned media and organic social campaign drove impact. Two months later, we generated a second wave of attention by leveraging the release of Netflix’s Adolescence, cementing the timeliness of our campaign and reentering it into the international news cycle.
