21-year-old man whose anti-misogyny poetry got reposted by Andrew Tate wants to create ‘the opposite of the manosphere’

A young man from Essex has gone viral for his emotive poetry videos which aim to spark human connection and offer an alternative to the “manosphere”.

Sam Browne’s engaging, heartfelt poems such as Silly Billy – which has around 15 million views across social media platforms – address taboo topics like men’s mental health and gender-based violence.

Difficult conversations with the women in his life fuelled the 21-year-old from Southend to start writing and performing poems to shine a much-needed light on these uncomfortable topics.

“I initially started writing poetry when I was about 14. I went to a poetry workshop and wrote a few pieces, and then I was terrified that people would mock me for it, so I stopped,” Sam told PA Real Life.

“Then years later, I found out that someone I knew had sexually assaulted somebody else that I knew. I saw him at the pub, and I walked straight up to the table, and I thought I was going to hit him, but I just walked straight on past went home and wrote a poem, and it was that was pretty much the first time I’d written since I was a kid. After that, it has just all flowed out of me in poetry.”

Sam only started posting about his spoken word poetry on social media last year, but his videos rapidly started getting thousands of views. The young poet now has 96.3K followers on Instagram and 42.3K on TikTok.

“Poets used to wake up on their grand estates, walk down to the river and write about the way that the water moved, and when I wake up, I see genocide in Gaza and a rise in loneliness within four minutes of opening my phone,” said Sam.

“Therefore, I choose these hard topics, because I can’t accept the world that we live in. The kind of poetry that I write is just honesty on paper in a very succinct form.”

His thought-provoking content has even caught the attention of controversial social media personality Andrew Tate, but Sam views any backlash to his videos as a positive.

“When Andrew Tate reposted one of my videos onto his Twitter with the caption ‘Try harder’, immediately I was like, oh my god, I’m going to get so much hate,” said Sam.

“However, I actually got a ton of messages from young men saying, ‘Hey, I saw your stuff on Andrew Tate’s Twitter, and I went to hate on your stuff, then I watched your videos, and it’s exactly how I feel. Thank you so much. You’ve completely changed my mind about this’.

“So if people are being rude, then that’s perfect, because they are the people that need to be listening. It may plant a seed that in four years’ time might grow into the into a man who cares.”

The passionate poet also delivers workshops in schools and believes that education is a core part of helping address internalised misogyny in young boys and men.

“We need to start giving people the tools that somebody like Andrew Tate is offering them, because if we just say that it’s bad, they’re just going to keep on going back to it. If you tell a 14-year-old not to do something, they will do it,” reflected Sam.

“The conversation should instead be, hey, listen to this stuff and show them more positive role models, possibly like myself, to see a cultural shift away from this.”

He knows first hand how prevalent misogyny can be in the classroom.

“I grew up and thought that everything was that we were all saying was a joke. Then one day, I found out that some people weren’t joking, and at that point I realised that we’d lost the right to joke about these things,” shared Sam.

“The more I examined that, and the deeper I got into it, the more women I spoke to, the more I started to untangle and unravel the web that is internalised misogyny. My journey itself was shaped by women in my life who were very patient with me and called me out on things.”

The 21-year-old initially started performing as a stand-up comedian but was quickly drawn to the honesty of spoken word poetry. He has found performing spoken word poetry onstage as a great way to connect with others.

“Poetry delivers a message in an engaging way, which is emotive and honest,” said Sam. “In a forever more alienating world where we have people talking to chatbots for company, to be able to listen to just raw human emotion, how someone deeply feels, and to tap into that, is so special.

“There’s moments when I’m on stage where everybody in the room feels connected, there’s this collective consciousness in that room which is absolutely wonderful. That’s the best part for me, to bring all of those people together, and there we all are in one big pounding heart.”

Despite performing at hundreds of gigs, he revealed that the initial fear of going on stage never goes away.

“I’m terrified almost every time I go on stage,” shared Sam. “That doesn’t go away, it’s still terrifying, but eventually you find a rhythm and get into that flow state, and everything kind of blurs out.”

He was recently invited to attend the One Young World Summit in Munich as an ambassador to present his poetry on the main stage and to speak to other people trying to make change in the world.

“I’ve had conversations with people at the summit who have nothing to do with my line of work but have completely shifted the way that I think about my work,” said the One Young World Ambassador. “I’ve been able to connect with young people all around the world who are making an immense amount of change and got some incredible advice.”

Looking forwards the future, Sam is keen to do more workshops within schools and work with like-minded creators to present to an alternative to what he calls manosphere, which has been defined by Cambridge Dictionary as websites and internet discussion groups that are concerned with men’s interests and rights as opposed to women’s, often connected with the opposition to feminism or dislike of women.

“Workshops in schools are such an important side of the work that I do, but I also want to be part of a group of people who are putting content in a collaborative way to create a shift that is not only positive, but also engaging,” said Sam.

“I want there to be the opposite of the manosphere…something like the humansphere. That’s the goal. That’s how we combat this and that’s how we start a movement.”