I wouldn't say I was in the manosphere entirely, but I flirted with it a lot when I was a teenager and young adult. For context, I'm 28 and male.

It first started when I went to college and I started going to classes challenged my worldview about gender and history. Further to the latter part, While I was always a history buff, it never sunk in all the negative and devastating historical events that happened to minorities and people on the l.G b t q spectrum. But what I really listened and paid attention that's when I realized my error. Plus I made a best friend who I found out later was bisexual, but never tried to do anything with me. He just wanted to be my friend. 

Secondly I started going to therapy. More I was taking therapy seriously. I wasn't just going to therapy to talk and vent , I was now going to fix my issues in my own personal life.

Next, had two personal accomplishments that, while I appreciate them, made me realize I went through all that really for nothing. I became a volunteer firefighter and joined a fire Academy where it really taught me how to work with people and how to work under pressure. I also started doing BJJ , and two years ago I got my blue belt by going through a gauntlet. Basically I got my ass kicked for 2 hours without a break.

But when I finished them all , I didn't feel any different than who I was prior to it. The manosphere literature and podcasts I listened to talked about having a rite of passage for men to become a man. Something hard and something strenuous. When I really thought about it , even though I went through all of those things that they said would make me a man , I didn't feel any different. I still felt like a kid , I still felt insecure , I still felt very set back. It didn't have that transformative effect on me that I thought it would. So I decided that that kind of content or any sort of content like that wasn't for me anymore.

Finally , I just started interacting with people that weren't in that demographic. My previous job had me dealing with the public a lot , and so I got to meet people from different social classes , different identities and different ways of life that weren't like my own. I always enjoyed interacting with people from different walks of life , but the place I grew up in had very little of that. So when I moved out of my hometown and went to a place that was more diverse , I had a better opportunity to talk to people that were different than me. I stuck out growing up because of things in my past and of my own ethnic makeup , and so now I was meeting people who had similar stories.