Mastodawn

Watched the manosphere doc by myself last night, just to gauge how watching it w the kid might go, and I’m glad I did because I don’t think he’s ready for it. I have criticisms, but before I go into them I want to make it clear that I loathe these asshole grifters and everything they represent. I have my own issues that basically boil down to the fact that I more or less hate men without needing any outside prompting, which is some trauma that I have had to reconcile with as the father of a boy, not wanting him to inherit my shitty baggage.

I feel like this movie does this constant little wink to the viewer, where Theroux keeps claiming he’s not trying to gotcha these guys, when he clearly is, and they rightly sense it. And I mean, they deserve it, and I think on some level they know that, and therein lies the tension of the film. But I think it would have been so much more interesting and useful, if extraordinarily difficult, to try to listen to what these broken, evil boys are saying from some more truly journalistic perspective. Because as contemptible as they are, I noticed several moments where these kids had hints of class analysis, where they clearly could see how gender is perverted and commodified, they just kinda say “fuck it” and hedonistically lean in rather than fight it

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stooge Mar 20

Like, they’re halfway there, why not try to engage with their flawed analysis in terms they might understand? It seems like Theroux is capable of this kind of journalism, but I suppose this wouldn’t lend itself to the kind of emotionally-leading bombast of a Netflix documentary

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tony tone toni

@stooge
I dunno I don't think it's worth engaging them. The folks he interviewed/followed will also just fall back to gotchas that would never allow any actual real discussion to take place. I appreciate that he isn't trying to "both sides need to be heard". I don't think they deserve to be able to try and engage and defend their atrocious views. Not these guys. I think if he did that with their target audience then it's possible to actually engage. I look at it the same way as trying to talk with a white nationalist that is a famous youtuber....fuck them and engaging in discussion.
But all of this is def an in person discussion not a back and forth online.

I do agree this is geared towards folks that aren't trying to smash the system. I think it's main purpose is to inform folks that these guys exist because so many people don't have any idea at all. You can say "there's these ideas around toxic masculinity being pushed on young men and women" but they don't actually know the depth of it.