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