Trainwreck: The Real Project X

I think Merthe is a sweet girl. This was not her fault, perhaps a bit naive. How something like an innocent facebook invitation could get out of hand is truly unbelievable. Therefore, it is a bit of an ok documentary to watch, but otherwise not very interesting. The short-haired man from "Stuk TV" could use some work on his English. That was annoying.

The documentary doesn't add anything about how this could have happened, group behavior, police statements, etc. More time could have been spent on that to make it a bit more interesting. That's a missed opportunity.

PS: In a few reviews, it's said Merthe laughed when she was talking about the rumor she heard of two deaths. Her laughter is clearly one of uncertainty, and right after she falls silent and cries.

Some entitled Dutch kids shared a Facebook event invite, two loser YouTubers incited aggression in the crowd for profit (they're still proud of that cause they are still losers "it was like being in a videogame" says this 52 year old narcissist), then the kids threw some guardrails around, then some police stopped it. 90% of who they spoke to were doing a lot of superficial uptalk about this willfully moronic 5 hour street-drinking event like it was years long war-time and their golden years of achievement. I've never been less impressed by people talking about something so utterly pointless with so much pride.

Netflix continues its run of disaster porn, these tightly edited, punchy docs under the "Trainwreck" banner and I'm grouping these two together because we watched them back to back. While different in tone, both examine the chaotic consequences of crowd behavior and what happens when no one's in charge. "The Real Project X" revisits the bizarre true story of a viral invitation, poor local oversight, and a quiet Dutch town engulfed by a mob intent on mayhem. It feels quaint now, but the seeds of today's algorithm-driven chaos were already there.

In contrast, "The Astroworld Tragedy" is a somber and infuriating chronicle of corporate negligence, with a behemoth like Live Nation prioritizing profits over lives, and facing barely any accountability. As someone old enough to remember being lifted off my feet in the crush of a Halloween crowd in the Castro in 1990s San Francisco, the concert crowd footage lands viscerally. Mass gatherings can flip from euphoric to deadly in seconds, so I've learned to generally avoid anything that's going to give me a panic attack.

Title says it all. A girl wanted to have a nice birthday celebration with her friends and then men stepped in and had to ruin everything. And they're so proud of it. I felt bad for her and her family. Worst episode of the Trainwreck series for me, because I didn't feel entertained, just angry and disappointed.

Netflix's Trainwreck documentary series has previously covered festivals that went wrong, such as Woodstock '99 and the Astroworld tragedy. Project X, however, was not an official festival; it was a Facebook event.

It began as a birthday party for a 16-year-old girl, but the Facebook event was set to public. This regrettably enabled other users to send out invites, and thousands were sent. Faced with an unmanageable number of guests, the family cancelled it. However, the idea had already gone viral, and copycat events were quickly created on Facebook, attracting ever more attendees.

It was too late. No sooner had one event page been removed than another popped up. This was in 2012, when Facebook was still a relatively new phenomenon. There appeared to be no mechanism to contact the platform directly, and the local municipal authorities and police didn't appreciate the potential for a viral event to attract huge numbers of people. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of invites were sent out.

I know that part of the Netherlands quite well. When people think of the Netherlands, they often picture Amsterdam's nightlife and party scene. However, much of the country, especially in the north-east, is very rural, with picturesque but sleepy small towns. They are conservative with a small 'c' and, as mentioned in the documentary, places where literally nothing happens.

The documentary draws a direct line from the 2012 American film Project X (about a high-school party that spirals into a destructive riot) to the events in Haren. The copycat Facebook events were explicitly named "Project X Haren," which primed attendees to expect chaos and a wild time.

The police, the mayor, and local authorities were simply not prepared. They took no measures to divert people, such as closing roads, and turned down an eminently sensible offer to host a party in a field just outside the town.

A lot of people turned up. Holland has an excellent railway and road network, and Haren is only a couple of hours from Amsterdam. You can get to most places in the country in under three hours, and the town is also very close to the German border.

Before 2014, the legal age to buy alcohol in the Netherlands was 16. Unfortunately, when you have a large number of young people turning up somewhere wanting to have a good time with nothing provided, it's a recipe for disaster. The police got a bit heavy-handed, and a riot ensued.

Of course, watching the show, you feel sorry for the residents and the young girl's family, but it's hard not to see the darkly comedic side of how a simple Facebook event caused thousands of partygoers to descend on a tiny Dutch town. Fortunately, unlike Astroworld, nobody died, so the programme makers were able to present the documentary with a more light-hearted tone.

They didn't get any comment from Facebook about the event, which is a notable omission. In my opinion, Facebook bears significant responsibility for allowing the event to be repeatedly republished with no apparent way for the family or authorities to get it taken down permanently. When the show finished, I said, "I hope they sent Mark Zuckerberg the bill."