TFW NO GF

In every other aspect of life people are treated as individuals and not held accountable for the actions of other loosely related people.

For the first time ever i think this topic has been covered with some humanity instead of purposefully trying to demonise the subjects.

The world seems increasingly more bland and alienating for a massive portion of the population, its liberating to actually have somebody give a voice to that and allow some of these people to speak.

The internet is definitely the modern equivalent of subculture, however vague and ill defined it might be. This film attempts to capture this point in history in a open minded and often beautiful way.

I hope in the future people view this Documentary in the same way that we view Penelope Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization". It definitely deserves it.

I am always interested in learning about the various groups and subcultures that have developed on the internet since the early 2000's. This film goes beyond the nerdy and depressing "incel" culture and really explores why youth are drawn to these communities. I appreciate the neutrality of this work. Give it a watch. For what it is 10/10

It is novel that this documentary follows a few men in the incel subculture over a period of a few years, but the film is mostly lacking narrative or statement.

Instead, we are presented with a collage of clips platforming the subjects' ideas. They do offer some insightful thoughts about consumer culture and the way young men are expected to behave in our society, but the men also spread some blatantly misogynistic or racist ideology, the latter presented caged in a flimsy veneer of "satire" (a term which those in the subculture misinterpret to mean transgressing for the sake of transgressing, rather than using irony to make a larger point).

Personally, I felt that the misogyny and racism were brushed off too easily in favour of humanising the subjects. That may be the best approach for reconciling these sorts of men with society, but it means that we end up with a fairly shallow look into the subculture that only briefly references the hate and extremism it has generated. You get the impression that the incel community is mostly a place for commiseration and that those within it eventually graduate to more typical lives. This is probably true of many, maybe even most, but it still misses an important fact.

At one point, we see a brief clip from the Toronto Van Attack (an act of misogynist terrorism that took place in Canada's largest city in 2018), but its roots in incel fora are not explained at all. The perpetrator was a member of the incel community, and he and other domestic terrorists like him have been idolized in some incel circles since. One could argue that this film is about the less extreme members of the community, and that the hateful acts of extreme factions are for another movie. Frankly though, to me it feels irresponsible to spend so much time in the subculture without directly addressing the fact that it has spawned domestic terrorism.

My advice: give this one a miss. If you want to know more about the incel subculture, listen to the CBC podcast about the Toronto Van Attack, I found it much more enlightening.

This may have been a sort-of grungy look into incel subculture and their rancid online homes. Unfortunately it'll have to be JUST a look, as all audio seems to be recorded on a 1987 walkman, and put into the documentary without levelling. Most of the people sound like they are in an _actual_ pit of despair, and speaking from the bottom while the mike is hung in another county. Combined with footage that wildly oscillates between 'fair' and 'filmed on a second hand iphone 5' this is borderline unwatchable and unusable as a podcast. How this got past selection on a fairly prestigious film festival is completely beyond me. It wouldn't even pass as a first-year filmclub test project.

Interesting look at incels that isn't filtered through media sensationalism and fear mongering. Looks at the conditions that created the subculture and what the people inside actually have to say