Dinkaltranen

Louis Theroux’s new documentary is unintentionally brilliant. In general, he is great at finding the worst of the worst and making them dig their own graves. He’s also a bit of a hypocrite and the documentary probably won’t have the effect with the people it’s trying to tell you are at risk (Young men, boys, etc), but we’ll come back to that.

One of the first lines of the documentary when asked by Louis about what he does, he answers: “I teach boys how to be boys.”

Boys. Not men.

When I was 8 I thought by 25 I would be married, published more than once, directing films, breaking new ground in psychiatry or psychology, and visiting my parents every weekend with my wife, who would live with me in my parent’s old house that we bought off them, running a business, and with a child on the way, hopefully more than one.

Some of those things came true, but most of it was delusion and childike naivety.

Louis proves that you can be a bumbling idiot and say nonsense and make millions of dollars doing it, all whilst being a delusional manchild. He unwittingly says – your delusions of grandeur are true. If these idiots are able to do this and make millions, be famous, have women, without any actual skills beyond charisma, jargon, and delusion, then why would you ever bother being someone competent, like a doctor? Why spend years going into debt, going through the hard work, when you can remain mentally a child and lift weights and be morally bankrupt?

An adult would answer that there’s only so much room in a market, look at streaming services or internet influencers in general, incredibly competitive, low discoverability. You gain the skills of a salesman, but someone’s already sold to your customer.

But children are naive. And they will look at these people and say, well, I’m better than them, I will filter to the top even if I’m 5% better. And in some sense they are right, a child is almost certainly better than them, and if you are even 5% better you might stand a chance.

A child who’s in the top 2% of intelligence is smart enough to realise both of these things, but lack the wisdom (or decent parents) to decide which to pursue. Become a master of your field or become a salesman. Indulge in impulsive fantasy, or commit to competency.

What follows is quite possibly the most interesting and significant event in the documentary: one of the followers, who claims the man Theroux is interviewing is one of his role models, is asked what the message is from these influencers:

“Never give up. Life as a man, you’re born without value. We have to build that value throughout time.”

That is in extreme contrast to the message that Theroux has portrayed from the last 3 influencers he’s talked to. He focused on the machismo, the sexism, the fraud, the narcissism. So where did this random follower (Yes, N=1, but in a documentary this is significant), who looks at their idol with starry eyes, get this message from?

Apart from the “man” part, I agree with that statement to some extent. It’s the same message Jordan Peterson gave, and honestly this manosphere catastrophe is largely the result of the fall of Jordan Peterson: Don’t give up, become someone of value, and you will have to suffer to do so – but it’s worth it. The alternative is much, much worse. We are all born fallen.

The documentary falsely attributes the red pill to the manosphere, which, lol, lmao even. The red pill as a political term is nearly 2 decades old at this point, and the definition that Theroux attributes to it is incompatible. That isn’t to say that semantic shift isn’t real, hell, just look at mental illness, but it’s worth pointing out that a lot of what Theroux conflates with manosphere slang is hijacked, much like the manosphere hijacked the power vacuum left by Jordan Peterson’s career suicide.

“Suspicion of mainstream media” is manosphere? No, sorry, the numbers don’t lie. The majority of people don’t trust mainstream media, not even the government, not in the US, Canada, the UK, or Australia.

“The media” is salesman, just like the influencers are salesman. They will antagonise, entertain, and incite you in any way they can to get you to buy.

Louis is excellent at trapping people. But the way he does this is genuinely dishonest. For example, he’s discussing polygny, the guy he’s interviewing says he wants more than 1 wife, but later says it could or couldn’t happen. Louis pushes this, brings up what he said before and how it contradicts his previous statement. The guy repeats his statement, and Louis pushes again, and then the guy says that maybe in the future he might decide that one wife is enough (it is), and two wives would be too much (it is).

Louis then uses that as a gotcha, saying he backtracked.

Sorry, Louis, but saying you want something is not the same as having something. It’s not determined. What do I want for dinner? Well, a 3 course meal with a main of salmon tagliatelle with a glass of wine, but I check the fridge and don’t have the ingredients because I watched this documentary and wrote this blog instead of going to the shops, so I decide to make something else.

• 2x Carrots, peeled, diced
• 2x Potatoes, peeled, diced
• 2x Onions, sliced (1cm thick, large)
• 2x Chicken breasts, sliced halfway but not all the way through but enough to spread out. Roll them out to be even and flat, I didn’t have a rolling pin so I used a wine bottle.
• 1x Cup of rice, maybe more if you’re lazy and want even more leftovers
• 2x Eggs in a bowl, beaten.
• An unknown amount of flour
• What always seems like too much panko bread crumbs but really is always too little
• 2x Golden curry cubes
• Enough olive oil to go a little halfway over the height of the chicken breast. Eyeball it, you can do it.
• Paper towels (don’t worry we wont’ be eating these)

Put on the rice. Dip the breasts in egg, then flour, then egg again, then panko. Make sure you really thoroughly cover it every time. If you want to be fancy you can pan fry the panko beforehand to make it more brown.

Add a small amount of olive oil to a large pot or pan, medium-high heat. Add vegetables, add the onions first and give it a couple of minutes or so before adding the rest. Add at least a cup of water, turn to high heat to boil, add the golden curry cubes. Add however much more water you want to make it as runny or thick as you want.

Another pan, olive oil, about half as high as your chicken breast. Highest heat possible. To check if it’s hot enough drop a panko crumb into the oil and if it bubbles and fizzles it’s the right temperature.

Place chicken breast (now uncooked schnitzel) into pan.

Prepare a plate and cover with one of the paper towels. After a 3-4 minutes, turn over your schniztel, if it looks cooked, great. Wait another 3-4 minutes, place on plate covered with paper towel. If you have a small pan you might be only able to do one at a time. Either way, dab off the extra oil with paper towels.

The rice should be done. Turn off everything, Serve, and remember to wash your hands and the bottle after, using the wine bottle just in case you catch salmonella. Cannot recommend. Drink the entire bottle, maybe even two if it’s a Friday.

Cooking lesson over. Back to scheduled program.

Pro-tip: If someone tells you they have nothing to hide (something said by one of one of the first people Louis interviews), they are absolutely trying to hide something. A great way to hide something is by providing a lot of information, it's a way of lying by omission. They released the majority of the Epstein Files, and months later nobody talks about it. 1, because we already knew everything and it just confirmed the worst, and 2, because unless you are a turbo autist with an obsession with the elite, or a real journalist (who don’t exist anymore), no one is going to read every single of those files. See also the US Senate report on CIA Torture, the events of which are depicted in The Report.

Louis repeatedly hammers on the hypocrisy of the manosphere, particularly with their profiting off of pornstars whilst also calling them disgusting. See the now infamous McDonalds CEO ‘promoting’ their new burger. For most, especially those striving for status, morals are easily parted with money. I’m not saying they’re not hypocrites, but Louis is for once trying to antagonise the person he’s interviewing (HS), and the interviewee sees right through it. Most of the people he talks to admit they’re salesmen.

In the next section, Louis goes with HS and some pornstar, and Louis asks the pornstar if he’s comfortable being on a stream with someone who openly thinks she’s disgusting. She says the same thing that HS and many of the other influencers say: No, I don’t care. Because the best salesman don’t care, that’s why they’re the best salesman. Something interesting in this scene is that when HS points the camera that is streaming at Louis the first time, Louis ducks his head. In shame? Is it a performance? He says “I’m not content.” You poor, ignorant fool, yes, yes you are content. Louis fucking Theroux is doing a documentary on you. I know you aren’t naive, or really an ignorant fool, but you have to know that you are giving these people the best marketing pitch that they could ever get, basically for free. “I’m so interesting/insane/controversial that Louis Theroux is talking to me.”

Well, I’d better go check that guy out, I’ll bring the popcorn, you bring the wine and cyanide.

Banned books is an advertising tool.

Louis then pivots to the development of these influencers, pointing out that the ones he featured came from abusive, absent, or broken homes.

Trauma is a funny thing. It absolutely changes people, usually for the worse, but it absolutely can motivate people to make sure that thing never happens to them again. Bessel van der Kolk noticed a trend of men who had experienced trauma often became dedicated to maintaining physical strength, hypothesising that it was to make sure they could not be overpowered.

It’s an interesting reframing by Louis because it provides a sympathetic explanation, especially so late in the documentary, in what has otherwise been a very critical experience. I think this is cheeky, and intentional. “Oh, I don’t think they’re monsters with despicable views even though I was clearly ashamed to even be around them. They were made monsters with despicable views.”

It’s to make it seem more balanced. Louis has spent an hour depicting these influencers, accurately or not, as misogynists and racists. More interesting, all but one of them are not, ahem, white. Argue this all you want, the vast majority of people featured in the documentary are not white, despite the blog focusing a significant amount in the 3rd part on nationalism, trumpism, etc.

Take note the rest of this post is written blind drunk.

The documentary ends with a romcom tier “Where are they now?” which basically says that all of the people featured in the documentary are now single, broke, or worse. A rather telling evaluation, isn’t it?

“But E, isn’t Louis evaluating by their own standards? How many women they bed, how much money they make, and clout they have?”

Well, it would be fair if Louis wasn’t claiming the moral high ground. As it is, he’s sinking to their level.

Beat them on their own terms?

Sorry, no, we’ve established that they’re delusional and infantile. Something something, shitting all over the chess board. Louis arguing with idiots doesn’t prove that idiots are idiots, it proves that he’s driven enough to argue with idiots to prove they’re idiots. Talking to these people doesn’t validate they’re idiots, anyone with a brain can tell that, it just proves that Theroux will argue with idiots for his own motivations, as the mother at the end rightfully points out.

Journalism is prostitution of narrative, and Louis, as the manosphere types would say, is 'ran through'.

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