There is a strange style of science, that blends endlessly into art, and which, despite playing a crucial role in the shaping of how we Moderns understand the world, is largely taken for granted, to the point where few people could likely even describe what it really meant to practice it. Its borders, and even the borders between its disciplines are fuzzy, are surely the choicest, fuzziest, most psychedelic deep cut of these “Human Sciences.” I speak of course of what of the field we call *Anthropology*.
Most associate Anthropology with the study of strange, foreign, isolated cultures — pygmies in a jungle, shooting blowdarts — lost Amazon tribes who have never heard of numbers. In fact the vision of this Science was always much greater. The fuzz, the ambiguity, was always intentional. Not a bug but a feature. Not a feature, but the whole point.
During the classical age of Metaphysics, from Descartes to Kant, the great Science of Philosophy had ambitions of the utmost rigor. Philosophy today is Animal Crossing. But in those days, it was Dark Souls — all syllogisms and triads. Through strict reasoning alone could the nature of the Soul, the Universe, and God be understood.
This lofty Philosophy was of little use to the new common man — the newly literate peoples of Europe. They read *novels*, and it was They who fueled the initial development of what we now call Mass Culture.
This new world demanded a new vision of Philosophy, a vision to synthesize all the practical fields of knowledge together within one framework. The story of the Universe would be laid out in full — from its most ancient, speculative beginnings, through physics to biology to humanity, to the secrets of history, civilization and the future. This was Philosophy in action, and untold eons of cosmic time were made to unfold with the elegance of a tightly plotted comedy of errors. The punchline: Us.
Over time, the encyclopedic totalization of all knowledge gave way to the ever more demanding necessities of popular appeal. The founding fathers of Anthropology invented World Literature. They gobbled up everything available on China and India. They developed linguistics and Art History. They even probed into Historiography — the study of the study of History itself.
Now all these foreign worlds and ideas have become commonplace. The “Orientalizing” spirit of Anthropology however — Indiana Jones’s eternal adventure to discover new niches and ruined temples, and lost idols — continues ever onward, in a series of unasked for sequels starring a geriatric protagonist.
But this isn’t a History of Anthropology or Philosophy or even Academia. It’s a movie review, and Alex Lee Moyer’s documentary TFW NO GF — is very much a Work of Anthropology. One intended both to popularize, and to capture the totality of the experiences which constitute the lives of the subjects it follows, myself included.
Will documentarians exhaust the supply of subcultures to entertain us with during the current streaming boom, or simply accelerate the fragmentation of our society into micro-enclaves of superficial forms of commodifiable self-distinction? If the film succeeds in answering anything, its this, though I’ll leave it to you to guess in which direction.
Ok, I lied. I’ll tell you. It’s the second option.
In the interest of full disclosure though, I believe I have a solemn duty to point out that I suffer under the tyranny of what some moral philosophers might call — uh, just let me double check… okay — What some moral philosophers might call a “Conflict of Interest”. Don’t worry though, I think that only applies if you try and mislead people that something you were involved in was better than it was. I give you my word though, I’ll do my best not to disappoint any of you moral philosophers who might be reading.
Whatever truth there is in all this may be nothing but an image, reflecting back and forth between two mirrors, escalating towards infinity. But I think if we work together we can get to the bottom of it.
Over the course of two years Alex Moyer filmed “TFW no GF,” and assembled a series of isolated moments captured during that time. Using some of these, the film you watched on Amazon Prime was assembled. The larger narrative contextualizing the film however goes far beyond its own chronological scope, continuing down to this very day. To this very moment in fact. To each word I’m typing as I write this very second.
The movie was edited. It was submitted to festivals. It was accepted into SXSW. Its premier was canceled. It was picked up for a limited streaming event by Amazon Prime. Even with all that over and done with, the narrative goes on. Distribution remains unsecured. Things in pipelines and future projects are fed to me in phone calls. And this review… well, it continues to sit on my hard drive unpublished. But as the author of the final chapters, I figure, why not throw in a twist. Especially considering they haven’t offered me shit! Oh well, I guess I’m just not Hollywood material. (Seriously though, Hollywood, call me!)
For Moyer the film is the culmination of two years of unfinanced work. For me its only the latest chapter in the story I’ve spent my entire adult life writing. What story? You’re probably wondering. Well, the working title is: “My Life: A Destiny in Progress”.
What do you think? Yeah, I don’t like it either.
But in any event, the point is this — I’ve made a living out of being weird and annoying. And, unfortunately, I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
But this review isn’t about me, the star of the show, it’s about Moyer, the visionary behind the camera. She too has her own story, and while her documentary seeks to contain the lives of its subjects within celluloid cells, her own is given ample open space to bloom. In fairness, that Moyer has earned a moment to herself isn’t something I’d dispute. But all the world’s a stage someone once said, so I’d assume there’s enough room for all her subjects as well to bloom a bit as well.
There was something about being involved in “TFW no GF” that made it a one of a kind experience — an experience worth talking about, and as a Anthropologist my duty to science comes first in reporting the truth about the whole matter. And the truth is I was never really sure if she was the real deal or not. More specifically maybe, whether the movie ever had a single chance in hell of actually being released.
Other festivals prior to SXSW rejected it, and truthfully, part of me hoped it would simply die a quiet death. But Moyer persisted. To her credit ultimately.
Only around the time when the film was finally accepted to SXSW, and Moyer began arranging travel itineraries, did the reality of the situation begin to dawn on me. I attempted to avoid confirming the final details with her for as long as possible, in hopes a miracle of some sort would stall the film’s premiere. In retrospect though, “Miracle” is a poor choice of words. So I apologize on behalf of my former self.
In the meantime though some kind of (promotional) events were in the offing. What were they? To this day I couldn’t really tell you. It remained unclear to myself and the other participants. More than that, it remained unclear to Moyer herself. She vacillated between exhausted and enthusiastic — not unusual for her in my experience, but also understandable in light of the circumstances.
At times hopeless and grumpy, she snapped at me as I asked her for more information about what exactly we’d be doing. There was going to be a talk? Or maybe not. There’d be an after party where we’d celebrate completion of the film together? Scratch that. We’d be throwing an impromptu show in a gas station parking lot instead, fronted by world famous hip-hop superstar Egg White. (Gotta give Moyer credit for that one. Egg White’s my boy).
The plans were amorphous, and ill-defined. Moyer’s resources and cash supply were always limited. She would go to great lengths — unasked for, unnecessary, sometimes (honestly) uncomfortable lengths actually — to prove to me how little she had in her bank account.
As to the kind of financing the movie really had, who was involved, or what kinds of shadowy figures had hungry eyes for the final product, that was usually where Moyer stayed silent. Even with the successful release of “TFW no GF” on Amazon, and a distribution deal in the offing, there’s a tendency by Moyer to reiterate — too often, and apropos of nothing — how little the movie will ultimately make. How no one who produced it or worked on it will end up seeing a dime. I don’t mention all this to cast doubt to be clear. I just find it an amusing compulsion of hers.
With regards to SXSW though, Moyer remained a tireless cheerleader for the possibilities the premier might open up for her subjects. It didn’t always seem like this act was for our sake however. When the festival was canceled due to Coronavirus then, and while I was counting my blessings, it shouldn’t have surprised me that the indefatigable Moyer quickly resolved to go to Austin anyway. She would stage some kind of underground, guerilla premier, she said. Carnival barkers were heavily involved — though whether as a metaphor for self-promotion, or … actual carnival barkers? I don’t know. But Moyer attempted to keep our spirits up, or hers, or all of ours, or… The point is, she would do anything, whatever it took, for people to see the movie.
Some involved in the film ultimately did end up going, against what was likely their better judgement, and on an extended layover on her way to Austin Moyer messaged me regretfully for several hours about the situation she had found herself in at the airport where she was now trapped. In the end, this bootleg SXSW dream Alex had concocted never materialized. She and a few others ended up wandering the deserted streets of the city. What destiny had intended to convey by painting such a striking picture of the rapid change suddenly sweeping the world — Well I suppose that’s a director’s commentary track God’s just going to have to save for the bonus features. The deluxe and unrated blu-ray collector’s edition of this little universe of ours.
Moyer told us, time and time again, she did all this for us. She made the movie for us. She flew on a wing and prayer to Austin during the onset of a global pandemic for us. To promote us. To promote the subjects of her movie. She wanted to let the world know about us. It was all for our benefit.
I never had reason to doubt her proclamations, as it wasn’t her I didn’t trust, but that no-good Hollywood swagger of hers! What about today, has anything changed? Not in the slightest honestly.
It was obvious that Moyer knew how it all seemed. She knew full well how she would perceived — The kind of energy she brought with her. Her manic, L.A. vampire, party monster vibe was apparent within moments of meeting her. Her touchiness, and physicality towards me at our first introduction felt cloying and manipulative. I’d even go so far as to say it made me little bit uncomfortable.
Did she think I was one of these Incels, desperate for a woman’s touch? I can’t say what her intentions were. For that matter, who can ever judge another person’s motivations like that? I wasn’t sold. Not by a long shot. And my initial instinct — my first suspicious reading — left me, I’ll admit, questioning not only her sincerity, but also her creative intentions.
Those days when she did everything she could to humor me — to make me feel important over my Twitter “influence” — they now feel like a part of some distant past I don’t even actually remember anymore. Not memories. But memories of memories. In the weeks prior to the publication of this review, we’ve struggled to stay in contact at all even. Any trace of the lighthearted, playful dynamic that she originally attempted to spark between has now been effaced by mutual-avoidance. An unlikely friendship, held together by chains of hyperbolic, paranoid recriminations forged between 4G towers.
The mistake Moyer made, in my interpretation, wasn’t that she wasn’t sincere. Her mistake was that she wasn’t anyone important, and simply chose the wrong approach to misdirection. In reality, deep down, she was in the same position all her lost and hopeless white young male subjects were. That beautiful condition most just call making it. She had cultivated an identity, not on Twitter dot com, but at clubs and parties in L.A., and it was one that unfortunately just didn’t translate.
Where we used our carefully crafted identities, and our participation in this microscopic Twitter subculture to draw attention to ourselves — and to the content we produced and timidly even tried to sell sometimes — Moyer likewise had a whole scene of Hollywood glitz and glamour she draped around her insecurities to keep them out of sight. Was there ultimately any difference really between any of us?
Since the very beginning of my involvement with “TFW no GF,” it never really felt like Moyer was ever “separate” from any of us. Having never been the subject of a documentary before I can’t say whether or not this is typical. It was intuitively apparent though that Moyer, who had established herself previously as a talented editor, was now in unfamiliar professional territory. Here she found herself, documenting the lives of some Incel losers. The same sexless virgins media commentators had grown increasingly preoccupied with since the 2016 election. This was the big break Moyer’s had been waiting for. But was it just chance to make something more entertaining than what her peers had been able to? Or a responsibility to the truth of the lives it captured?
The shoots that were done with me amounted to only about four days total, beginning in July of 2018. Two days of primary filming, and two of reshoots occurring in December of 2019. My total participation in the overall project amounted to significantly more time however, to the point where, as I write this, I wonder whether the whole thing will ever end, or whether it will simply stretch on interminably, until the end of time. When I die, will a CGI version of myself deconstructed to continue to automatically fulfill my obligations associated with the production? I admit I hope they’ll opt out of that clause in my contract after they read this review.
Conversations around the dynamics of credibility, the authenticity of the project, Moyer’s intentions and motivations, the distribution of credit among participants — these had a way of being circling around the drain ad nauseum — endlessly past the point of being productive. It became almost compulsive. There were times when Moyer would be blowing up my phone with such a barrage of messages justifying herself or defending her efforts on behalf of the film, that I would simply have to put mine away, out of despair of her ever running out of steam. So many would sometimes accumulate that I’d put off checking for days, for fear of what recriminations might await me.
This may seem harsh, to turn things around on Moyer, but it’s not my intention to make her look poorly. Above all, she was committed to the project, and was making this movie largely on her own, so her occasionally getting a little high-strung about things was understandable, and in my usual way, I’m sure I only made things worse by avoiding her pleas and explanations.
Moyer is, whether she admits it or not, one of us. Yet another Incel. She’s gone so far as to “joke,” somewhat uncomfortably that she did all this to “earn Kantbot’s approval”. This line in particular has put me on the spot several times since Moyer uttered it in an interview with “Alt-Philosopher” wiz-kid Justin Murphy. Though she certainly intended the sentiment as a cutesy kind of joke, it also seemed to speak to something deeper — To Moyer as, (in a fate surely worse than death), not a bodacious L.A. party babe, but yet another hopeless Incel case. Someone eternally seeking the validation of a distant, apathetic figure they’ve built up in their minds as the only force capable of bestowing validation upon them.
TFW No Idea Whether You’re a Real Artist or Not.
Not being in any real position to provide this to Moyer I’ve continually demurred, and sometimes I sense that her irritation at my uncooperative nature extends much further, to a sense of hurt that I’m not unconditional in my love and support of her project — that I forever forestall a final judgment — that I maintain my immeasurable distance from the project and its portrayal of me. No matter how good a job she ever did though, nothing shown on the silver screen can ever exhaust a single subject.
But, I realize, I haven’t gotten around to the question of how Moyer even first became involved in all this. How did she discover “us,” the people she ended up selecting as the subject for her directorial debut? She simply stumbled upon us I suppose? Something told her? I never really found out specifically.
All I know is that, having taken an interest in some of the strange characters she caught glimpses of occasionally on Twitter, she was so seduced by the allure of our mysterious ways that she couldn’t keep herself from lurking about the periphery of our territory. No one has ever managed to coin a suitable neologism capable of capturing the shifting ecosystem of individuals inhabiting this domain. Besides myself, the individuals featured in Moyer’s film: Sean, Viddy, Charels, Egg White, and Kyle — are but a sample from a cast of many more, selected by circumstance to represent all the others.
That all these individuals could be described using a conceited concept such as “Incel” more than a few taxonomical bridges too far, I think.
Around the sites Moyer selected to set up camp, “Incel” was a concept mocked and derided. We joked how the term was being used — by politicians and journalists — to conjure something supposed to be SCARY. Mock news report filings spun like ticker tape off our keyboards:
This just in — men who don’t have sex have been declared by the Department of Homeland Security as a potential terror threat. We’ve just received word now that that virgins around the globe have declared a Jihad against those who get laid.
Besides a few extremely disturbed individuals who had completely psychologically snapped, millions of young men were in generally in a similar condition — one which, in accordance with what I hope is just common sense — hopefully falls just a little bit short of qualifying as a terroristic ideology… like Leninism. But really, these are just young guys trying to date. They lack experience. Careers. Incomes capable of supporting themselves. It’s rough, but it’s honestly just what most men go through these days.
As Islamic fundamentalists drove trucks through crowds, petty political journalists were attempting to draw comparisons between centuries of Holy War between Christianity and Islam, and the relatively normal condition of young men throughout the west who weren’t getting laid enough. In some twisted contortion of reality then, in order to contort the ordinary disappointments and frustrations of life to their deformed narrative, journalists where equating saving a meme of Wojak to looking for bomb making instructions on the dark web.
This is what I hope Moyer began to discover as she observed us — deep in the mist shrouded jungles of Twitter’s deep ecology of radical ironists and social media artists. Only this realization allowed Moyer to become, at last, a true Anthropologist. Or some version of one. Or something.
Maybe it was a bit more Something than Scientist still though. No doubt her appearance did make for an endearing picture. A picture which, to those who observed her in return, was not without a little comedy coloring it as well (no offense Alex). She lurked despite her exposure under a private, nondescript account. Uncertain forays by our intrepid heroine into our territory usually caused a stir, as she tried to get in on the fun she thought we were having.
She allowed herself to be trolled — poked at — by accounts that didn’t know what to make of her. Fittingly, her profile image during this period was a fawn, and when she came out from the underbrush for a closer look, whoever she approached would clap their hands or stamp the ground a bit to send her streaking back into the bush.
Documentary is, as a mechanism of capturing the truth about a thing, also a potential tool of the Anthropologist. A scholar researches a thing, so the documentarian films it. The truth of such investigations is not exhaustible, but is as Werner Herzog calls it: The “Ecstatic Truth” of a thing. Not it’s Reality, but its Essence. In this sense a documentarian like Moyer makes a tempting target for comparison to someone like Jane Goodall. Primal males, beating their chests, encamped in the inner recesses of uncharted social media territory. C’mon. That’s Gold.
The dumb, uncomprehending Incels — totally devoid of self-awareness — hoot and shout, and play like chimpanzees. Suddenly however comes slowly up the feminine mother scholar: the Goodall — who with deep empathy observes the monkey men.
Then, just as their sudden proximity to a woman is right on the verge of inciting them into a frenzy of harassing female game developers, the Goodall takes the sexless ape up in her arms. Cradling the pathetic creature as we wrap our lanky arms around her neck, the Empathic Scientist Goddess opens up this disgusting Caliban’s heart, and restores him to his humanity.
As nice as it sounds, and as tempting as it is to attribute such motherly qualities to a woman, like Moyer, it wasn’t exactly so pretty a scene as all that.
Her subjects in this case possessed self-awareness in ample measure. Many candidates therefore immediately distrusted Moyer, something that seemed to wound her slightly, as she believed that by abiding by the ritualistic games of this world, she would earn her clout. This led even to a somewhat sycophantic streak in Moyer being drawn out as she subjected herself to the criticisms and dismissals of other accounts quite publicly, and I imagine painfully as well.
Some potential subjects kept a far distance from Moyer, having no intention of ever revealing their faces — or ever even their voices — to anyone. Ever. A self-proclaimed documentarian with no institutional backing, shopping around an indie film among a group of people who embraced anonymity as standard operating procedure was? I don’t have to tell you that was something of a tough sell for Moyer… Though it was one she ultimately did anyway.
That the Congo of deep Twitter would make a good subject for a documentary, one that was feasible for the resources a first-time director like Moyer could potentially muster, was a primary consideration for her probably. But there was also, in my opinion, a deeper feeling at work. A feeling of sincere appreciation and respect. Of recognition by Moyer, wherein she saw her subjects engaged in a process of creation and play that she identified with.
As an unproven, aspiring director looking for a sense of approval and creative validation for herself as an artist, I can imagine that Moyer saw in us herself.
The people she documents are not careerists, but those who rejected paths through our labyrinthine cultural institutions to gainful employment in favor of unexplored and alien avenues. Unlike Sean, one of Moyer’s subjects, who was only 20 at the start of production, Moyer is an adult. She’s established in her industry to an extent.
It is in someone like Sean that Moyer is ably to comprehend herself more fully than she maybe ever has before. Through him, nostalgia and, perhaps, even regret remind her where she started out. Her pity, if one can call it that, may not be so much on his account, but on account of a feeling of lost innocence her arouses. The innocence, and freedom that comes prior to the compromises we ultimately all must make to institutional and professional considerations. The raw number of possibilities someone like Sean enjoys, who despite still being so young, has already found a family of friends to which he feels he can belong.
Sean’s tweets stuck out at me very quickly for their literary potential. For their wit and concision. To find out he was as young as he was turned him into something of a prodigy in my eyes. Though it may appeal to others little, my love of literature obviously runs deep. Cervantes. Diderot. Rabelais. Stern. I love the ironists and the learned satirists and the winding meta-narratives they draw. Perceiving, like Moyer, something in Sean about myself, I struck up a conversation.
Despite having no intention or long term plan to go to college or “officially” study literature, Sean seemed to take to these dry old novels naturally enough. Seeing someone so young and talented, and being able to presumptuously foster even a tiny fraction of their potential, was deeply gratifying to me, and this has been one of the friendships that mattered the most to me of all the ones I’ve made doing this.
Besides the hiccup of being in “TFW No GF,” I have no doubt, not even the slightest hesitation, in believing that Sean will someday be recognized as a genius of the novel, or something of that nature. To even twist Sean into the image of an Incel is disingenuous, especially for someone so young, who hasn’t lived long enough to really succeed or fail at anything. Someone who is still yet engaged in a natural process of growing up. I’ve never known him to be prone to excessive self-pitying of wallowing in his own depression. Very much to the contrary, he is a paragon of maturity beyond his years, and expresses in our personal conversations a great deal of self-critical perspective about himself.
Out of various personal considerations — to Sean’s privacy no doubt — none of the very real, and genuinely even tragic experiences Sean has managed to overcome during the production of “TFW No GF” were touched upon by Moyer. Instead his very understandable, and complex emotions about his difficult life situation were reduced to a banal, and substanceless malaise which I’ve seen many casual commentators attempt to mock him for. As Moyer doesn’t succeed in portraying why Sean is really “sad” about things, which may very well have been out of a genuine respect for his privacy, she also fails to bring out of Sean his best qualities.
And here I feel is one primary criticism one could make of this film: Moyer’s inexperience as an interviewer. Something about Sean resonates with her, understandably, as it does with me as well. Moyer’s instincts therefore are spot on, but the material she collected from him feels hopelessly inert. I was not present for Sean’s interviews, and saw only some of the raw tape that Moyer assembled of him, but if my experience being interviewed for the film is anything to go by, it’s understandable why the material didn’t really sparkle.
Of the other subjects of the documentary, I know Sean without a doubt the best. Viddy and Charles less so, though I have followed them both for a long time, and always appreciated their tweets as being hidden gems, deserving of more followers than they had at the time. Kyle I know least of all. If I came across looking any better to some viewers than them, it was probably due to more developed consciousness of myself as a “performer”. I was more aware of what Moyer was looking to get from me, and was able to act the part and put on the kind of show I knew will entertain an audience. The others Moyer juxtaposed me against, had only her interviews to guide them.
[There were originally some comments here on many technical difficulties which plagued my time shooting with Moyer and cameramen. Mentioning also the way the (mostly) friendly bickering between them took up a great deal of time I would have rather spent shooting. This part, especially about the freezing weather in December…Well, some of those who read this review did not like this part.]
By the final day I shot with Moyer, the pressure was on to wrap up. The previous night I was shown a rough cut of the film which lacked a third act, and I began to feel a sense of unease — unease that I was suddenly being put in the position of not just being interviewed, but now expected to assist in the full scale reconceptualization of the film’s finale. Essentially, I now had to “write” the material I was to say on camera to give Moyer what she needed to edit according to our narrative discussions.
Here Moyer and I struggled to get on the same page. She needed an ending. Her rough cut tried to set up a happy resolution for things, and to give a sense of growth. A sense that all her subjects had overcome their problems — or something to that effect, anyway. I saw it differently. That there’s no such thing as Incel. And that life isn’t something you can ever finally overcome. You’ve no doubt seen the movie, so I’ll leave it to you what impressions ultimately shined through.
Whatever fictive narrative Moyer chose to employ was intended to highlight, and to sell the individuals in her movie. She wanted to introduce them to a wider audience. I hope Moyer succeeded on that score. But whether she did that by showing the version of her subjects she thought was most entertaining, or the one representing the Ecstatic Truth, I think you know my answer to.
This essay on the film and its internal production is problematic. Is it too much to document the documentarian? Is it unfair to her? Does it discredit her work? That hasn’t been my intention. She did, no question about it, put effort, and blood, and sweat, and tears into making this movie a reality. I’m in no way personally hurt or unhappy with how I was depicted (though I only speak for myself), or how the movie turned out after all was said and done.
Moyer’s movie was, unavoidably, exploitative — though not callously or cruelly so. It simply sold you a fiction about the people in it, as most movies do, and that doesn’t completely invalidate the work she did, or the good intentions I believe she did have. I personally have no illusions however. I agreed to do this film knowing full well I would be exploited, without a doubt, before it was all over. I was right. And as I’ve been exploited, so too will I exploit the film. As I was documented, so too will I document the documentarian.
I feel most justified in doing this, because, as I’ve observed, Moyer is perhaps the real incel herself. Something which, as the movie shows, is no crime. She admirably worked her way through various rejections to get this made, rejections from festivals, rejections from financiers, rejections from the subject candidates she wanted to shoot. She wanted, like her supposedly loser subjects, some recognition. A recognition she felt she wasn’t, or maybe would never get from Industry she worked in. And that same desire for recognition, she was quick to project on myself, and the other participants in the film, and on the Twitter subcultural sphere she tried to establish herself in like Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist. She came to the sphere she wanted to make a movie about, not as a truth teller, but as a participant, and she never established any line between herself and her subjects in this regard. Perhaps you could go so far as to say, this film isn’t so much about those in it, as it is secretly about Moyer.
Do the ranks and grades of institutional prestige even exist anymore for anyone on the outside? “TFW no GF” has no subject. Nor does it have a documentarian. What is the documentary even? Is it the movie? Is it our lives? Is it everything those involved have done, and continue to do? Including the review about the film you’re now reading? Have we all become so alien to one another, so self-distinguished through micro-identifications, that the members of every subculture out there have all become Anthropologists, excavating niches no longer recognizable outside the symbols and memes of those belonging to them for mutual reconsumption? Is this the end game of digital culture?
Is everyone just an “Incel,” driven into some microcultural hole due to the inaccessibility, and distance we feel from our central institutions of culture and civilization and what they’re supposed to represent? Each hole is full, of pygmies, starved for sex, starved for credentials, starved for recognition, for funding, for resources, for justice, for anything and everything you can possibly imagine.
For these reasons, I continue to see Moyer as the missing part of her own movie, as the secret subject. The hidden “Incel”. It’s not out of negativity or distrust or dislike that I’ve written this, but out of love, out of a desire, perhaps, to complete her movie for her, to include her into what she made, to give her the actual recognition she claimed to desire. Alex Moyer is my friend. And I have stuck it out with her through this whole messy process, even now as we switch roles, and the “Incel” becomes the “Inceled,” if you will. Now that it’s all coming to a close, as the “Incel Expert” she brought in to commentate the film, I can give the final word on things, and show my final appreciation for Moyer. I approve of you, Alex. You were the biggest Incel of us all.
