The Hater Essay
Introduction
The Hater is a disturbing, yet interesting movie about the dangers of misinformation and propaganda, as well as a look at how they are created. It’s a look at the dark side of the internet, where fake news is created by a company to fulfill its agendas with little concern about the effects their stories will have on the world. Watching the film, I couldn’t help but reflect on my time on the internet and the types of stories I encountered. It made me wonder what stories I’ve seen have been true and which ones have been made up. It also made me wonder what news sources can be trusted, or if social and mainstream media is so filled with fake news and fabricated stories that it’s almost impossible to find the truth.
Summary
The movie starts with the main character, Tomasz, being expelled from law school because he plagiarized one of his papers (RogerEbert). We then learn that he has a crush on his friend Gabi, but her parents don’t like him despite financially supporting him(RogerEbert). After failing to find a job, he ends up working for a woman named Beata who runs a company that creates and spreads fake news. After failing to win over Gabi and getting on bad terms with her parents, he decides to ruin the campaign of a politician Gabi’s parents support named Rudnicki as a form of revenge (RogerEbert). Tomasz goes to any length necessary to accomplish this, even when his actions go against Beata’s wishes. He joins Rudnicki’s campaign and gets close to him to find new ways he can destroy his reputation, he leaks to the public that Rudnicki is gay, he hires an extremist vlogger to shout hate speech at one of his rallies, and he plans both a pro-Rudnicki and an anti-Rudnicki rally just to demotivate his followers. This all leads to the climax of the movie where he pays the extremist vlogger to shoot up a Rudnicki rally with guns he stole from a shooting range. After realizing Gabi was at the rally, he tries to stop it, but his efforts are in vain as the vlogger guns down several people. The event ends with Tomasz being injured after trying to stop him and one of Gabi’s relatives dying. The movie ends with Tomasz being seen as a hero who tried to stop the shooting and him meeting up with a grieving Gabi and her parents, who are still unaware that he was responsible for the shooting.
Discussion
The creation and spread of misinformation are the primary subjects of the movie. From it, we see not only how fake news gets made, but who the people making it are, why they’re making it, and the real-world effects it can have. The first example we see of this is when Tomasz starts working for Beata. He suggests and creates a trend on social media claiming that the product of some wellness company turns people’s hands yellow. We see this trend get made when Beata brings up getting in contact with people from India to get more fake accounts to post images of yellow hands to further spread the fake story. This ends with Beata and Tomasz watching a video from the creator of the wellness company making an apology video and saying how they’re going off social media because of all the death threats they’ve been receiving, all the while trying to hold back her tears. Beata’s only reaction to this is laughing at this woman’s suffering because of a fake story they created to ruin her company. Watching this scene made me wonder if other companies that do these sorts of reactions to the lives they’ve ruined, however, going off this movie I believe they would. Beata’s reaction felt so detached from reality like she didn’t realize or didn’t care she just hurt another person. If her work made her that detached from reality, I imagine other people in the position might act the same way.
However, the biggest incident of fake news being created is Tomasz’s quest to bring down Rudnicki. The way he can single-handedly disrupt Rudnicki’s entire campaign is horrifying, especially since most people would expect this to be done by an entire team of people. He drugs Rudnicki and brings him to a nightclub, which leads to him being gay getting leaked to the public. He plans a pro-Rudnicki and an anti-Rudnicki using his company’s fake accounts. He even gets an extremist vlogger to shout hate speech at one of Rudnicki’s press conferences. However, the biggest incident is when he plans a shooting at one of Rudnicki’s rallies using the extremist vlogger. Not only is he able to create all these events by himself, but no one can figure out that they were all fabricated by one person. All of this makes me look at our politicians and all the news that comes out about them. How much of it is true and how much of it is fabricated? I don’t know if it’s even possible to learn the truth, especially with how bias media outlets can be. If, for example, a democratic politician was involved in a scandal, all the Republican news outlets would try to defame him while the Democratic ones would try to save his image. If two different people are telling two different stories, how can you learn the truth? The answer seems to be that you don’t and you just go along with whatever story you’re told, as everyone in the movie buys everything that happens without giving it a second thought. The worst part is these fake events can lead to people in the real world getting hurt, as seen in the movie with the shooting at the end, and in the real world with the capital break-in on January 6th. It’s a good reminder that fake news is not only easy to make and come across, but it can have real-world consequences.
Propaganda can also be seen being used throughout the movie. The most prominent example is the aforementioned leak of Rudnicki being gay. While him being gay is true, it’s used in a way to discredit him and hurt his chances of winning the election since people who are homophobic wouldn’t want to vote for him. Another point where propaganda is used is when the extremist vlogger goes to Rudnicki’s panel and brings up how his parents were communists. Again, this information is used to discredit him by making it sound like he could be a communist like his parents, and he’s going to reform the country to have a communist form of government. As the extremist vlogger puts it, it makes him a threat to the country and freedom. In both cases, the propaganda was not only based on factual information but was used to influence people not to vote for Rudnicki. Whether or not it worked is unclear, as we never see the results of the election. However, Rudnicki and his team were left in distress after both incidences, so it’s clear it was having some effect. This shows how, like misinformation, propaganda can be so easily created and how people will buy into it. It also feels like a reflection on how we don’t know that we are being given propaganda, as I didn’t realize these were propaganda till a few days after I finished the movie. This has made me realize I need to put more thought into what I see in the news and on social media.
The thing that upsets me the most about these incidences is how easily the people behind them got away with them. No one can determine that the accounts posting about yellow hands are all fake, Tomasz gets away with planning a shooting that leads to a lot of people dying, with even government agents being unable to figure out he was responsible for it. Part of me thinks that this may be a commentary on our life and how we just accept whatever information we’re given. Looking back on my life, there are only a handful of incidences where I researched to see if something I was told was true. In that sense, the reason Tomasz and Beata might have gotten away with everything was that no one was verifying the information they put out. It paints a terrifying picture of the world where we just automatically believe everything we’re told and rarely check to see if any of it is true. It’s likely the reason fake news is so powerful and why it is so often used. It makes me consider putting more research into what I see and hear on the news and social media, and I hope other people had the same thoughts after finishing the movie.
Conclusion
The movie is an effective, yet horrifying look at the effects that fake news and disinformation have on us. The way it shows how easily misinformation and propaganda can be made, as well as how easily we buy into it, paints an unsettling reflection of our modern news and social media landscape. I wish more people would see this movie since it’s a good wake-up call for people to start questioning what they see and hear.
Workcited
“The Hater.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 29 July 2020, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9506474/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1.
“The Hater.” RogerEbert.com, 29 July 2020, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hater-movie-review-2020. Accessed 25 Oct. 2021.
Tallerico, Brian. “The Hater Movie Review & Film Summary (2020): Roger Ebert.” Movie Review & Film Summary (2020) | Roger Ebert, 29 July 2020, https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-hater-movie-review-2020.
