I've recently seen 'Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere', the first documentary that Theroux has made for Netflix.

I wish the documentary were in-depth; even though it focused on Theroux's usual way of interviewing people—calmly asking questions, simply pointing out inconsistencies in people's stories—there's a lot of show-and-tell of manosphere influencers but little to show how and why they're wrong.

Don't get me wrong: these influencers are often wrong, always in how their xenophobia (real or manufactured for money) shows, for example, through sexism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and ludicrous conspiracy theories.

I mean, I think the documentary would have been better made if more time were spent on not just following the influencers or asking them slight questions but rather speaking with people who research and know how the manosphere influences not only their target audiences (young boys who become older boys with money and are allowed to vote) but the results of their behaviour on others.

This documentary scantily passed victims. I'd like to have heard interviews with women, especially those who did make it into the documentary.

Unfortunately, even though Theroux hits some good points, I think it's a mistake for this documentary to mostly just pass influencer content through the Netflix funnel rather than to analyse, question, research the field, and ultimately present a better documentary.

#video #sexism #islamophobia #homophobia #xenophobia #documentary

A short while back, MTV—a.k.a. MTV Music—stopped broadcasting. Their website went fairly dead as well. The music video phenomenon didn't start with MTV but without MTV, it would have gone nowhere.

Now, a developer has taken it upon themselves to try and save the feeling that MTV was. Enter MTV Rewind.

What's saved:

• 120 Minutes (6,063 videos): The holy grail of alternative rock and shoegaze.
• Headbangers Ball (1,604 videos): A shrine to thrash and heavy metal.
• Yo! MTV Raps (348 videos): The golden age of hip-hop, preserved.
• MTV Unplugged (343 videos): Stripped-back intimacy from before auto-tune ruled the charts.
• Club MTV (232 videos): For the techno and house heads.

There are also decade-specific buckets—ranging from the experimental MTV 70s (268 videos) to the massive MTV 2020s (8,050 videos)—proving that the music video format isn’t dead, it just lost its home.

Here's an embedded example of MTV Rewind:

For more information about the project, see this Midnight Rebels post.

#music #video