I Finally Understand Edgelords.

Oh, now I've got these scars. Well, I'm the Joker, baby. Hello, beautiful. My honey, it is the new gato. It deserves a better class of gin.

Okay, the first thing you should know about any Rubik's Cube is that they're easy. A jackass or joker could solve it. Sorry, what? What? You know, we're living in a society.

We're supposed to act in a civilized way. I don't want your sympathy. Forget your health. Everyone's an expert on everyone else except themselves. What do you get?

I don't think so. When you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and takes up my trash? Several years ago, I made what I guess was at the time my most controversial video. This was in a very early, primordial state for the channel; it was titled "Edgelord Movies and the Man Who Loved Them." I don't know—I mean, I know exactly what I'm about to talk about. I know my subject, but just knowing how YouTube videos, social media, and internet communities work, I wonder if this will be received in the way I hope. Really, it was just a critique of sad white people movies and sad white men in general. In it, I discussed the longstanding tradition of the edgelord character archetype and examined the type of men and boys who are attracted to these films and why they're attracted to them. This topic has been one I’ve returned to in some form or fashion multiple times on the channel.

For one, it's something I somewhat relate to, being, I guess, a recovered edgelord myself who grew up loving movies like *Equilibrium*, *V for Vendetta*, and *Fight Club*. The middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war. No great depression.

Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. More significantly, this is an area I studied in graduate school, where I conducted analyses on spree shooters, gaming culture, internet subcultures, and so on. This is because I've always had an interest in—and a genuine compassion for—the challenges and issues faced by young boys who are, for whatever reason, socially marginalized and maladaptive to that experience of life. The experience of marginalization.

Most of the time, and throughout most of my career on YouTube, I find myself wanting to be empathetic—some might say overly empathetic—to this population because I see the good and possibilities within them. I recognize their pain, and I see myself in them. I genuinely believe that not much is gained by mocking them or making them punchlines or targets for derision. At least, not much is gained in actually addressing their problems or the issues they present. For the most part, this has been manageable.

Through line in the times I've talked about this population. I'm still very proud of the breakdown I did of the edgelord psyche in my first manuscript video. I'm super happy with my "Incels Make the World Go Round" video, which I think was basically the spiritual follow-up to that whole series. I also believe I did a good job in my "Male Desirability" video, even though I know some did not appreciate my "Be Yourself" advice at the end. I'm not a dating relationship advice guy, y'all. I apologize.

It is what it is. Overall, I think I've been as much of a gentle guiding hand to a vulnerable population of young men as possible from my specific standpoint. In fact, I've done it to my own detriment, as my channel has become quite the sausage fest over the years. My affinity for engaging with these populations has also left me open to criticism and, at times, resulted in some negative experiences. I bring all this up at the beginning of this video to say that a certain type of person has been watching me relatively regularly and comes away with the idea that I'm just a male feminist who hates men, or a misandrist, or whatever other words you all want to make up. They believe I'm not interested in helping this population and just want to point and laugh at the misanthropic edgelords like everyone else does. You can disagree with me on some of my takes, of course, but to paint me as a grifting misandrist is just not a criticism I'm going to take to heart.

You can't have watched me with an open mind and come away with that unless you're the type that is so stuck in that headspace that you really shouldn't be watching me in the first place because I'm just not where you need to be right now. But if you are like that, or hopefully a little bit further along than that, this video is kind of for you. See, I'm very proud of my track record and efforts on this topic with this population. I've also become somewhat frustrated, maybe even disillusioned, by how intractable some of these folks are and how, for some, it seems like no matter how nice, gentle, logical, or thoughtful the message or messenger is, they just won't hear it. They just don't get it.

Maybe they don't want to get it at all. And after a while, you just want to say, forget them. Forget these knuckle-dragging, neck-bearded, dry-skinned, bad-humored keyboard warriors. I bet they wouldn't say it to my face. To all the incels, and those who make snarky comments—whether it's in my comment section, through subtweets, DMs, or especially on Reddit—take a step back. If it hasn't been made clear before, I'm making it clear now: going forward, I am not the person for certain portions of that audience. For those who are deeply stuck in that worldview, the path out isn’t going to start with me.

I've moved past being annoyed, and I'm just going to focus on those who are here to learn and actually grow. And if you have to go through, I don’t know, an Abba and preach phase before you get to me, cool. That may have seemed mean to some of you, and it may have been a little excessive. I may have been having a little fun there—a little trolling, as you guys like to say, just getting some laughs.

Is "lull" still a word? I've lost touch; I don't know. But I'm actually not alone in that sentiment. It turns out I seem to be maybe even late to the party because, in the last year, multiple iconic figures or creators of edgelord-adjacent media have also come to the same realization: they maybe just shouldn't care about what you guys think anymore. And it's been really interesting; in fact, it may even be satisfying to watch some of the worst fanbases in media get that sudden sinking feeling about how they've been wrong about something the whole time.

And I want to explore that in this video. I want to look at three specific, very iconic, in-the-moment red pills—right-wing, edgelord-adjacent pieces of media—and how they've given up on being overly empathetic in their discussion of male pain, edgelord ideology, and other vaguely right-wing behavior. They've just turned into an overt declaration that edgelords are bad, and we don’t care anymore. What does that mean? Why is that important? And maybe, what laughs are there to be had at the expense of these individuals?

So let's get started. Ed, and maybe what laughs are there to be had at the expense of these people. Let's define a few terms and review a little literature at the outset so that those of you who are unfamiliar with the subject matter can get somewhat grounded with the rest of us. Additionally, I’d like to level set a bit for the forthcoming, I'm sure, very civil and completely nuanced conversation that I know will arise in the comment section.

Of course, nobody is going to leave a long comment in the comment section before watching at least the first 15 minutes of the video. Right? Right. You’re going to watch before you comment. I’m not going to have to reply to that with anyone.

Comment in the comment section before watching at least the first 15 minutes of the video, right? Right? You're going to watch before you comment. I'm not going to have to reply to anyone about that. Let's see.

According to Dictionary.com, an "edgelord" is someone on an internet forum who deliberately discusses controversial, offensive, taboo, or nihilistic subjects to shock other users in an effort to appear cool or edgy. Furthermore, in their paper, "Digital Games as Vehicles for Extremist Recruitment and Mobilization," scholars Andrew Newhouse and Rachel Cowher state that expressing a hateful or heinous sentiment, and, in the face of pushback or criticism from others, suggesting that the things they were saying are in jest, is characteristic of this phenomenon. As this paper suggests, the term "edgelord" is a nebulous catch-all for a problematic, predominantly white population. It could also be described as encompassing the alt-right, neo-fascists, Nazis, red pill spaces, incels, and the entire community of problematic white boys, all in one spot.

But for the sake of clarity—though there is no perfect clarity for this group—some groups can be described by two or three of those terms, but not the other two or three. Of course, they all want you to know that they are specific, special snowflakes and that you shouldn't label one with something related to the others. I’m just going to call them "edgelords" and other terms interchangeably throughout the video, so just roll with me here.

Because all of these groups tend to have a high affinity for this specific edgy sigma male archetype in their media, this paper goes on to discuss an important reason why this highly unique and online population is crucial to pay attention to. The authors state that extremist groups have the capacity to build large, sophisticated, and consistently evolving networks on gaming platforms. They can also exploit the mechanics of the games themselves to create propaganda and strengthen extremist identity, often in plain sight. All of this coalesces with what is now a large and growing body of research on what I think is best described as a pattern of antisocial online behavior that, on occasion, spills out into real-world consequences in the form of doxing and harassment campaigns.

And then the most rare and extreme example: school shootings and spree shootings at malls or grocery stores, or maybe even Black churches. We want to move now to the dramatic moments in the courtroom as Dylan Roof's chilling and disturbing confession to killing nine people inside a South Carolina church is played for the jury. At times, Roof was laughing during his confession. However, it's important to understand that the most typical negative outcome of this behavior is young, predominantly white guys on the internet being disrespectful and developing more intense antisocial behavior and beliefs.

And that behavior and those beliefs often contribute to further isolating them, which deteriorates their mental health outcomes and makes them susceptible to other negative health factors. Joey is 23 years old. He doesn't have a job, and he's not in school. On a given day, he may not get up from his chair, where he sometimes sits for two days straight, smoking cigarettes and running chat rooms.

Honestly, I feel more real here, sitting in front of the computer. When I go outside, I almost depersonalize a little bit and feel like I'm playing a video game. Spree shootings and school shootings, while awful, are very, very rare. Edge lords are annoying online, but if you cultivate your own social media and online activity effectively, you can avoid sensitive spaces when that's the case. For the most part, the edge lord's greatest risk is to themselves. So why is this significant to media?

Well, for the most part, the development of edgelord behavior is often a reaction to poor social efficacy in their environment and community. This can be due to a multitude of factors such as poor social skills, mental and behavioral health challenges, poverty, niche interests, neurodivergence, physical unattractiveness, troubled home lives, etc., or a combination of those features that lead to antisocial behavior. This can make a variety of escapist experiences attractive to them, i.e., media, TV, video games, comics, etc.

Is your day-to-day school life a struggle? Is your home life traumatic? Then imagine yourself as a protagonist in your favorite anime, power fantasy video game, or genre. You know you're coming. Of course.

But it won't matter. Furthermore, you can mark your online presence with these avatars as a representation of your interests and beliefs, so that others will find you, and then suddenly you have a community of "edgelords." This is a key element of their behavior that is often under-discussed, but I touched on that in "Incels Make the World Go Round," so I won't go over it again here. The media that attracts these types of young men is what I'm going to call sigma-coded, i.e., coming from that sigma male meme that became popular a couple of years ago. If you think about it, it's not really a new phenomenon. The sigma male meme and concept may seem like a silly online trend, but it perfectly codifies a lot of the aesthetics and internal logics of this type of media. The sigma male, for those who don't know, is this goofy yet, for many, super serious combination of traditionally idealized masculine traits and antisocial traits constructed, in my opinion, as a coping mechanism for the young men described earlier, who struggle with social efficacy.

To create an image of traditional masculinity that they can reasonably aspire to. A lot of people say, "Well, this was just a meme and a joke," but what you'll find with this population is that they're always trying to hide the more concerning and heinous elements of those communities. It's just jokes; it's just memes until you see that it's most definitely not, based on their behavior. Sigma males are the wild cards of the social hierarchy. Unlike alphas, who might resort to aggression, or betas, who often back down, sigmas operate on a different wavelength. These men don't follow a predictable playbook. They're adaptable, resourceful, and often catch others off guard with their approach to problems.

Single males are traditionally masculine in their outward appearance, but internally, they can be stoic, cold, and disinterested in typical social activities such as intimate relationships or even friendships. They are lone wolves who run apart from the pack. The wolf has, much to the chagrin of our friend of the channel, Super Eyepatch Wolf, become their spirit animal symbolically, representing what the sigma male truly is. As I alluded to earlier, many commentators on this topic, and even some researchers, view this concept as a new phenomenon.

But in my opinion, it's really just a new, useful term for an image and concept as old as America itself. The individualistic nature of American culture breeds the sentiment needed for this lone wolf, stoic image of masculinity to become idealized. If you look at media going back decades, well before the sigma male meme, you can see the presence of this sentiment. Many point to "Taxi Driver" (1976) as the quintessential sigma male protagonist, but I think you can see sigma-coded characters earlier in movies like "Easy Rider," "Network," "A Clockwork Orange," and probably tons of Westerns up to that point. You'll bring a horse for me?

Well, it looks like we're shy of one horse. You brought too many. It's even in our literature; whether we're talking about, I don't know, Don Quixote or Holden Caulfield from "The Catcher in the Rye," which has a legacy within this culture. I bought a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye," signed it to Holden Caulfield from Holden Caulfield, and wrote underneath that, "This is my statement," underlining the word "this" to emphasize it.

And yes, it should be noted that these characters are almost always straight white men, as this identity has always been most closely associated with that group and their response to social ostracism. If you want to consider a leftist lens, it can also reflect alienation from self and body. That said, although it seems to be a uniquely white phenomenon, I'd argue that there are also Black versions of the sad white guy movie trope, just as there are Black versions of the impossible white guy movie trope. Movies like "Menace to Society," "Baby Boy," "Antoine Fisher," and "Creed," as well as books like "The Invisible Man," all feature main Black male characters who exhibit sigma characteristics in various ways. Race changes many other dynamics within those books, films, and video games, but the core aspect that attracts a specific type of viewer remains the same. It's not about bringing them back or even exacting some street justice.

It's about making that bastard feel what it's like to lose everything. Watch as I take it all away from him. In many ways, the sigma male is a reimagining of the outlaw or anti-hero archetype who is railing against social norms that they have noticed—or, really, all of us should have noticed—that don't work and aren't right for a lot of people. We know things are bad, worse than bad. They're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller. All we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, my TV, and my steel-belted radios, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone." Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad. In this context, the framing of the sigma male and edge-lord-coded character has many positive attributes, as they often fight against unjust systems. You see heroic, sigma-coded characters like Batman, Wolverine, and the aforementioned John Wick, who are fundamentally heroic or good, despite their anti-social, often anti-hero, and anti-establishment traits. I killed those people. That's what I can be.

No, you can't. You're not. I'm whatever Gotham needs me to be. Go on in. But that's kind of the problem.

Travis Bickle is not a good guy. He is not depicted as a good person in his movie. It should be understood by anyone who watches him that this is not what you want to be like. However, he behaves in a way that is very similar to Wolverine, Batman, and John Wick. We spend as much time understanding and empathizing with how he became who he is.

Is, as we do with characters who are obviously coded as being heroic and righteous in their acts, something that can become confusing. If not confusing, then at least blurry for those who are struggling with the balance of these types of identities, which behaviors are more admirable, and where they might land ideologically. Considering where some of these characters do land and what behaviors they exhibit contributes to enriching this specific social identity of the sigma male, the edgelord, the lone wolf—whatever you want to call it— which is not really a good thing for society as a whole. In the introduction to their thesis on sigma males, media studies scholar Matteo Valdivia writes the following about what Martin Scorsese, the director of "Taxi Driver," thought about it almost 40 years later. In describing "Taxi Driver" (1976), he highlights the main character Travis Bickle's loneliness and his dangerous antisocial behavior.

Scorsese makes the chilling observation that today, the psychological and emotional state embodied by Bickle is a tragic norm. Every other person is like Travis Bickle now. For nearly 50 years, the alienated, misogynistic, and racist character remains relevant not only as a representation of individuals in our contemporary moment but also as an idolized representation of emergent and evolving masculine identities online. This realization from Scorsese seems to be something that a few other creative minds are grappling with. Despite their intentions—whether it's to critique this type of behavior or to simply tell an exciting story—they are contributing to that tragic norm.

The audiences are meant to reflect upon their own beliefs and behaviors, which are galvanized and encouraged by the images they see of these sigma-coded characters. In response, it seems that at least some creators have decided to do away with nuance and open-endedness to ensure it is clear how we should view this behavior in these characters. Media literacy is dead, right? So, let's make it obvious enough that even an illiterate person can understand the message. Let's start with "The Boys," because it is probably the most obvious of the three properties I want to discuss today.

Because the boys have never been subtle. It's always been a criticism of capitalism and corporatism. That much was even true in the original, and mind you, far inferior comic. If you're a person who likes to read source material, my advice is to stay away from the comic book. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's kind of the worst thing ever.

"The Boys" has also been a pretty naked, overt criticism of modern right-wing ideology, with Homelander, its main villain, being an explicit symbol of Donald Trump. People want me to come out here and speak empty platitudes to you all—a little bit of corporate talk—but I don't want to do that; I can't do that. You want to know why? Because I believe that what God wants me to do is to get over there, find the filthy bastards that masterminded this, wherever they are, and introduce them to a little thing called God's judgment. Just what I said. But even in its right-wing criticism, it's also shown some real guts and insight in its condemnation of liberal politics and how they're often just the other side of the same coin. "The Boys" is very popular, very successful, and it has a relatively wide, diverse audience in terms of politics because it was just too good to be avoided by those who are more right-wing in their ideology.

However, something clearly changed in Season Four. Jewish space lasers. Before the singer replaces us with a bunch of transgender illegals that will do everything. Save the boogeyman stuff for the idiots.

After having Homelander date a Nazi in Season Three and kill an innocent man in public—something that Trump said he could do himself and get away with—where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, okay? It's incredible. It feels like the show was saying, "Okay, these people really aren't getting it, so we're going to be even less subtle and more alienating to this right-wing fan base."

So they made one of the more popular characters have a same-sex relationship, with explicit man-on-man kissing and implied sex, which makes a certain type of guy cover his face like an eight-year-old seeing breasts for the first time with their parents. One of the new villains is an on-the-nose representation of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, two right-wing politicians that are really a perfect fit for this type of show. Are Jewish space lasers brainwashing you into joining their synagogues? According to Q—now I'm saying according to Q—I don't have any proof of this, but we're talking about who Q is, so I'm going to tell you what he says. According to him, many in our government are actively worshiping Satan, or they call him Moloch.

One of the more interesting changes was the introduction of another new villain, Sister Sage, a Black woman who is far more challenging than the show gets credit for. The lazy analysis is to see Sister Sage as a Black woman aiding in literal white supremacy and think, "Oh, Candace Owens," or compare her to the usual tap-dancing sellout Black women that you see with the Republican Party. However, Sister Sage is more comparable to another Black woman seeking power, serving a similar role. We don't have time for that right now. Why would you do this?

To see if I could. Thank you. This was so much fun. This creates a lot of changes with the main villain of the show, Homelander. Homelander has always been a villain and overtly pretty awful.

Go ahead. Release it. Let's light this candle, huh? I mean, sure, I'll lose it. Everything.

But then I'll have nothing to lose. However, there was often a subtle element of humanity and struggle within Homelander's villainy. I understand why some edgelords identify with Homelander, because most of his problems and challenges are responses to his reality and his existence, over which he had minimal control. This is a common thread for edgelords, Sigmund Bell, ideology, and behavior. When you look at the Crow, John Wick, Walter White, and Rick Sanchez, among others, you see that their responses, while misanthropic, are at least, in some specific way, justified, even if it's negative.

And we get that with Homelander. So what if I took you to a house you'd never seen before, full of photos of parents you never met, toys you never played with, Hardy Boys books that you never read? And then I asked you how much all that fake fucking bullshit meant to you. In earlier seasons, we're meant to empathize with him. We recognize his maternal ruin and abandonment issues, and the fact that he was raised in the lab with no parents, no family, and how this translates to his preferences with women.

Are you thirsty? We see that a lot of his psychopathy is related to his deep insecurity about his place in the world and his inability to connect with other people due to the way he was born and the fact that Vault Corporation clearly didn't care much about him, seeing him as a product rather than a well-adjusted human. Every year, she would bake me a birthday cake in the shape of a baseball diamond, and I have to tell you, it was perfect.

Perfect. Everything down to the last minute details. Just like her. Cut. Perfect.

So great. Most significantly, I think, is that up until this point, Homelander hasn't had much of a plan other than surviving and destroying his enemies. Because of all this, while I don't understand how anyone can see Homelander as a good guy, I can empathize with the position he's in until Sister Sage ironically changes a lot of that. Unlike Homelander, Sister Sage has a more explicit agenda regarding how much she hates humans and her vision for the future. She pulls Homelander into that through a little bit of manipulation and really just by unearthing Homelander's actual desires and wants.

If you crush the masses, who builds your monuments? Who touches your taint? No, the people will tear it apart themselves. You just have to nudge them a little. Then you get to swoop in and be the one saving it.

Like Caesar. Like Caesar. In doing so, we see Homelander becoming much more insane. Like Caesar. Like Caesar.

And in doing so, we see Homelander start to become a much more calculated, outright villain, losing any semblance of humanity or empathy that he had in earlier seasons. He still has mommy issues, control issues, insecurity, etc., but they are less prominent now. These issues are overshadowed by his explicitly villainous goals of world domination, possibly even genocide. You will no longer be beloved celebrities; you will be wrathful dogs.

He's orchestrating murders of all kinds, obsessed with aging to a disturbing degree, harming his own alleged son in the process. There are even hints that he hopes to take his son's body, perhaps. That's just my film theory and prediction for the next season. You could argue that he may be a less interesting character now, but he is undoubtedly more effective and bothersome as a villain.

Victoria, if you stray even an inch off that path, I will make sure Zoe knows nothing but pain for the rest of her life. And I will send you a piece of her every year for the rest of yours. There is no fail. I know writers who use subtext, and they're all cowards. The show figured out how to be even less subtle and openly tried to alienate that portion of its fan base.

And in response to its wokeness, there was a significant backlash. The show's fourth season was review-bombed. The Reddit page for the show experienced huge fallout, with many people getting banned for wanting to discuss the underlying politics. I guess that wasn't according to their rules, which doesn't make any sense for a show that was inherently political from its first episode. So if that was their goal—consequences be damned—then they were very, very successful.

The response to this show on Twitter and in public discourse is that it's now gone "woke," which has been pretty entertaining for me. However, it also raises a couple of questions that I will address at the end. Now, let's move on to our next show. If you're a regular follower, then you know one of my favorite punching bags on this channel is "Attack on Titan." I've talked about it multiple times, and I have gone on record to say that my most dedicated anti-fans hate me specifically for my criticism of the show. This is ironic because I've also expressed how much I love the show and believe that everyone should watch it, despite its issues. If you're a fan of the show and I'm a fan of the show, then why the animosity, Jack?

Why is there so much hate when we're all just Attack on Titan fans here? I think I understand it better than you, and that's okay. That should be fine. However, it seems like other fans of the show don't like that I have this opinion on the show's themes and flaws. For some reason, that really, really frustrates them.

I wish I could show you all the Reddit threads I've seen. I'll leave all my old "Attack on Titan" takes and descriptions for you to judge for yourself, as well as some videos that I think present the material better than I did. For instance, I have to show a little love to a man with many cats, who I believe provided the most balanced and accessible assessment of the show's issues and how it handles war and fascism. His video was the first I watched that discussed the character Erwin Smith and how he's a direct reference to Erwin Rommel, a literal Nazi general. The parallels between them are uncomfortable and really challenge the idea that "this is totally not a fashion show," which may not hold up as well as some of you think. But that's not the point of this video; go watch it when you can.

Instead, I want to return again to my favorite punching bag from the show, Eren Yeager, and how the public discourse around him has evolved since the anime ended earlier this year. In the first 95% of the manga and maybe 99.9% of the show, Eren Yeager is your typical shonen protagonist. He starts out as a plucky-spirited kid with an explicit goal. He faces some significant obstacles in reaching that goal, but eventually, it seems like he's going to be on his way. Then there's a major time skip, and he transforms from being a plucky shonen protagonist into the coolest, most sigma badass in the history of sigma badassery.

It's really, really bizarre, and it's where a lot of the fans or anti-fans of the show begin to split. It's also when his popularity skyrockets with edgelords and with the ladies. He becomes the real dark triad Chad. I say that not all that jokingly, as his mostly reasonable and responsible behavior in the first half of the show/manga devolves into the edgiest "we live in a society" behavior ever. He commits multiple atrocities, gets his friends killed, beats up another friend, inspires an overtly fascist uprising, which he does little to stop, and then ends with a literal global genocide, wiping out the society that caused him so much harm, resulting in the death of 80% of the world’s population.

In that regard, he's literally worse than Thanos. He killed more humans than Thanos did. No matter what your opinion on Eren or the manga's politics, this ending and the way it was handled with the character was very divisive, but for different reasons for different people. To some, the way Eren's behavior is depicted as worthy and heroic was a real head-scratcher and made people uncomfortable. To others, there were still a lot of difficult-to-understand plot threads that didn't quite come together or weren't very satisfying.

But to that specific crowd of edgy boys and horny girls, they hated the way that Aaron went from a badass sigma male to a crying, brain-broken, and confused beta cuck. All the words they like to use for, you know, dudes with actual issues in the course of a few panels. The original intention was to clearly criticize Aaron's behavior as a character, highlighting how he was always meant to be a false hero, not an anti-hero, but a false one. That's straight from the mouth of the story's creator, Hajime Isayama, who alludes to the fact that he sees a lot of himself in Aaron and struggles with the confidence of his own work. I didn't think I could become one of the big ones.

The only publisher that showed any interest was Kodansha. My self-esteem was so low. When my editor said he liked it, I remember thinking, "What's wrong with it?" This guy. It's also clear that Aaron moving forward was bad for everyone else.

And I think some of his fans didn't seem to understand or care about this fact as long as they could project their fantasies onto the character. In the end, when it's revealed that Aaron's whole "moving forward" shtick was an act and that he was actually being compelled and controlled by forces outside of his own, it becomes clear that he was really just a lost little boy, scared of what was happening to him and what he was doing. This revelation truly undermines the sigma iconography and ruins his appeal in the eyes of his fans. You can understand why; that is who they really are. Ultimately, that's not what they wanted from that story and that character.

And so this pissed off his fanboys to the point where they were claiming that it had to be fake or saying that Isayama was forced to rewrite it, along with all kinds of other stuff. They really hoped that the anime version of the story would fix this obvious mistake and provide a more satisfying version of the character they had fallen in love with. But instead, it just got worse. No. Break my heart.

I don't want her to find someone else. I want to be her one and only love. Even if she does get over me, I think it should take her at least ten years. In the anime version of the ending, they purposely downplay some of the more concerning messages, like when one of the characters thanks Eren for committing a global genocide. So they made some changes, but they didn't make the changes that this population wanted. Instead, they doubled down on showing Eren to be a confused little boy, a loser who really failed upward.

He does all the same things he does in the manga, but they turned the pitiful tone of his explanations up even more. It's harder to watch than it was to read if you're coming from that specific standpoint. They even added this specific shot where Aaron calls himself an idiot. This isn't a panel from the books; there's no shot that looks like this.

This is a creative decision they made to frame Aaron as the loser he truly is. Much like with the boys, they wanted to ensure that no one was confused about what the message about this character actually was. Contrast this image of him sitting in the ocean of blood with the seashell or whatever this is to the way he was depicted some episodes back, and you understand why people are upset. It's as if they took Batman and turned him into Scrappy-Doo.

Correction! The new and improved Scrappy! Is Scrappy-Doo old to you all? Scrappy-Doo is really quite old. Nonetheless, help me.

Give me some Scrappy-Doo, but for Gen Z. Right here. Give me this double, Nick! I don't know. We'll see what happens there.

My personal theory is that this came directly from Isayama. As I mentioned earlier, Isayama is on record saying that he identifies heavily with Eren. He's also on record stating that no one made him change the ending and that this is the ending he's going to present. Much like Eren, a lot of people viewed him as a visionary figure creating amazing works, which he undeniably was. However, he saw himself more like what we see in Eren at the end of the manga and anime. For your stereotypical edgelord who fantasizes about this and aspires to that image, the ending of the manga and anime resonates deeply.

And again, for your stereotypical edgelord who fantasizes about this and wants this image to aspire to—having the plan and the power to enact that plan, the power to destroy or maybe even recreate a society that better fits who they are—that is what Eren did, and they just kind of shat all over it. I have a little more empathy for these guys than for the right-wingers with "The Boys," because, again, "The Boys" was not subtle. Are Jewish space lasers brainwashing you into joining their shuls? But "Attack on Titan," at times, was or at least required more analysis to see what was really happening.

But Attack on Titan also has the problem of not fully committing to its themes. You can't present an anti-war, anti-military message while also featuring epic military battles filled with sakuga moments of badassery. Many regular viewers may not grasp the intentions behind this approach and will be frustrated, or at best confused, when the main protagonist, who has been portrayed in a certain way for several years, is suddenly shown in a different light. I don't want her to find someone else. So, despite my antagonism toward the community, I empathize with them because it really does feel like a bait and switch.

But it's not the biggest bait-and-switch that happened here. Let's talk about the most recent Joker. Let's get to the reason why this video was made. Let's talk about the Joker or Joker 2. I should have looked up how to pronounce that before I started filming, but I don't care. The movie doesn't deserve it.

There’s a ton to say about the entirety of the Joker character apart from the two most recent solo movies. As a nerd who grew up in the '80s and '90s, it's interesting to see how this character has evolved. He has become bigger and bigger in pop culture over the last 20 years, transitioning from a campy and over-the-top, low-key queer-coded character who was beloved but not quite iconic to the legend that he is now. Some of that shift probably has to do with late capitalism, but mostly I think it's a result of the undeniable high point marked by Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight," which gave us the most popular rendition of the character—possibly of all time—in Heath Ledger's Joker. I believe that whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you a stranger.

And the legend of this performance was only made even more prominent when Heath Ledger suddenly died not long after playing the role. The actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in an apartment here in New York City. He was just 28 years old. I believe he won a Grammy for it. Editor, please correct me and show a picture of him winning a Grammy or show me looking dumb, whichever one is correct. However, this is not to say that the character’s chaotic evil elements were not popular before then, as we have something like "The Killing Joke," which has always been one of the most iconic Joker stories, even if it actually isn't that good.

And, at least to me, the biggest reason why the Joker is popular comes from him being a focal point of arguably the best piece of Western animation ever: The Batman Animated Series, which started in the early '90s. "Hey, I know you. Sure, Bruce Wayne. Ah, so this is how your family made all those billions." All this to say, the Joker is an amazing character and a versatile one who, if I'm honest, is low-key made worse by the weird fan base he developed after The Dark Knight movie because he stopped being this versatile character and started being just the edgelord version of himself. Think it's time for you to take a seat, Batman! Like, I will die on the hill that the Joker the world needed the most, that we didn't get, was Jared Leto's Joker.

I think Jared Leto's Joker would have been the personal version of what the Joker really needed to be to bring a lot of this toxic edgelord nonsense back down to earth. I believe he was seen as so unpopular partly because he was a kind of slap in the face to that toxic edgelord culture, instead of giving us what the Joker would really be in real life. Look at Dax, for example. There are people who are still acting like that Joker right now. Anyway, no shade, Dax. I'm sorry.

That was a little shady. I don't know if Dax deserves that. Ooh, let alone Dax. Like Diddy’s Joker cosplay a couple of years ago. Did you see which Joker he picked?

I'm just saying, Jared Leto is not looking so bad right now. What do you do when a side character is arguably more popular and compelling than the hero he shares a story with? Well, if you're Warner Brothers and you're being foolish, you give him his own movie, of course. And that resulted in a Joker film in maybe 2019 or 2018, which was very divisive but unequivocally a success at the box office. Critically, I think it was nominated for plenty of awards.

Some simply appreciated a good and interesting film with some homages, while others would outright call it a burglary of better films by director Martin Scorsese, such as "The King of Comedy" and the aforementioned "Taxi Driver." It had, at least in spirit, an overall good message as it attempted to critique and analyze the Joker's appeal to a specific type of young man who feels put upon and betrayed by society, finding a sense of liberation and inspiration in the chaotic sociopathy of the Joker. The first "Joker" movie understood that it had an audience locked in to see what it had to say and wanted that audience to feel seen and heard within the film, even as it attempted to criticize and preach to them. "Joker" was meant to be empathetic, but fundamentally depicted a negative view of that type of ideology and what it leads to.

Arthur Fleck, the original, I guess, Joker of that universe, is meant to be seen as pathetic, detached, broken, and hurt. All I have are negative thoughts, but you don't listen anyway. I said for my whole life that I didn't know if I even really existed. And yes, we should empathize with that experience, disposition, and seek ways to address those problems at a societal level. But overall, we need to show that that response is wrong.

Arthur Fleck was dealt a horrible hand in life, and it's hard to see him struggle through it with so little help to keep him moving forward and prevent him from breaking down. When he does break down and succumb to his delusions and anger, you understand why, and you empathize with the horrible things he does, but you're not supposed to admire or idolize those actions. As I explained throughout this entire video, that does not resonate with the core audience. Do you think men like Thomas Wayne ever consider what it's like to be someone like me? To be anybody but themselves? They don't.

I remembered watching the movie in theaters and being frustrated because, unlike some others— to each their own—I admit the film was very enjoyable. It was well done on many levels, even if it borrowed some of its best parts from other, better movies. I wanted to like it, but I knew enough, due to my experience and research, that the population the film was aimed at would not get the message at all and would become what they became in the preceding years. "The Joker" is a perfect example of how the angry, sad white man story doesn't work. It makes the mistake of trying to criticize something while making it look either completely justified or incredibly cool, or both.

Again, the main characters in *Breaking Bad*, *Falling Down*, *Taxi Driver*, *Fight Club*, *American Psycho*, and so on are all incredibly cool. Movies seem to convey the message, "Hey, this is bad," but also, "Hey, this is badass." While you, the viewer, are likely smart enough, or perhaps aligned with a certain political ideology, to balance these two elements, many others—especially those who probably need to hear this message the most—lack that balance and do not see this part of the equation. Arthur Fleck, as the Joker in this film, gets to enact brutal and, in the eyes of the film, somewhat righteous violence while confronting his bullies.

And tormentors and society as a whole. His one inarguably unprovoked and unjustified act of wanton violence is paired with an epic speech that basically boils down to: we live in a society where he blames society for the senseless violence that he enacts. Literally. Oh, why is everybody so upset about these guys? If it were me dying on the sidewalk, you'd walk right over me. I pass you every day, and you don't notice me.

But these guys—what, because of Thomas Wendt? When you cried about them on TV, everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody considers what it's like to be the other guy.

And then, after this, he has multiple iconic scenes where he is framed as a hero. Now, maybe these are delusions; maybe they are not. We don't quite know, as the movie doesn't decide to tell us. The most egregious scene for me is when he dances on top of a cap, surrounded by other people who are like-minded and idolizing him. Yes, after this, he does finally get caught and sent to jail, but he does so with a smile, feeling like he has accomplished something significant.

And I know I said that spree shootings and senseless violence from this specific nebulous group of people are rare, but the people who commit those acts of violence imagine things happening a certain way when they plan it out. I'm going to come back to this a little later because you're going to be surprised by how this video ends. The common criticism of people who critique "Joker" and films like it is that we don't have good media literacy and that somehow we don't understand that it's not supposed to be idolized the way it is. Again, I want to be clear: this is not an issue of media literacy. I know what the message is supposed to be. I get it.

You get it. But if you look at the tweets where people were discussing "Joker 2," those individuals clearly didn't understand it. There's an argument to be made that this isn't their fault, but rather the fault of the creators. They don't want to challenge right-wing ideology and iconography as much as they claim to.

Otherwise, the problematic population that enjoys those stories, which are meant to be criticized, wouldn't love them uncritically and would probably refrain from watching. Media analysis and comprehension involve not only understanding what a piece of media is saying but also understanding what that piece of media is doing. What a piece of media is saying and doing can often be very different. It's not just about knowing what the creator is trying to convey to the audience; it's about understanding what the audience is actually going to perceive.

Like I'm sure the directors and writers who made "Crash," the 2004 Academy Award-winning movie, they probably thought they were creating an anti-racism opus that white audiences lauded it for. However, when I watched it, I saw a Black woman who had to hug and rely on the racist, crooked cop who sexually assaulted her in front of her Black husband, who did nothing. I didn't perceive any anti-racism in that movie, and most Black people didn't either. So, intention doesn't always match or change impact. When it came to "Joker"—the first one—those edge lords, red pillars, sigmas, and all the others in that nebulous group did not grasp the criticism of that worldview portrayed in the film.

They received a reinforcement of that worldview. It seems to me that Todd Phillips took that personally. The very idea that this movie had a sequel had to be somewhat galling to Phillips, who, before now, was best known for "The Hangover" trilogy. While the first film was good, the final two seemed to devolve into this weird, mean anti-humor. I don't know a lot about Phillips, but what I gather from him is that he wants to be seen as a real director and not just the guy who created the Mr. Chow character.

I can't call it on how that should work for him, considering the spottiness of his film catalog. Either way, it's clear that he had a score to settle in his head when directing "Joker" too. I've personally floated the idea that the movie is bad on purpose. I don't know if I'll hold on to that take much going forward, considering that the movie had a budget of $200 million. It's like, who would allow that to happen? But again, we are talking about Warner Brothers, and they are one of the most poorly run movie studios in existence right now. Don't forget that they vaulted a fully finished movie that people seem to like just to write it off their taxes, among other things. However, there are reports that Phillips wanted nothing to do with the DC production universe and didn't really report at all to James Gunn during the filming.

It was also not screened in many ways before its initial release, so whether or not you think it was bad on purpose, it definitely aimed to alienate its core audience in the way it was done. At a minimum, regardless of your opinion about this movie, you must understand that aside from a couple of elements that feel tacked-on, it does not want to be seen as a comic book-adjacent superhero film. Throughout the movie, it does not engage much with that world. It is sort of an anti-comic book movie, so to speak. It is a character study, a deep dive, and really a film that explores mental illness, compassion, and all those themes we wanted to address under the guise of a comic book film.

In fact, I’d argue it does a lot of things to purposely alienate itself from anything related to those types of movies. First and foremost, for no apparent reason, "Joker 2" is a musical. And not just any musical, but one that lacks the engaging elements typically found in musicals. It's not like "Chicago," "Hairspray," or "Little Shop of Horrors," where there are big, upbeat, fun musical numbers with elaborate sets or dances.

The music features all the croony, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett-type stuff—music that I guess Lady Gaga is also into. The vocal performances from Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix aren't great; Joaquin Phoenix is not a great singer, and nobody else sings. This means that part of the audience is likely to react negatively, saying, "Oh my God, it's a musical; that's so soy," and they won't enjoy that aspect of it. Personally, I hate musicals.

I do not like anything with interpretive dance. I find it very cringy, and it makes me upset. Anyone who might like a musical is still not going to be entertained, because it's just not a fun musical or even a dramatic musical like *Les Misérables*. I don't know what the music is for other than to just be different and artsy, which it still doesn't do well. Again, it makes me think that there's a purpose to how alienating it would be. There's this really intense moment toward the end of the movie where the Joker is trying to talk to Harley Quinn, and she starts singing. He's like, "Hey, look, can you stop singing for a second?"

I really need to talk to you like a normal person. Could you just stop singing? I don't know if I'm supposed to laugh, but I did. However, beyond that overtly weird choice, the movie also suggests that the first movie isn't real. The Joker from that movie, and the way that movie ended, doesn't exist in this one.

This movie starts out with an animated short where Arthur Fleck, as the Joker, seems to be controlled by a shadowy figure. That concept was absent in the first film. The story revolves around the idea that Arthur Fleck is one person, while the Joker represents an alternate identity that he cannot control. This notion becomes part of his legal defense, with a psychiatrist attempting to articulate it, but the Joker ultimately rejects this at the end. Honestly, I'm left unsure of what I’m supposed to think, other than to view the events of the first movie as if they don’t count.

As such, in this movie, he’s barely the Joker or even any remnant of the Joker. In the rare moments that he is the Joker, after Lady Gaga, who I guess is Harley Quinn but really not at all—again, outside of name, which is sad—she convinces him to try to be the Joker again, and he does it, and it sucks. It's cringe. He’s being his own lawyer.

Oh, that "Tendency" song. It isn’t him. It isn’t me. So you don’t think this is me? Well, maybe, maybe you don’t know who I really was.

He talks in this goofy Southern accent, and I don't know if we're supposed to think this is cool or see it for what it really is, which is weird and cringe. He tries to do joker antics, but they're not well written. Are they not well written on purpose because we're supposed to recognize that Arthur Fleck is a loser? I think that's kind of how it's supposed to be. Or is it not well written because the movie isn't well written?

Either way, the experience is the same: it sucks. The film climaxes in a moment where you think you're about to get another big "we live in a society" speech at the end of this trial. The whole movie is basically about putting the Joker from the first movie—or the first movie itself—on trial. And, yes, that's a choice.

So he sits down like he's about to make this speech, and then he just doesn't. He says, "I'm not really the Joker. I'm just a broken man with a lot of mental health issues. I don't want to be this guy. I just wish I could start over."

I'm very sorry. I wish every irritating anime avatar guy I've ever seen in my comment section on Twitter would act like that, but it doesn't make for a good film. As the final nail in the coffin to ensure that nobody is confused about the message of this movie and how Todd Phillips feels about the fanbase that came to love the first one, chaos ensues at the end of the trial. The Joker has a chance to escape with two fans who idolize him for his anti-social behavior. They serve as literal stand-ins for the fans of the original movie. They get him in the car and start escaping with him, and he's not going back to jail—maybe he's finally going to embrace being the Joker.

But I think the joker here is Todd Phillips, and he hears the two acolytes talking about how they're going to tear things up and destroy society and all that stuff. The Joker has this look on his face like, "Man, fuck, you all are weird. I don't want to be here." Then he jumps out of the car, escaping from his own fans—the fans of the original movie.

And so when you look at some of the tweets about the Joker, about people walking out on the film, I don't know if "bad on purpose" is fair, but walking out on the film... It definitely felt like a "screw you" to that fan base. I shouldn't laugh, but what else are you going to do? I wish I could keep laughing.

I wish I could just take this moment to gloat about being right, right? But then I tried to actually make a video out of this victory lap. So, how's this for a plot twist? I'm wrong. This video started out as a B-size where I would, you know, do a victory lap on those previous takes on the topic after seeing the response in real-life people.

Like, I'm not saying that Todd Phillips or anyone who wrote "The Boys" saw my old edgelord video, but I definitely feel like they recognized a need to be more explicit and direct with their messaging to avoid the kind of criticism I tend to direct at this type of media. As I wrote it, more ideas developed, and I started thinking about the "Attack on Titan" situation, for which I've already done a victory lap. What began as a small filler video, something I would create while waiting on the Diddy video to happen, ended up becoming something I couldn't finish. I found myself stuck in a way that's unusual for me when writing a video. There was something about being correct in my original criticisms of this media that didn't feel right.

Yes, I was right. Or, at a minimum, the way I was looking at things seemed to be indicative of the way some of these creators were starting to look at things too. But that feels meaningless now that I'm thinking harder about what is actually happening here. Yeah, it's nice to dunk on right-wingers who don't understand media and are so bad at it, in fact, that the creators themselves had to spell it out blatantly so that even an idiot could see it. And yes, this doesn't change their minds, but it's at least fun to read their angry tweets, you know?

But then something else hit me that almost made me abandon this whole video. To explain that, I want to discuss two more movies that fall into this nebulous, sad white guy genre. These two movies are *Nightcrawler*, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, and *Drive*, starring Ryan Gosling. I may have actually mixed these two actors up, to be honest with you. They are quite interchangeable.

The movies are different, but even their posters are distinctly different. Yet, they are the same. Both films follow morally dubious, sigma-male-coded, lonely sad white guy protagonists who fight to survive and make sense of a world that has no real place for them, yada, yada, yada. I'm not sure how long this video is, but you know what I mean. Beyond that premise, the two films are very different in how they engage with that archetype.

In *Nightcrawler*, Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom character is presented to us in a way that explicitly removes his Hollywood good looks. His skin and hair are both oily and poorly kept, and his mannerisms and behavior showcase an over-the-top, low-key alternative. He is a statistically coded character who doesn't seem to have the ability to interact appropriately in social settings. How about an internship then? A lot of young people are taking unpaid positions to get a foot in the door.

That's something I'd be willing to do. I'm not hiring a thief. His performance is unnerving in every way. We're still intrigued by the story and the character, and it’s a good film. I want to be clear that both of these movies I really enjoy, but at no time are you watching "Nightcrawler" looking at Louis Bloom and saying, "Yeah, he's just like me, for real," even if he low-key is.

I didn't say that. On the flip side, Gosling's character in *Drive* is arguably just as autistically coded, just in a less overt manner that's easier to digest. Instead, his detached behavior and similarly underdeveloped social skills come off as cool. He's so cool that he doesn't even have a name in the movie; he's just "the Driver" the whole time. He wears a cool scorpion jacket, has impressive driving skills, and uses a really cool hammer to communicate his true feelings about how cool he is.

And while, if you're paying attention with good media literacy, you might be thinking that maybe this guy isn't so cool, the movie still doesn't want you to think too hard about that. Even as you watch the very disturbing hyperviolence throughout the film, where he himself realizes he may be a monster incapable of having intimate relationships, both movies attempt to engage with that sad sigma male identity. However, one is clearly more enamored and empathetic toward this image than the other. One leaves no room, much like "The Boys" and "Joker," for how the audience is meant to feel. Both are good, but only one is likely to develop a certain type of fan base.

The thing is, while people with views similar to mine may be less critical of the way that "Nightcrawler" engages with this archetype, it doesn't matter either way to these right-wing, edge-looking types in question. It won't stop them from ignoring the messages of "Nightcrawler" altogether or overlooking the subtext in "Drive." It won't change their minds. It won't stop them from being rude online. It won't prevent them from recruiting others and drawing people deeper into reactionary online spaces.

From the angle that I have presented up to this point, this movie does things the right way. But what difference does that actually make? A few weeks ago, I came across a video featuring one of my new favorite problematic white boy streamer types. I have a tier list of low-key problematic white guy creators that I watch, but I don't discuss it too much because I never know when they might do something controversial. So, Tyler is kind of a newcomer; he's moving up to that upper mid-tier area.

So, shout out to Tyler for now. We'll see how long this lasts. But Westside Tyler, a.k.a. S.A. Side Tyler, did a behemoth three-and-a-half-hour video called *Starship Troopers and the Death of Satire*. In it, he presents a very strong argument that *Starship Troopers*, the 1996 Paul Verhoeven film based on the intensely right-wing, if not outright fascist, book of the same name by Robert Heinlein.

He presents the idea that the movie isn't the subversive satire of fascism that many media critics on the left like to claim. Instead, he compellingly argues that "Starship Troopers," the film, is arguably more effective as a piece of pro-fascist media than the book it's based on. "Starship Troopers" is propaganda, not a satire of propaganda. It isn't really satire at all; it is propaganda.

You might say that the fascists don’t know they’re being made fun of. Aren’t we so much more clever than them? They don’t care! Verhoeven’s *Starship Troopers* has a runtime of approximately 2 hours and 9 minutes, of which the FedNet scenes, where essentially all of the overtly satirical moments take place, comprise a total of 6 minutes and 13 seconds.

That leaves us with two hours of a film that is non-stop action with a clear-cut message of us versus them—the good guys versus the bugs. It is done in the style of the most influential propagandist of the literal Nazi regime. He then goes on to criticize the very nature of this type of endeavor, both in media and in media criticism. Just how many times will we point and laugh at the chuds?

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fun and cathartic, but it's also a limited-use tool. After watching his video, I realized why I was struggling to finish this one. Again, repeating myself, we know by now that when the edge lords, chuds, Nazis, red pillers, and others watch *Fight Club*, *Falling Down*, or play *Spec Ops: The Line* or *Helldivers*, they just attach to the parts that reinforce the ideology they're connected to. We either shout at them about the parts they miss or we laugh among ourselves about how they're too dumb to get it.

And that's fun, but it's important to engage with the fact that I don't think we're getting it either. My core argument up until this point has been that if the media allows itself to be misinterpreted, then we need to be critical of said media, regardless of what its intentions might have been, because said media is still reflecting a certain ideology, even if it claims to want to criticize it. I still feel like that's true to an extent, but I need to amend that because, ironically, having been proven right in this light has forced me to see the limitations of that strategy. Here’s an important point that I need to drive home, which I've dabbled in but not really solidified: *The Boys* Season Four is the worst season of the show.

Jesus, it does a good job of being more critical about right-wing ideology, but to the detriment of itself as a piece of media. It becomes lazy, predictable, and pointless at times. The troll farms are already digging up fringe anti-Starlight content and injecting it into the mainstream. So far, Starlight's progressive jihad and hashtag arrogant white feminism are showing promise.

We need the algorithm to find the most receptive users, then blast the articles to the top of their social feeds until 100 million people are by starlight for reasons they can't even explain. And I still argue that *Attack on Titan* is good, right? But the changes they made to the end of the anime version don't fix the ending at all. It just makes it more galling and glaring how the character of Eren Yeager was written.

And Joker, A Foi de la Lou, whatever, is the worst movie I've seen in theaters in years. It is genuinely really, really bad, boring, meandering, and pointless, even as it makes points I agree with. I also hated many aspects of the first one. At their core, all of the examples I presented still fail to address their flaws, primarily because they are weak pieces of media. Furthermore, Fight Club is good.

Taxi Driver is good. Breaking Bad is good. Rick and Morty, and yes, even the first Joker, are good in their quality regardless of the flaws in their messaging. So no, the response from creators shouldn't be to do what Joker 2 did, or what The Boys Season 4 did, or what Attack on Titan did. If these creators truly wanted to address the audiences that misunderstood their media, they would approach it differently.

They should have first been good. And therein lies the question: can you make something good that still accomplishes the intended goal? I answered that by talking about those other two movies, "Drive" and "Nightcrawler." No, they still wouldn't get it. So if there's really no fixing that problem through the media, I'd rather watch something well-made and entertaining with bad politics than watch something poorly made and boring with good politics, especially if all I'd end up getting out of it is just clutter in my mind.

Of it is the smug satisfaction of being right because I have to tell you, here on the left, that smug satisfaction of being right is getting us killed. So, what is an actual solution here? What is my updated and amended take on all this stuff? Should no BreadTuber ever again make the "X media is bad and here's why" video? No.

In fact, we probably still need more, but better versions of that, with maybe just some tweaks. In the conversation on the Signified podcast channel, I talked to one of the people my mentor, Ziyalo Kenyatta. He makes the point that sharing knowledge and educating really aren't enough, considering the state of affairs in our world right now. So, our problem is not a lack of education; our problem is that we don't have counter indoctrination and counter propaganda. This is not simply about teaching a student.

It's about waging intellectual and psychic warfare. If it were simply a matter of miseducation and I could just sit everyone around and provide them with false facts versus fiction, presenting them with the evidence, that would be a very easy task. We have to be propagandists. We have to employ counter-indoctrination. It's not a fair fight, and we should not fight fair.

Yes, we definitely need to continue deconstructing these stories, pulling out their meanings, and putting them on display for everyone to see and understand better than they might have otherwise. However, as Diallo points out, we need counter indoctrination. We need counter propaganda. We need fewer stories about sad white men who save the day through inherently right-wing, antisocial behavior, where we simply say, "Look how bad that is, and look how good we are for noticing it." Instead, we need to envision the world we are fighting to create and imagine the battles we must engage in to achieve that vision.

We need more content like Star Trek. Shout out to Jesse Jinder. We need a world where they've already fixed many of the problems we face today, and they're just adding new elements because they are traveling into space. We also need more projects like "Sorry to Bother You" and "I'm a Virgo" from Boots Riley, where revolutionary action is imagined, even if it's in absurd and bizarre ways. That's what we should be discussing more.

The stuff that's actually good, not just good in theory. You get it? But that also requires a bit of reframing in the way we, as creators and consumers, think about media and its critics. One thing I had to understand while making this is that media reflects culture and society.

It's a product of social attitudes, not a producer. The stories we tell that include bad politics don't cause bad politics; they're the effect of bad politics. We forget that when we conduct our analysis and explain why something bad is bad. This leads to an overinflated sense of the value of what we do and a failure to recognize the reality of the situation.

The Harmful Messages in the Media We think that because I, or insert your favorite video essayist here, says something is bad and explains why, we have somehow solved the problem of it being bad. But that's not the reality. The reality is that we live in a society, and that society does produce media that is right-wing, edgy, or even quasi-fascistic, even when trying to critique those things.

And we won't be rid of that flaw. The problem in our media will persist until we address that flaw and the issues in our society. This is a far bigger challenge than simply liking the right type of media, having the correct perspective on a piece of media, or watching your favorite video essays break it down. However, it is something you can actively participate in. Fixing this problem in real life requires tangible actions, organizing, civic engagement, and, to some extent, mentoring.

Like, if you're really worried about the type of boys who are drawn to "Joker," "Attack on Titan," or whatever, talking to them directly when they're pre-teens and younger is the best way to ensure they don't end up following Andrew Tate or whoever else when they become teenagers. That's how you actually accomplish that— by engaging with them personally, not by sending them one of my videos. But we're getting off topic. To all you neckbearded, dry-dick, incel, "nixel," "curry cell," yada, yada, yada, who actually made it this far in the video.

First off, thank you. Secondly, I'm sorry. I got a little carried away. It's still "fuck you guys," of course, but let's focus on some commonality. Put your favorite sad white man movie in the comment section.

Extra points if you explain it in the edgiest, most sigma way possible. We'll have a big old edge-off in the comment section going forward. Maybe include your favorite deconstruction of one of those movies that you like. For instance, I really love Aaron Knopf's career reading of the Matrix films.

That completely opened my eyes to a completely different way of viewing those films. I went looking for a good video essay on "Fight Club" and its queer themes, but I didn't find any. The only one that I remember is about 10 years old from Rantasmo. That’s an original video, and I feel like none of you have seen it.

It only has 40,000 views, which shows that we still need more content like that. The fact that "Fight Club" does not have an hour-long "Fight Club Is Gay Actually, and Here’s Why" video makes me feel cheated. I really feel cheated about that one.

With that in mind, there's a great new video on a classic work of subversive media, the 2012 video game *Spec Ops: The Line*, done by fellow Nebula member Jacob Geller. It’s one of those top-tier video essays that, if you like this type of content, I'm sure you'd appreciate. If you really like Geller, you would probably enjoy the half dozen or so videos he has on Nebula that aren’t on his main channel, just in the last six months. Yes, Jacob Geller puts a lot of smaller niche videos on Nebula that aren't available on his YouTube page. The same goes for Maggie Mae Fish and T1J.

In a perfect world, we could put all our content on YouTube without worrying about it. Unfortunately, things don't work that way. Instead, we have to carefully choose what goes on YouTube because of its rules regarding copyright and monetization. Additionally, some videos, such as my video about the queer coding of Tupac throughout his career, may not find the right audience here. For years, Nebula has been the platform for that kind of content, allowing it to be uncensored without like buttons, ad segments, or algorithms determining whether you watch it or not.

That is the original glory of what Nebula was. But I also want to mention that that's not what Nebula is now, or at least not just what it is. All that stuff is still true, but Nebula is changing. It's going from a place where all your favorite YouTubers post their content for free to evolving into an outright independent film studio.

In the last year or so, Nebulun has made some tweaks to focus on giving this roster of over 200 talented creators the opportunity to think beyond YouTube videos. During that time, we produced docu-series like Brouillet de Chanel's series on sex in film and Real Life Lore's series on military conflicts in the Middle East. We also have travel content and reality shows like *The Getaway*, as well as independent films like Jesse Jinder's *Identitize* and Patrick Willems' *Night of the Coconut*. And that's just our first wave as we get the ball rolling on really becoming the YouTube version of A24.

But that ball is in your court. You can help us continue to be the most exciting space for independent content creators and gain access to all that exclusive content ad-free by signing up using my promo code FDSIGNIFIER or by clicking the link in the description. We rely on you, the consumer, to keep this ball rolling, as we are completely independent. We're not owned by YouTube, Google, or any other big tech company. It's just us as creators and you as the viewers.

So help us keep things moving by joining us today. Thank you so much to Nebula for sponsoring this video. Thank you all for watching! Don't forget to check out my Patreon, as well as my other channels and social media. That's pretty much it, y'all.

Peace.