Internet subcultures are notoriously difficult to explain to people. It’s hard to translate the arcane slang and inside jokes of a niche group of social media users into terms an outsider can understand, and efforts to do so may leave one open to ridicule by hostile insiders. Some might be tempted to give up, dismissing these subcultures as not even existing in the “real world.” But the dichotomy between the real world and online is a false one. For young people in particular, social life is increasingly taking place on the internet, on social media apps and message boards, leaving the physical world a mere fleshy supplement to the true digital one.
Alex Lee Moyer’s documentary TFW NO GF, released on Amazon Prime Video on April 27, concerns one of the most elusive and demonized subcultures of all. Its members are called by a variety of names — “incels” (for “involuntary celibates”) “NEETs” (“not in education, employment, or training”), “edgelords,” “trolls,” or “anons.” The five that Moyer follows are associated with the 4chan message board and “Frogtwitter,” an avant-garde faction with eclectic and esoteric interests that takes its name from the famous Pepe the Frog meme. Their intellectual leader, known as Kantbot, preaches a fanciful adaptation of German idealist philosophy (think G.W.F. Hegel and Friedrich Schelling) to an audience of disaffected young men.
There have been two general approaches to understanding Frogtwitter and related groups. The first is one of scandalized horror, depicting the subculture as a cesspool of violent hate and misogyny. After the 2018 Toronto van attack, in which a self-proclaimed “incel” killed 10 innocent people, there was a wave of articles casting the denizens of Frogtwitter as freakish losers and would-be terrorists. The second approach treats these subcultures as producers of texts that can be understood in an artistic or literary sense. Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies (2017), for instance, maps the rise of the alt-right as a consequence of online culture wars taking place on websites such as Tumblr and 4chan. Nagle sees the 4channers as practitioners of a “politics of transgression” against the hegemony of political correctness. Both approaches focus on the “incel-troll” as a political operative, a chaotic villain whose alter ego, Pepe, personifies the internet’s death drive.
Firmly following the second approach, TFW NO GF differs from previous investigations in that it focuses on the “Wojak” meme, the bald everyman counterpart to Pepe. Pepe is the trickster who makes everyone else mad but is never mad himself, the poster’s public troll persona. Wojak is the alienated subject, the real person behind the screen — the “feels guy.” (“Tfw no gf” is a refrain meaning, “That feeling when [I have] no girlfriend.”) These are troubled, loner underachievers, and their politics are secondary. When Charels, one of the subjects, is banned from Twitter for making violent threats, we see it from his perspective: that of a sad guy making a harmless joke to amuse his friends, rather than that of the outsiders who see it as taunting political hate speech. When pressed, none of the subjects seem to stand by the worst things their troll alter egos say. They are moody poets; their literary form is the Twitter aphorism. They also produce art, music, podcasts, and videos — in a word, “content.”
The documentary recognizes the artistic merit of the scene. Underground music big shots Ariel Pink and John Maus collaborated on the film’s hypnagogic pop soundtrack, which is one of its high points, and Pink has appeared on Kantbot’s podcast TekWars. The film also features the raw “incel” music of Egg White (whose song “Alek Minassian” has, according to the film’s press kit, been played by two mass shooters while conducting their assaults) and Negative XP (formerly known as School Shooter) as well as animations by Prince of Zimbabwe and Carnival & Lent, painting a picture of a surprisingly productive punk subculture.
Moyer clearly has sympathy for her subjects, which has been lacking in most press coverage on the topic. There is no hysterical culture war moralism, nor is there a sterile academic distance. Instead, we are introduced to intelligent (if somewhat odd) young men reflecting on their alienation — their broken homes, their depression, their social isolation. Some critics might even suspect that Moyer has gone native and become a troll herself. If she did, good for her: That’s probably the only way to really understand these people.
Unfortunately, the sympathetic approach may come at the cost of a compelling narrative and an incisive editorial stance. Other than Kantbot, whose lofty ambitions and internet clout ground the film’s depiction of the group as an intellectual avant-garde, it’s not exactly clear why some subjects are chosen instead of others. Why not investigate Logo Daedalus, Kantbot’s accomplice in the viral “Trump Will Complete the System of German Idealism” video, who is still going strong with over 13,000 Twitter followers and a self-published novel? Or the mysterious Bronze Age Pervert?
The result is a jumbled character study that combines the stories of a hodgepodge of lonely underachievers talking about their problems with the influencer Kantbot’s pontifications about the meaning of it all. At the end, we see that, in the years that passed during filming, some of Moyer’s subjects have matured and appear to be moving on: One has found a girlfriend; another has dedicated himself to self-improvement through reading and weightlifting. Only Kantbot remains in the public spotlight, now producing online content full time.
It seems the film can’t decide whether its subjects are losers to be pitied or artists to be appreciated. At the end, Kantbot is asked a question that the viewer doesn’t hear but must have been something along the lines of: “For these people, what now?” He responds, “What do you want me to say? You are basically asking me the meaning of life. The answer to the incel is for them to live their lives, to produce art, to create meaning.” Fair enough. But we never really know whether to trust Kantbot in the first place — is he the delusional captain of a ship of fools, or is he really on to something? It’s not something the filmmaker should tell the viewer outright, but Moyer doesn’t seem to commit to an answer at all.
Mike Crumplar is a writer and editor living in Washington, D.C. Follow him @mcrumps.
