This is a strange documentary. I hadn't read the description and expected some kind of breezy documentary about memes, but this film posits that memes are actually employed as sigils and hypersigils in the context of chaos magick, and so things are dark right from the outset.

I'm not sure I fully buy the central premise of the documentary. I don't really know the extent to which these online communities had an impact on the 2016 election, which was, as far as I can tell, a reaction to the Obama presidency and social progress moving at a clip which terrified a lot of people.

Even assessing the alt-right as a whole, I don't know how it breaks down between edgy 4chan trolls vs. Garden variety working class bigots, who may not have any connection with meme warfare or care much about the Internet.

Still, there is something unsettling here. I was surprised the documentary didn't discuss Edward Bernays and the way similar systems of manipulation have been employed in the context of business and capitalism (e.g., advertising). The concept of manipulating people in this way is not new; the particular spin it takes in online forums, and especially the people trafficking in these techniques is, perhaps, unique to the modern age.

And more to the point, as to criticisms of this documentary, this central point is missed: whether something is hokum or not has depressingly little connection to its efficaciousness: there are endless examples of human history of complete insanity and ludicrous lies having a cratering impact.

I have been genuinely surprised the degree to which these online cults have been attractive to people. And there seems to be little correlation between the stupidity of the worldviews they're selling and the IQ of the people who buy into them, which is to say, there are a lot of very intelligent people buying into some very stupid, harmful ideas.

Which, perhaps, speaks to a conversation we haven't had which is long overdue: intelligence -- that is, IQ -- and wisdom, are not the same things.

Grain of salt and all, but I find it hard to dismiss the central idea here entirely,

The most interesting thing here is the assertion that the power lies with the collective (vs. Individualist) expression of this technique, and especially the idea that the alt-right seems to have out-collective'd the left, somehow.

I would not have bet on this 20 years ago, but a whole lot of demented ideological pathologies have switched places in those decades, and the Internet may well have something -- maybe a lot -- to do with it.

That this is a form of mass insanity is a mundane and obvious conclusion. If you believe insanity is doomed to failure, you're not going to see much point here. If you believe in the power of mass insanity to disrupt, subvert, and destroy -- and I certainly do -- this is a far more disconcerting documentary.

I came into this documentary thinking that this was going to be actual, reasomable insight into the origins behind popular memes (such as Pepe) and their relation to online white supremacist groups, but this quickly turned into absolute nonsensical drivel about "chaos magic". It completely ruined the credibility of the documentary, especially since it's main interviewees were internet armchair "experts" who were too afraid to even show their faces because they're absolute knuckle dragging keyboard warriors.

Do not waste your time on this.

This film is as insightful as ripping salvia bong hits in a 17 year old Redditor's basement. The interview subjects are not experts, the narrative sounds like a high school student's poetry journal and there are so many uncited claims and the word "truth" is thrown around like a bouncy ball. The only reason I provided the second star is the use of Snapchat filters in the actual film with no sense of irony was HILARIOUS.