#adolescence

Even at 13, Jamie is aware of that, subconsciously or not. He uses words like “bitch” and “slut” to refer to a 13 year old girl—a child he killed. He brings up her leaked photos again and again, talks about her comments and her treatment of him as if any of that should exempt him from his crime.

He already knows he has an advantage, for being a boy and having hurt a girl who’s not perfect and “pure”. The show drives this point home when that store’s employee tells Jamie’s dad he suports his son and talks badly about Katie. He says there’s more people who agree with him.

Because there are. The whole time, Jamie brings up “Katie was flat”, “she took nude pictures”, “she rejected me”, “she bullied me”. He still tries to paint her as the villain when he was the one who admitted he only pursued her because she was fragile and he wanted to take advantage of that.

He even claps himself in the back because he didn’t sexually assault her after he murdered her, as if that makes him a good person. (When he did in fact commit a sexual crime by looking at her naked pictures without her consent).

The way that hour of t.v. in episode 4 is slow so that we can steadily watch the father and watch how closely his wife monitors his emotions so that she can step in to regulate them for him. She pushes her emotions aside to monitor his because his potential to blow up and get violent verbally or physically is potentially dangerous for her and her daughter.

Jamie switches from screaming to apologising in episode 3. Then we see the father apologise in episode 4 for spilling the water from the bucket after blowing up at his wife. He apologises for the wrong things. His son does the same.

His father hasn't shared with his wife what he saw Jamie do on the video and she says he shuts down and doesn't want to talk about it. In the same way Jamie hasn't spoken to any of his family about how he and his friends have been bullied at school - spat on and ridiculed in real life and online.

I need some time to wrap my head around this scary shit.

Firstly, they didn't have Jamie cartoonishly espousing his beliefs like a cartoon supervillain, because they did their research, and knew these boys are being carefully taught by the adults in the manosphere to hide their power level. They showed the full reality of what Jamie had become under the tutelage of the manosphere by letting their teachings silently guide his actions.

Second, they almost completely removed Katie from the conversation. That was so important because men would have jumped all over that to devalue the messaging by calling it another piece of feminist trash centered around women. Men were center stage in this, portrayed in respectful honesty, flaws and all.

Jamie's dad was legitimately an alright dude, but he had his family walking on eggshells with those tantrums of his, and I imagine the truth of that was such an uncomfortable but necessary glimpse in the mirror for men. My brother has never laid hands on a woman in his life either, but he has that same inability to emotionally regulate when he gets angry, and I think it was important for men to see what it looks like for the people around them to deal with. By centering the male experience in an honest way, in making a piece of media men might not completely dismiss outright, they get to see what they look from the point of a spectator's view, and that's so goddamned important.

Third, they left a lot of stuff about the Red Pill confusing and vague. This is going to spur parents to do more research, which is so fucking necessary, and it's going to keep the manosphere from saying, "Well, this and this and this is completely misconstrued." This is important because if we want legislation passed to protect young people from the Manosphere, we need to focus on the long term damage over time done to the psyche, on the actual damage they're doing to young boys, rather than focus on criticizing rhetoric they've got meticulously built dialog trees to defend. We need to build a case that the Manosphere is full of predators absolutely breaking the psyches of young boys for money.