My wife and I were watching The Circle on Netflix and felt really strongly about two people in particular. Our 1 second first impressions of Joey and Shubham were of probably not relating to Joey due to his intense personality, and relating more to the nerdy Shubham.
Immediately as they start talking and as the show progressed through the season, we fell in love with Joey and felt really uncomfortable with Shubham. Joey is very outgoing and straightforward, especially in his approach to women, very often admitting to thinking with his dick. However, he seems to have a great deal of respect for people of all walks of life and genders and is constantly checking himself on his actions and words, being very quick to apologise to anyone he feels he has slighted. He’s the type to hit on you but the second you say no he would respect that and move on.
A key point to Joey that we found is that his sense of self-respect and self-worth do not involve respecting others less or putting himself above others.
Shubham on the other hand quickly started to come off as pretentious. His “influencers are the devil” stance seems to stem from the same line of thinking that leads some introverted youths into thinking that all the “cool kids” lead superficial and meaningless lives while they themselves are actual people value and individuality. He frequently says things like “I will be honest and straightforward ‘unlike’ the other contestants,” and is often the first to label people as jocks or superficial and use that to assume their actions and intentions. Even when talking to his loyal friend Joey he’s talking to the camera about “well he’s a gym bro so he’s probably doing x”.
Shubham seems to be completely unaware of his words and actions in these regards, and seems to try to be good and kind; but the mentality he is showing seems to be toxic. His relationship to the girls on the show seems to come across as judgemental and untrusting of girls he deems superficial and fake, and borderline White Knight protective and idealizing girls he deems to be sincere. I feel like Shubhams “looking for” box on a dating site would just say “looking for a girl who’s not like ‘other girls’”
He reminds us of “nice guys” on the internet who are so chivalrous and romantic and compassionate to girls they talk to or are interested in, but the second the girl does something to marr their idealized fantasy or turns the guy down, the guy quickly turns around and lashes out with slurs and threats.
Anyways, there's my 22 cents on the matter. Great show.
