TFW NO GF

TFW NO GF

This may have been a sort-of grungy look into incel subculture and their rancid online homes. Unfortunately it'll have to be JUST a look, as all audio seems to be recorded on a 1987 walkman, and put into the documentary without levelling. Most of the people sound like they are in an _actual_ pit of despair, and speaking from the bottom while the mike is hung in another county. Combined with footage that wildly oscillates between 'fair' and 'filmed on a second hand iphone 5' this is borderline unwatchable and unusable as a podcast. How this got past selection on a fairly prestigious film festival is completely beyond me. It wouldn't even pass as a first-year filmclub test project.

It is novel that this documentary follows a few men in the incel subculture over a period of a few years, but the film is mostly lacking narrative or statement. Instead, we are presented with a collage of clips platforming the subjects' ideas. They do offer some insightful thoughts about consumer culture and the way young men are expected to behave in our society, but the men also spread some blatantly misogynistic or racist ideology, the latter presented caged in a flimsy veneer of "satire" (a term which those in the subculture misinterpret to mean transgressing for the sake of transgressing, rather than using irony to make a larger point). Personally, I felt that the misogyny and racism were brushed off too easily in favour of humanising the subjects. That may be the best approach for reconciling these sorts of men with society, but it means that we end up with a fairly shallow look into the subculture that only briefly references the hate and extremism it has generated. You get the impression that the incel community is mostly a place for commiseration and that those within it eventually graduate to more typical lives. This is probably true of many, maybe even most, but it still misses an important fact. At one point, we see a brief clip from the Toronto Van Attack (an act of misogynist terrorism that took place in Canada's largest city in 2018), but its roots in incel fora are not explained at all. The perpetrator was a member of the incel community, and he and other domestic terrorists like him have been idolized in some incel circles since. One could argue that this film is about the less extreme members of the community, and that the hateful acts of extreme factions are for another movie. Frankly though, to me it feels irresponsible to spend so much time in the subculture without directly addressing the fact that it has spawned domestic terrorism. My advice: give this one a miss. If you want to know more about the incel subculture, listen to the CBC podcast about the Toronto Van Attack, I found it much more enlightening.

Myself and the wife have used TFW twice in May, first time was wrexham to Birmingham international to get our flight to Crete. Travelled from Wrexham on the 30th April for our 7 am flight on the 1st was staying overnight. Before we left wrexham I saw a notice ref train strikes on the 8th May our return date, I asked the girl in the ticket office at Wrexham would we be okay on the return train on the 8th ,I was told yes as TFW aren't on strike. On our return to Birmingham international there was no trains from Birmingham international or New street to Wrexham due to strikes. We got told if we got to Wolverhampton TFW are running from there. We'd been up and on the road since 9am ,so stayed overnight in Birmingham at our own cost. Tried to claim it back but they are all blaming each other. The weekend of 24th May we travelled to London for2 nights due to return the 26th at 19:03 from Euston,I checked my phone to check for train updates and found no trains running from Birmingham to Wrexham again TFW .We returned to Euston at 15:00 to see how we could get home. We had to get a train at 16:22 to Birmingham and then get the Manchester train to Wolverhampton then Bus replacement to Shrewsbury and train to Wrexham from Shrewsbury.

Interesting look at incels that isn't filtered through media sensationalism and fear mongering. Looks at the conditions that created the subculture and what the people inside actually have to say

You see what's in this documentary everyday when you've grown up with the internet. And not only does this doc cover the common mindsets and themes of this subculture well, it also sticks to the atmosphere of said subculture while explaining it. Its a painfully beautiful thing to see these people at these points in their lives but at least they're going through it together. But hey, we're all gonna make it. Right?

In every other aspect of life people are treated as individuals and not held accountable for the actions of other loosely related people. For the first time ever i think this topic has been covered with some humanity instead of purposefully trying to demonise the subjects. The world seems increasingly more bland and alienating for a massive portion of the population, its liberating to actually have somebody give a voice to that and allow some of these people to speak. The internet is definitely the modern equivalent of subculture, however vague and ill defined it might be. This film attempts to capture this point in history in a open minded and often beautiful way. I hope in the future people view this Documentary in the same way that we view Penelope Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization". It definitely deserves it.

I don't understand the point of this documentary. All of the characters were just normal twenty something year old's for the most part. The only difference was that the filmmaker and characters are comply unaware of how normal they really are so they just moped around and created one of the most boring pointlessly constructed films I've ever seen.

Amazing score, brilliant editing, compelling subject matter. A call back to the 70s cinema before documentary school of yore reminiscent of Ross McElwee's "Sherman's March" or Spheeris' "Decline of Western Civilization." An unflinching portrait of a little understood subculture. We're all gonna make it.