Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:
Alex Lee Moyer’s 2020 documentary TFW No GF — shorthand for “That feel when no girlfriend” — profiles several disaffected young men desperately searching to connect on the dark corners of the internet.
Though the film has its share of crude language, and a couple of violent images, its real subject is the souls of a generation of males who have been nursed, weaned, and raised in cyberspace.
What happens to young men when there are no role models, no authority figures, and no meaningful, flesh-and-blood human contact? And when at their fingertips they have a dopamine-hit-producing alternate reality that rewards the outrageous, the violent, the unhinged?
READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.
hi heather!
that was a necessary piece about these guys and the internet.and pain.sadness.
it shows not says.very,very important.
and comforting to knowyou are not alone in your pain of disgust and everything else.it is a different kind of pain .we are used to loneliness but to emptyness? that is a hard pain to break up.it comes from a lot of numbing.
if you find a book about it let me know.
i have a small book about the human and the tecgnical age.i think i will start it today.
thanks for bringing this up!
your friend tina
Thanks, Tina–the film was slammed by many for humanizing people we’re “supposed” to demonize and despise…but it was strangely moving, and for me, an eye-opener…beneath all our cultural, social and political ills is a spiritual malady…a deep loneliness and what’s worse, as you say, and I think especially in the West an emptiness…anyway, it’s well worth a look.