American Psycho is a comedy. A dark streak of humor runs through Mary Harron’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel — a pointed satire of corporate greed, yuppie culture, and rampant consumerism — in which a wealthy investment banker eventually spirals into madness and murder. Not so for certain sections of the manosphere, in which Patrick Bateman is revered, unironically, as a “sigma male” (the mysterious, lone wolf version of the “alpha male”) for his bank balance, hustle culture-oriented mindset, and his irresistible appeal to women.
His sharp jawline and sculpted physique are held up as an ideal by the “looksmaxxing” community, young men fixated on maximizing their appearance to become the most attractive version of themselves. Bateman’s punishing, ridiculously elaborate morning routine, which involves two cleansers, two scrubs, an anti-aging eye balm and a thousand crunches, is now the standard of self-care. “Patrick Bateman is (almost) the ideal male,” reads one post on a looksmaxxing forum. “Great fashion sense, harems of women, soothing, masculine voice and accent…the only thing he lacks is height (he is 5’10).” American Psycho is a comedy, but somewhere along the way, some of its audience stopped being in on the joke.
