In 2022, it seems overly obvious to say that the internet has become a defining force of everyday life, shaping our social lives, influencing politics and becoming the place in which most people interact. But despite it’s outsize influence, at times the internet still feels young, malleable and ill-defined, a Wild West rodeo of the collective id that many in power seem unable to wrangle. To that end, many filmmakers have attempted to grapple with the past, present and future of the internet, seeking to understand or express something about how it has functioned, and will function, in our lives, in three very different projects hitting streaming services this week.
First up: the internet’s very recent history is plumbed in Rob Miller’s Netflix docuseries “The Most Hated Man on the Internet,” a three episode depiction of the rise and fall of internet provocateur Hunter Moore dropping on Wednesday. Though the events take place a mere 10 years ago, it feels like eons in internet cycles. In the late aughts, Moore, a posturing bad boy from the emo-adjacent music scene, started a website called IsAnyoneUp.com, on which he non-consensually posted nude photos of people, along with links to their social media profiles. It’s shocking to consider that this was even within the realm of legality at the time, but it was, until Moore messed with the wrong young woman, and her tenacious mother. Harkening back to a previous Netflix true crime series, “Don’t F— with Cats,” “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” could ostensibly be called “Don’t F— With Moms,” for the dogged determination with which L.A. mother Charlotte Laws went after Moore, collecting evidence from 40 victims who were hacked by Moore and his associates, and reporting him to the FBI. It’s a shocking look at one of the most vicious eras of the internet and a reminder that we are all, in ways, responsible for shaping the landscape of how we interact online.
From the past, to the present, Quinn Shepherd’s sophomore feature film “Not Okay” bows on Hulu Friday. Zoey Deutch stars as a depressed young New York City woman who fakes a trip to Paris for the Instagram clout, and then finds herself needing to fake surviving a terrorist attack when bombings hit the French city. High on likes, she drinks up the sympathy and career success that her false victimhood affords her, and becomes embroiled in a complicated relationship with a young school shooting victim (Mia Isaac). Shepherd manages to distill the right now of the internet into this film: cancel culture, clout culture, misinformation, terrorism and school shootings, and to inspect the lingering desire to tear people down online — but for completely different reasons than Hunter Moore and IsAnyoneUp.com. Deutch, Isaac and Dylan O’Brien are fantastic in this sharp social satire.
Finally, the future? Joe Hunting explores the social interactions of virtual reality in his debut feature, the boundary-pushing documentary “We Met in Virtual Reality,” which played at the 2022 Sundance and True/False film festivals, and premieres on HBO Max Wednesday. Hunting began filming the world of VRChat at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when so much of our interaction moved online. “We Met in Virtual Reality,” which utilizes interviews and observational footage taken entirely from the virtual reality space, explores the ways in which people are empowered to play with their identities and connect across the globe in a space that can be fundamentally liberating. It’s fascinating and tender look at this unique mode of human connection.
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