Part I: It Came From Something Awful Book Review
Y'all, it's been far too long since I've taken to the keyboard. While I have pages of scribbled notes and ideas to flush out, I just finished reading It Came From Something Awful by Dale Beran and feel compelled to share some reactions and evolving thinking on the ideas explored in the book.
I'd venture to say Nate wasn't exaggerating when he pressed the urgency of grabbing a copy in a recent Takes & Typos newsletter “A Syllabus for the Manosphere”. This might be the most important book of the last ten years (up there with Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny). I wish folks were reading this book with the obsessiveness in which they’re consuming The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. It does a far better, fact-based job of explaining what's happening with social media, echo chambers and the identity crisis facing young people today. It doesn't pander to over-anxious parents or those who want to blame phones and social media for everything. However, it’s less palatable, facing an ugly, gross truth about the pursuit of belonging, validity and self-worth in online spaces.
Beran’s writing is precise and methodical, guiding readers through a dense web of historical and cultural currents. While the book tackles many urgent questions about toxic online spaces, I want to highlight a few threads that struck a personal chord—shaped by my time in online forums, the books I’ve read, my teaching, and ongoing conversations about toxic masculinity and the manosphere.
Thread 1: Yes, our current version of fascism meets white supremacy is real. The step by step walk down history lane in this book is 🇮🇹🧑🍳💋. At first glance you might think linking 4chan to 8kun to Charlottesville to the Trump administration is hyperbolic until you read this book. While depressing, you can't ignore the facts. There is a clear through line, a cause and effect sequence of events that bring us to where we are now. I think we all want to believe that key historical and cultural events are not connected to each other, but Beran forces us to face reality.
Thread 2: Consumerism, capitalism and misogyny are bedfellows.
Y'all have probably read Naomi Klein's No Logo (cited frequently in this book) and maybe some other arguments about manufactured masculinity and femininity and the evolutionary ideal that attraction, identity, and social validity come from economic power. The way Beran unpacks this complex dynamic, though, is really remarkable.
The idea that toxic masculinity and misogyny sell isn’t new, but I don’t think it’s analyzed or critiqued enough in public spaces. I immediately thought of Rogan, Tate, and so many other misogynists fomenting bitterness and promoting their men’s rights nonsense . When I read this section of the book, I was reminded of the PBS documentary Merchants of Cool. I used this documentary in my classroom to help students explore the relationship between consumerism and dissent, teaching them to be more critical about the ways in which marketers are manufacturing what it means to be cool in order to make money off of their angst or rejection of “normal.” Today, at the crossroads of discontentment, male fragility, and misogyny, big business sits waiting to take your hard earned cash, not giving one iota about who is hurt or marginalized in the process. Corporations don’t care if we bicker about what is/isn’t true about PizzaGate or whether or not women are inferior to men and should be subservient to their every whim and need. They care about lining their pockets.
Thread 3: We long for human connection & belonging even if it comes at a cost.
At our core, we want to be part of something–be it a small group of friends, a club of weirdos who take a spin class at 5am, or a band of unathletic people playing indoor soccer on a Sunday night (shout out to my teammates on Icepak FC). Since the term “identity politics” was created in 1973 and jumped into mainstream discourse in the 80, folks have wrestled with the benefits or limitations of intellectual debate around identity. To be clear, some folks build their entire identity on the deconstruction and rejection of identity politics.
I knew that 4chan, 8kun and similar sites thrived on creating a collective identity by rejecting the concept of identity, but I didn’t really really understand the extent of it until this book. Two examples from the book–the LGBT board and another board I can’t remember the name of right now. In these spaces, participants posted messages that revealed a deep sense of self-loathing and disenfranchisement. On these boards, others echoed those sentiments and, through the rejection of their identity, found belonging and community. Another example is when folks, struggling with mental health and depression shared suicide ideation, eventually saying goodbye to the community and taking their lives. Those stories really break my heart and yet I can’t help thinking about the way in which those people experienced human connection.
Just after I read this book, Nate and I watched Dear Kelly in which Andrew Callaghan follows the story of an older gentleman he meets at a “White Lives Matter” rally. In that documentary, Callaghan postulates how people join extremist/far right movements because they want security, significance, and connection, confirming the human desire for belonging.
To Be Continued…