“The Boys” and my Eye Twitch

I couldn’t remember, for the life of me why “The Boys” really hit a nerve, when I watched it last.

Sure, the flying sheep gave me big eye rolls, I thought “really”? When we pulled out a steam room human centipede salad toss, and you can tell they were pulling out all the stops. Yet, I kept watching because I was really into the character development, and honestly I wanted to see what was going to happen to Homelander. However, I had decided in my brain that the show already ended. I was shocked to see another season.

My wifey and I re-engaged. I was a huge stoner and drinker last time I watched it, and my recollection wasn’t great so we thought we would start fresh and watch all five seasons. Watching it again, I think my brain was working to protect itself.

We are in the middle of the 4th Season now, and I am realizing why this show hit such a deep nerve. I am almost wondering if it helped to spin me out regarding my job, my love of history, current events, and and my love/hate relationship with understanding humans AS THEY ARE and not through the myopic lens we try to paint ourselves.

Over the last few years I have generated an unhealthy obsession with propaganda, scapegoating, outrage farming and media manipulation. I’ve become disgusted with how easily people are encouraged to see each other as enemies. Knowing that this is by design drives that disgust deeper. There are scads of other humans who see these patterns as compulsively as I do, taking on the mantle of Cassandra and feeling helpless. It’s hard to gauge whether the rest of the humans around don’t see the dangers of this behavior or don’t WANT TO. Our brains love simplicity after all.

This season highlights manufactured outrage, media ecosystems profiting from division, personality cults, performative cruelty, and authoritarian traits thinly veiled as entertainment. It underlines the real issue of ordinary folks being ok with terrible behavior as long as it is coming from their chosen monsters, and being spectators instead of participating in what’s right.

My stomach feels nauseated as I write this. The way that the show presents these themes right in your face instead of abstract concepts makes me feel seen and sick all at the same time. The shows says 1) This is easy! 2) Look how many people just go with it! 3) Shoot, they might actually enjoy this! That’s the part that feels way too real, and I think that’s the part that broke my heart the first time I watched it.

I know now that it’s not just the misinformation/disinformation that bothers me, it’s more than that. I work in Digital Marketing, and social media, so I am constatly immersed in content and there isn’t always a way to turn away. What gets me is watching Propaganda, and specifically “othering” work on my fellow US Citizens. Watching people happy to get lost in the sauce and forget our humanity. But, I am working on forgiving people for believing lies they are told. There’s a lot of money put into it, maybe I should just congratulate people for their strategy working? No, no, that’s not it.

I get the message from people to “look away” often. In fact someone I don’t know commented over and over on my post, advising me to just “Protect my energy” and ignore the trolls and negativity. I just don’t have that luxury, or the means to detach from my core values of human rights and opening my eyes. But I am not going to argue with a stranger online who likely is in their witchy discovery phase. Good for him.

People being awful to each other will always bother me. I need to face the fact that my broken heart about this won’t improve anything, and I need to choose what hill I want to die on. I just think it’s a worthy hill, you know?

I want to finish the show, but I am going back into it understanding that the reason it affected me so hard previously. It’s subject matter is about people becoming more cruel, more tribal, and more detached from reality all while carrying the certainly that they know what’s right. And certainty is intoxicating.

My core values are curiosity, media literacy, empathy, justice, and understanding people rather than dehumanizing them. So this show gets me because it isn’t feeling like satire any longer. It’s feeling like a documentary the longer I watch it. Like a documentary about the fact that humans are not inherently evil, but can fall victim to manipulation, dangerous groupthink, and be made numb by corrupt power without even realizing. All of this while being filed down the hallway of a slaughter room by harmful systems designed to protect themselves. Trying not to notice that people enjoy cruelty when given full permission is a hard pill to swallow. I hate that I want to understand why this happens. It plagues me.

I don’t want to give up and decide the machine is too big, and people are more likely to cheer on nonsense than think clearly. I know we are meant for more than this. We have created too much beauty to give up on each other. We have so much more we can create. I truly believe this. If that makes me naive, I am ok with that. Could this be the discomfort as we fall into an era of enlightenment? I am going to take a clue from my helpful online mansplainer and truly believe that’s where we are headed.