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An interesting disclaimer at the beginning of “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” reveals that all footage within the series to follow of Is Anyone Up? is fake/recreated, which was a smart move from the creators to avoid repeating exploitation. Raw TV, the creators of Netflix hits “Don’t F**k with Cats” and “The Tinder Swindler,” also smartly center the real heroes of this tale early on by introducing viewers to Charlotte and Kayla Laws from the very beginning. Kayla tells of taking a topless photo and emailing it to herself because her phone storage was full. Before she knew it, the photo was on Moore’s site. She never emailed it to anyone else. She gave no one permission to post it. Not only was the post an invasion of privacy but Kayla suspected, correctly, that it was the product of hacking. Charlotte began an intense investigation, contacting dozens of women who had also been hacked. Facing threats from Moore and his acolytes, Laws had all the evidence that the FBI needed when they came knocking.
Is Anyone Up? launched in 2010 and had fallen apart to a degree that it was sold to the owner of an anti-bullying website—himself a fascinating interview subject in this series, having tried to take Moore down from within—only 16 months later in early 2012. Moore would plead guilty to identity theft and other charges in 2015 and serve less than two years behind bars. And that’s it. In the grand scheme of the internet, the most hated man on the internet burned out quickly. And that’s the core of the flaw of Rob Miller’s docuseries—a failure to place what Moore did in the larger context of what came before and, more importantly, what came after. The truth is that there are other Hunter Moores out there right now and the approach of his fanbase, who were enabled by Moore to bully and threaten people, hasn’t dissipated online at all. Moore didn’t create online toxicity, he tapped into a vein that was already there. Where did it go now? How do we stop the next Moore before he starts?
And why did SO many people choose to follow the internet’s self-proclaimed Charles Manson? Miller interviews some of his former colleagues, including an attorney, girlfriend, and one of his viral stars, a woman known as ‘Butthole Girl’ for reasons I couldn’t possibly explain in a review. They all seem almost shell-shocked by their experiences, as if they escaped a cult. Maybe they don’t even know why they originally chose to stay. It feels like Miller intentionally, and understandably, picks the vilest interview clips with Moore, but it makes it hard to understand how he became the King of the Incels. How did everyone not see through him immediately?
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