Feels Good Man

Growing up with the internet culture can be a fascinating experience depending on whether you have been born before its creation, at the start of its beginnings, or somewhere in the point where it can catapult anyone into different social media circles. It can mold people either being private about their postings with what they feel is necessary or make them unapologetically public with all of their popular/unpopular views. While the predictable nature of toxicity from that area is expected, how far it can affect the public, on the other hand, is a bizarre thing to witness. This brings us to the documentary, Feels Good Man, which chronicles a well-known meme and its history. This feature had debuted at the Sundance film festival and I had heard about it from a movie reviewer content creator on YouTube who had been attending these events virtually (in this case, Adam Johnson from YourMovieSucks.org). After watching it as an Amazon rental, Feels Good Man impressed with both the interesting content and its modern relevance. 

What's it about? This documentary chronicles two aspects concerning the famous meme Pepe the Frog: The artist Mark Furies creation of it along with the impact on his life since its public release and the hijacking manipulation of it behind the scenes on the internet. The former arc is a lot more simple to digest compared to the latter since the journey has straightforward points but the artist himself is an interesting guy to learn about here. Watching how it starts as something small for him where he didn't think much of the online world at its starting stages before it rocketed out of control to where things ended for him. The latter arc, on the other hand, has a complex history to unpack but manages to knock it out of the park with the important factors that twisted the meaning of this meme. The trip down that memory lane (for those who lived long enough to see it happen growing up) is a fascinating but honest view on disturbing cruelty that social media landscape is capable of both of the old times and our modern age. Just revisiting factors such as 4chan, starting days of celebrities using that media, and terms such as "normies"  adds some great value, especially to those who didn't understand that kind of language or references.

Overall Consensus:  Feels Good Man shines as a relevant fascinating documentary on a journey with an interesting yet familiar history, an engaging subject matter, and an execution of great editing as well as solid pacing. ⭑⭑⭑⭑1/4 Runtime: 1 hour 30 minutes R

Reasons to watch it: You are aware of Pepe the Frog and are curious about its background surrounding its creation as well as the artist himself. You want to take a trip to the past with internet message boards (and see if you recognize some of their slang). You enjoy documentaries with modern day aspects you can connect with. 

 

Reasons to avoid it: You aren't a fan of documentaries in general. You would prefer not to look back on the growing toxicity of an online group in the past.