r/TrueAnon

All the dorks in the US soccer sub talking about how awesome he is, never thought I’d see the day. Damn it’s easy

edit PSA if you don't know what I'm talking about this isn't for you. you don't have to read further or have an opinion on what you don't understand.

And like never asking her any questions about the iconosphere or really anything else.

Idk man I'm losing my mind. It's not like I assume any beautiful and famous woman must be a dumbass, but for it to be her of all people to bump into Mike in some a list hotel and recognize his voice and know a lot about the kinds of niche subjects I happen to be interested is definitely enough high spectacle shenanigans as to have my brain constructing whole universes of bespoke conspiracy theories...

Also, if you're reading this Sid, (why not it's less insane than meeting my favourite podcaster in a swanky hotel) GO BACK ON THE POD AND FORCE THAT MENTAL MEANDERER TO HAVE AN ACTUAL CONVERSATION ABOUT THE ICONOSPHERE, WHAT THE FUCK!!

but fr I'm sure her manager will be furious with her for risking her status as saviour of the white race, if indeed it's not all some insane pynchonesque ploy to transition from the dying magasphere now that he has lost the mandate of heaven...

SHITS CRAZY.

He is a plumber. You would think he's a hard working blue collar worker. A comrade. But he isn't. He escapes death by hoarding wealth. What's his goal? To bang the bougiest broad in the kingdom. He has no compassion. Murders and jumps and swims his way to the castle. And it's not even clear if she wants to be "saved".

What games have better leftist values? The first one that comes to mind from my childhood is FFVII. A soldier with fucked up schizo memory joins an anticapitalist eco terrorist organization and bombs a mako reactor.

I'm doing a series of posts about male loneliness, porn, and AI using Hollywood movies from the past 20 years as a framing device. A few days ago I did a write up about 2007's Lars and the Real Girl and today I'm looking at 2013's Don Jon.

Don Jon is I guess you'd say a romantic comedy starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Brie Larson, and Tony Danza. It was written and directed by Gordon-Levitt, cost about $5 million to make and made back about $40 million so not too bad. Everybody made their money back but they're not gonna make a Don Jon 2. The basic concept of the movie is what if a Jersey Shore cast member was addicted to pornography but like in a comical way, which was not enough to get me to buy a ticket when it came out but I guess I can see the appeal.

I was a little nervous when I was getting ready to do the review because I hadn't actually seen the movie. I knew I wanted to talk about porn, but I wasn't sure that Don Jon would have anything to say about male loneliness, which absent that angle I was worried I wouldn't actually have anything to say about it, but having now watched it there's a ton of stuff to dig into.

With Lars and the Real Girl the initial point of interest for me was that with 2026 eyes Ryan Gosling's character looks a lot like an incel on paper, even though the modern conception of an incel didn't exist in 2007. The filmmakers saw something on the horizon but they couldn't really identify it, and as a result they made a movie about a sweet, sad guy who entered into a delusional relationship with a sex doll because he was so lonely and socially isolated, and the people who watched found it to be pretty endearing. When Joseph Gordon-Levitt made Don Jon there was absolutely no confusion as to what kind of guy his character was.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character in Don Jon is a gooner. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The movie opens up with JGL doing a monologue about how much he loves internet porn. He spends hours and hours watching internet porn, he jerks off multiple times a day, he likes porn better than sex, it's his escape from reality. The word gooner may not have existed in 2013, but no man or woman living can debate that that's what JGL's character is. He is not sweet or sad or lonely or misunderstood, he is a horny ass dude who loves jerking off to internet porn. That's the first thing the movie tells you about him.

JGL's secondary personality traits don't really sweeten the deal too much. He's from New Jersey, he combs his hair like an asshole, wears skin tight shirts and bedazzled jeans, he's obsessed with working out, he owns a vintage muscle car that he drives like an absolute prick, and him and his boys are out at the club every night chasing women. His best friend is played by Rob Brown (and pause on that, because there is no fucking way this character's best friend is a black guy) and both of them constantly mog all over the third friend for being short. They objectify women in that Hollywood way where it's clear that they're pigs but like they never call women bitches or sluts or even ugly. In fact, the concept of ugly people does not exist in this movie. JGL never goes home alone. Every time he goes out he seduces the hottest girl in the club, takes her back to his place, has shitty jackhammer sex (not editorializing, they show it and that's how he fucks) and once the girl falls asleep he sneaks out of bed to jack off to internet porn in the other room, and then he never calls the girl again.

The only thing that JGL has in common with Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl is that they're both outwardly religious and they love their families. Every Sunday JGL goes to Catholic mass, confesses how many times he had sex out of wedlock that week and how many times he masturbated, and goes to family dinner with his dad (Tony Danza in full EYYYY OHHHH I'M TRYNA WATCH DA GAME mode, perfect casting but if you're writing a script where Tony Danza is perfect casting you're not making Citizen Kane), his mom who desperately wants him to settle down with a nice girl and give her some grandkids, and his sister Brie Larson who never talks and just stares at her phone the whole time. Also off the religious tip when JGL is working out at the gym he's saying the Lord's Prayer and Hail Marys and whatnot.

One night JGL is out at the club and he spots Scarlett Johansson, and if you're trying to figure out how this movie made $40 million it's because people saw 2013 Scarlett Johansson in the movie trailer. JGL has to have her so he makes his move. They dry hump on the dance floor and JGL tries to take her home but she doesn't do one night stands. The next day he tracks her down on Facebook and she agrees to go on a date. They go out to dinner, but she still won't have sex. After the dates are over JGL walks Scarlett Johansson to her door and they make out in the hallway until JGL busts in his True Religion jeans. Scarlett tells him that she won't give it up until they meet each others family and he goes back to night school. He agrees.

They keep dating, He takes her to movies (her liking romance movies is a major plot point), he enrolls in night school, they meet each other's friends. The whole time they're out together JGL is thinking of porn. Every pair of pants he owns is ruined from dry humping. He's telling everyone that this thing is real, it's true love, she's the one. He takes her to family dinner. JGL's mom and dad love her on sight. They both tell him he's got to lock it down. After dinner Scarlett finally agrees to go home with him. He takes her back to his place, he rails her, and after she falls asleep he gets up and goes into the next room to watch porn on his laptop. Scarlett walks in on him and loses her shit. She's outraged to find out he watches porn, she tells him he's disgusting. He says he doesn't watch porn, he doesn't even jerk off, his friend sent him the link as a joke. She gives him a second chance.

JGL keeps watching porn on the sly. Scarlett is always around JGL's house so he starts watching porn on his phone in the car. He's still going to night classes and one day on the way into class he walks by Julianne Moore, who's one of his classmates, sobbing uncontrollably in the vestibule. It's awkward. Now JGL is watching porn on his phone in class. After class Julianne Moore comes over to him to apologize for making him uncomfortable and after apologizing is like hey, what's up with you watching porn on your phone? He denies it and she's like whatever.

The next time JGL goes to class Julianne Moore is waiting for him and she gives him a DVD of 70s Euro porn as a form of apology and tells him that it's better than the shit she saw him watching on his phone. Now I want to pause on this because it's the only scene I consider to be weird in an otherwise pretty straightforward movie. Hear me out on this: in real life Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a former child star. He grew up in Hollywood. To the best of my knowledge he's never talked about being abused. I have zero proof of any of this but I promise you that at some point when he was a kid an adult showed him some pornography. I'll talk more about it in a minute but JGL is working some shit out with this movie and being groomed by an older adult was a formative experience for him and that's why this scene was in here.

JGL goes home and Scarlett Johansson is waiting for him. She's pissed. She looked at his laptop and he doesn't use incognito mode so she saw the proof that he's a gooner. She breaks up with him and JGL spirals. He stops going to class, he stops spending time with his boys, he stops going to the gym, and he starts masturbating crazy style. He doesn't tell his family that him and Scarlett Johansson broke up They show a montage of him not leaving the house and jerking off 11 times in one day, which is a new personal record for him. He has a road rage incident and busts out some guy's car window with his fist. One day JGL is at home jerking and Rob Brown comes by to check on him because he's worried, JGL tells him everything is fine but Rob is like man, get your shit together, at least go back to class and get your credit.

JGL goes back to class. He runs into Julianne Moore and she's like hey, where have you been and he's like hey let me talk to you real quick and he immediately takes Julianne Moore back to her car and rails her. They're fuck buddies now. After a while she's like hey what's going on with you? JGL is like my girl broke up with me. She's like what happened and he says she caught me watching porn. She's like that's why she broke up with you? JGL is like well she caught me once and I swore I wouldn't do it again but then she caught me again. Julianne Moore is like respectfully dude you're watching too much porn, it's messing with your head and to be honest you're not fucking me right. Just do yourself a favor and for a week just jerk off regular style with no porn.

JGL tries to jerk off regular style and finds out he can't get hard without porn. He goes back to Julianne Moore and is like hey, you were right. She's like tell you what, come back to my place and I'll teach you how to fuck regular style. He's like bet. They go back to her place and she draws up a hot bath for him. She goes to get him a towel but she breaks down crying. JGL eventually comes out to check on her and is like hey, how come you keep breaking down like this? She's like actually my husband and my kid died like a year ago. JGL is like oh shit, what happened, and she's like it was a fucked up car accident and now they're both dead. He's like oh my god I'm so sorry and Julianne Moore is like I'm just really really lonely and I need some kind of human connection. Then JGL and Julianne Moore have loving, intimate sex and it's actually really good acting by both of them, very good scene.

The morning after JGL is a changed man. He finally stops jerking off to internet porn. He combs his hair different. He doesn't drive like an asshole any more, not because Julianne Moore asked him to change but because he cares about her. He finally tells his mom and dad that him and Scarlett Johansen broke up. They're both devastated but for the first time in the entire movie his sister Brie Larson speaks and says I actually never liked her, she didn't actually care about JGL, she just liked him because she could push him around. (As an aside having Brie Larson's character pull a Silent Bob and not speaking until she drops a truth bomb in the final act of the film is a dead giveaway that this movie was not written by a professional screenwriter.) JGL meets up with Scarlett Johansson and apologizes. She's like I don't forgive you and I won't take you back and in a real passive aggressive way JGL is like we both had our issues and then they go their separate ways. The movie ends with JGL still being fuck buddies and him hanging out with his friends but now he's not trying to fuck anything with a pulse.

I still have a lot to say about this movie.

For one Joseph Gordon-Levitt is 100% an actual real life gooner. They always say to write what you know and in 2013 JGL had a whole lot of crystal clear insights into the mind of a chronic masturbator. This movie is 50% JGL working shit out and 50% wish fulfillment. There were a lot of things I appreciate about this movie but when you talk about vanity projects it's hard to beat starring in a movie you wrote about a cool guy who loves to masturbate where a good portion of the movie involves you grinding on Scarlett Johansson and the rest is Julianne Moore aka Amber Waves from Boogie Nights changing you from a boy to a man. No way is that casting a coincidence.

Speaking of the auteur's vision JGL clearly had somebody in mind when he was creating Scarlet Johansson's character and it's somebody that he's harboring a lot of bitterness towards. Like this is a remarkably uncharitable portrayal of a woman who wants her boyfriend to stop gooning, go back to school, and introduce her to his friends and family. There's also a whole subplot where Scarlett Johansson is like I can't believe you love porn so much and JGL is like how is it any different from you loving romance movies, and it seems like JGL thinks he's actually making a good point and bro you are not

I was worried this movie was going to be odd man out in a series of posts about male loneliness but it really wasn't. JGL's character wasn't lonely in the way way that Ryan Gosling was in Lars and the Real Girl but by the end of the movie it's clear that JGL was living a pretty empty life. Because JGL isn't a professional writer the story is pretty ham handed. The character of Don Jon chases women because he wants to please his mother and show his father that he's a real man. They basically spell that out. The character explicitly states that he goons to lose himself. He's trying to escape from reality. His relationship with Scarlett Johannsen is explicitly masturbatory. She's the hottest woman he's ever met and during their courtship he's cumming in his pants. She also isn't a real person to JGL in the same way that Julianne Moore is. She's a fantasy object. I was tough on Lars and the Real Girl for being unrealistic but frankly the third act of Don Jon where he stops gooning and learns to respect women is just as phony.

I probably have some other points to make but I can't think of them right now and I'm probably coming up on max characters for a post. Next up I'm going to review Her starring Joaquin Phoenix, which also is from 2013. I haven't seen it yet but I'm actually very curious as to what I'm going to think about it. I might get the review up on Thursday but more likely it'll be Friday and after that it'll be Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, which the more I think about it the more I suspect I'll have to break that up into two posts, which I really don't want to because Blade Runner doesn't fit into my thesis. Thanks to anybody who read all this. I'd love to hear your thoughts