Watched Fight Club, thought about it, and realized why it was such an extremely influential, yet misguided film for men in my generation.

No spoilers--a breakdown of key elements which made the movie so relatable for introverts filled with unaddressed boiling rage.

THREAD.

First time I saw it in 1999, the theater was empty, I was with two good friends, had smoked a fat blunt, and was expecting a Rocky-esque movie about fighting…that was the angle of its previews/marketing back then (pre-internet era).

What came on screen blew me away.

It was directed in a style which had never been seen before, but copied endless times since…opening sequence starting in synapses of the id at the microscopic level, cool techno music, the camera pans out to reality--a tortured and confused young man with a gun in his mouth.

It was a movie that made you feel smart watching it--from the breakdown of how to build bombs from household products, existential philosophy, becoming off the grid and self-sufficient, addressing the confusion and despair of males thrust into pervasive 1990s consumerism.

The story is based on the suppressed/unrealized rage of men who feel psychologically neutered and balless, trained to consume and think like women, who have been raised by women, and educated in a feminized system--their deep emotional needs smothered by a soft society.

Their Fathers have abandoned them to this society, and an emotionally detached/absent Father can only mean that HE DOESN'T LIKE YOU.

And Fathers in the West are representative of God.

Therefore God has abandoned you...now what?

This was the first time I had ever seen these issues addressed by mainstream, instead of being hidden in subcultures or esoteric literature--there they were--shiny, polished, and slick on the big screen…it felt like we were finally being HEARD.

Jack only begins to feel and cry for the first time at a support group for men who have lost their testicles to cancer—once he expresses the sadness and feels HEARD for the first time, he begins to feel alive again.

*another of Jacks weaknesses is his fear of rejection*

Jack is a very typical introverted beta—passive aggressive, afraid to take what he wants, has no capacity to see deeper meaning because of his lack of self-awareness.

He's the product of following the directions of what a 'normal' successful modern man is supposed to be.

Tyler is a fully realized Sigma—he does what he wants, is a sexgod, follows through on his ideas, has overcome fear, can express himself exactly as he means to—and using the Sigma talent of perception, he can see things for exactly what they are.

Most importantly, he is FREE.

The Fight Club they form is a testing ground for overcoming fear and becoming aware to why men feel such malaise in modern society. After awareness everything in the real world is a means to an end—the end being part of a mission which will change the world.

The clubs are underground, in dirty basements of dive bars, males only, beating the shit out of one another with smiles…EXACTLY like 90s punk/hardcore scene. We’d pilgrimage to go to shows with 100 guys moshing to violent music so loud it made your ears hurt.

And we loved it.

The film addresses the problem with modernity and IMMATURE masculinity…if you want to go back to a primal way of living, everything must collapse—there would have to be total destruction of the system…which is tempting to fantasize about but unrealistic.

Jack mentions he is a “30 year old boy”, because he never had a place to mature...this is the demographic the film is aimed at and why it appealed to me so much as a thinking, aggressive teenager.

You want to burn the entire world down when you don't understand yourself.

What happens when immature masculine war energy is channeled?

The film shows how it attracts lost souls...who then become domestic terrorists, blind followers wearing masks, with no personal identity…exactly like Antifa has risen up in the past few years.