Titled after a 2012 Rolling Stone article that profiled the notorious internet troll Hunter Moore, Netflix’s three-part miniseries “The Most Hated Man on the Internet” is, surprisingly, not a hyperbolic statement. Recounting the rise and fall of Moore’s infamous IsAnyoneUp.com — a user-submitted revenge porn website that linked to social media accounts, doxxing people in the process — the closest corollary is, perhaps, Netflix’s own 2019 doc series “Don’t F**k with Cats.” Like that series (shares producers here), ‘Most Hated Man’ narrows in on how online culture spills out into the real world, often with malicious intent.
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While mainly foregrounding the salacious train-wreck that was Moore’s outsized personality, the series is also a prime example of the type of true crime doc that Netflix’s algorithm churns out on a near weekly basis at this point. Engrossing, bingeable, and ultimately a bit superficial, there are infinitely worse ways to spend your time than ‘Most Hated Man, ’ which might sound like faint praise, but really suggests that Netflix — or, more specifically, Raw TV (who produced this, ‘Cats,’ and “The Tinder Swindler”) — have perfected the surface-level sheen of this particular documentary mode. While watching, you’ll be caught up in the sheer batshit twists that come along rapid fire, even if you might struggle to remember what the doc was actually about in three months’ time.
Even though the series is titled after Moore’s unabashed terribleness, it really is about Charlotte Laws. An author and activist best known for her Hollywood party-crashing in the ’80s, Laws became the focal point for the doc through her daughter Kayla. After Kayla’s nude pictures are posted on Moore’s website, Charlotte takes it upon herself to try and have them removed. Moore, however, refuses — trolling Charlotte, Kayla, and anyone else that reaches out to him for help. Purposely flaunting his inconsideration on Twitter, podcasts, and interviews, he very quickly makes an enemy of Charlotte, Kayla, and Kayla’s droll (and very British) lawyer stepfather Charles. Eventually realizing that Kayla never sent her private photos to anyone, Charlotte begins a years-long quest to essentially destroy Moore, enlisting the FBI with the belief that Kayla’s pictures, among others, were hacked and not user-submitted as Moore claimed.
In contextualizing Laws’ crusade, director Rob Miller’s series also features interviews with others whose photos were posted and Moore’s followers, associates, and girlfriend. The first episode mainly narrows in on the victims of Moore’s website, showcasing the trauma associated with their photos and names being leaked. By the second episode, however, Miller’s central conflict comes into stark view as Charlotte launches an all-out war against Moore. Moore, in retaliation, tries to weaponize his massive online fanbase against Charlotte. From there, it’s not surprising to say that Moore’s small-time celebrity begins to wane by episode three as the lawsuits pile up, his cash runs dry, and the public turns against him with shocking speed — he does himself no favors by appearing on Anderson Cooper’s short-lived talk show.
By making the conflict between Laws and Moore the central drive of the series, ‘Most Hated Man’ succeeds mainly in showcasing just how terrible Moore was and how determined Laws could be. Charlotte’s scorched earth approach to taking down Moore is both fascinating and infinitely watchable. But, by flattening the narrative to a simple narrative of good versus evil, the implications of Moore’s behavior go largely unexplored. He was someone who knew how to use his small notoriety to drum up an exceedingly large online fan base to harass Charlotte and Kayla, which reeks of present-day cyberbullying and the ability of some to tap into online rage for targeted harassment that often bleeds into real life.
“The Most Hated Man on the Internet” isn’t interested in drawing these parallels, and perhaps, it’s an unfair criticism to lobby at a series that was programmatically designed to be binged on a Friday night with an open bottle of pinot noir close by. But, Hunter Moore’s bottomless ability to be awful is treated as a spectacle and not as a symptom of online culture that aggressively rewards anonymization, unfettered bullying, and groupthink.
If Miller’s series never really dives into the machinations that created and rewarded Moore, it nevertheless wisely keeps its camera on Charlotte. Her ability as a storyteller, and go-for-broke determination to destroy Moore, guides the three-hour runtime, creating a thriller-like pacing as the Laws’ family throws everything imaginable to have the images, website, and eventually Moore himself taken down. While there’s a lingering sense that Moore is just one of many, it still is a rewarding experience to watch such a disgusting man get his comeuppance. [B-]