Fluid mechanics is a discipline of physics that studies the behavior of fluids in determined mediums, the name sounded very strange and poetic to me: for me, there was something of the order of oxymoron in putting together “mechanics” – which has something calculable, predictable, rigid – with “fluids” – which had connotations of unpredictability, volatility. When I was looking for a title for the film, it seemed to me that the concept of “fluid mechanics” nicely condensed the contradiction in computational capitalism when it insists on trying to predict and measure our effects and emotions, which are unpredictable, through algorithmic methods. On another hand, the film is full of visual metaphors of water and flooding, which also fits perfectly the title.

I think that it can be applied to any Western capitalist culture, not only to the United States, although perhaps the situation there is more extreme due to the fragility of its welfare state and the lack of social policies. We live in societies in which the value of the life of many people is unfortunately undervalued, mistreated, and often measured in relation to factors such as the social class of belonging, the colour of the skin, or nationality. It seems to me that the Anathematic Anarchist is right in his letter when he says that the system is partly responsi- ble for our pain and suffering. We have built and we live within extremely unjust and cruel socio-economic systems. What I was interested in was to understand how in that analysis the incels and I could agree, despite all our ideological differences.

The most important thing for me was to change the prism through which I saw those men who hate women. Before being really interested in them, I knew them superficially and obviously saw them as my political enemies, with a lot of contempt. During the research I understood that incels are also victims of patriarchy and, without justifying their hate speeches or their violent acts in any way, I found it more interesting to try to understand what sociocultural and economic factors explain the existence of that community. For example, the link between dating apps and incels is very clear when you get into the community, and I really believe that these new digital modalities of the sex-affective encounter have had some responsibility in the increase of the male population that feels affected by sexual misery and social isolation.

This is precisely what I mean: dating apps like Tinder have combined Big Data and digital computing with an intrinsically human experience like the rejection we can feel from others sometimes. This has produced the birth of a new feeling, a kind of massive feeling of rejection by a bunch of strangers you know don’t like you for X reason. I find this feeling, or for example the invisibility of certain profiles that do not pay the application subscription, very worrying. It can destroy the morale of an individual, and mark them with a very deep narcissistic wound. Such wounds produce psychological pain but can also be transformed into aggressiveness, violence, need for self-affirmation, and self-determination… Very prev- alent attitudes in the incel culture. I believe that many of these private companies should be more regulated because of the gigantic impact they have on our mental health and our identity constructions.