A Documentary For Our Time: ‘The American Meme’ Asks the Cost of Instagram Fame

Movies of this sort have become en vogue over the past year with titles like Eighth Grade and Viral Beauty. These films tackle the same phenomenon from different angles, all ultimately questioning the impact of this grand social experiment of new media and suggesting — or reflecting — what has come as result. Enter The American Meme, the new Netflix documentary by director Bert Marcus, that takes the more direct angle of an interview-based observational presentation of social media culture. It works by featuring four social media stars of past and present (with a spattering of side guests in between, social media stars like DJ Khaled that the film would be remiss not to include, if available) and follow their rises and falls. They serve as character studies in what one of the film’s guests calls a grand experiment, that calls into question the type of people attracted to social media stardom, what’s needed to sustain it, and, ultimately, what might be the personal and societal side effects of this new brand of celebrity. The main four characters are public figures of internet fame ranging from the A-list to D-levels. You might separate them and their spatter of other interviewees into 3 categories: those who understand the game of public manipulation and do it willingly; those who understand the game of public manipulation and do it with a sense of shame or maintenance, a machine they were caught in until it became too lucrative to leave; and those who play the game well bu…