Moby couldn’t just be Moby, a single middle-aged man with poor dating instincts.
Moby became all "rich white” men.
Moby became the predatory "older men" sleazing after “a teenager barely out of high school” (both parties were adults past the age of consent)
Moby became all the “beta males” and “nice guys” – those who hide their carnal desires behind a friendly persona.
Finally, Moby became “the patriarchy,” or just“men.”
I am sure that all of the above authors – predominantly women, and a few “allies” of whom Moby used to be one – think they know their own Moby, and yes, he does represent a certain recognizable model of male behaviour.
But using him to attack a whole class of people – based on race or gender – is pure prejudice.
And while these authors think they are performing some deep socio-cultural analysis, what they are actually doing is using a single anecdote to say “look at men, aren’t they bastards/creeps/idiots” leveraging it as self-vindication for their own unsuccessful brushes with men.
After all, among the dozens of think pieces, there isn’t one deeply analysing why fame and wealth gives this apparently unattractive individual the cachet for his cornucopia of conquests, or why Western culture teaches men that acting like Moby – since he is, apparently, so representative – is the way to a woman’s heart.
In fact, what the episode is most reminiscent of is school gossip – where some socially-maladjusted nerd is picked as the scapegoat, and the 'Mean Girls' point and laugh. As in many recent public eviscerations, there is much self-congratulatory virtuousness, but no empathy, and one assumes that all of the authors piling in have never acted like fools in relationships, because that would make them hypocrites.
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