‘OceanGate’ Documentary Dives Deep Into The Deception, Disregard That Led To Sub Implosion

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-16-at-3.07.08 PM-e1750105685967-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-16-at-3.07.08%5Cu202fPM-e1750105685967-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]OceanGate's Titan submersible suffered, by different means, a similar fate to the ship it was intended to explore.

Jason Whitlock: Tyler Perry’s ‘Straw’ is ‘demonic’



The number-one film currently streaming on Netflix is Tyler Perry’s latest movie, called "Straw," which follows a single mother who faces “a series of painful events.”

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock and BlazeTV contributor Shemeka Michelle didn’t love the film, but they do think it revealed something about Perry’s audience.

“Initially, I was very upset with Tyler Perry, simply because I thought, you know, his greatest fan base, which he himself has admitted is black women, I thought it would go completely over their heads,” Michelle tells Whitlock.

“Spoiler alert, for those who haven’t seen it,” she continues, “he waited until the very last minute of the movie to really show that this woman was suffering from psychosis, which is a mental disorder based on being completely detached from reality, which is what she was.”


“I got even angrier when I got online and it was proven that it completely went over women’s heads, and I kept seeing them say, ‘Oh, I am Janiah,’ who is the main character of the movie. ‘I stand with Janiah,’ you know, ‘Janiah is me, this is what single women go through every single day,’” she continues.

However, not all black single women are walking around suffering from psychosis.

“This is not what single women or single mothers go through every day,” Michelle says. “And then I had to say it’s not Tyler Perry’s fault that his main group of supporters are intellectual midgets.”

“I’m just trying to figure out where to stand with Tyler, because I thought he just could have done a better job, but I think it exposes the psychosis in black women, the detachment from reality, the hallucinations, the bad behavior, because so many of them were just applauding this,” she adds.

After watching the film, Whitlock had a similar realization.

“Corporate media, the movies, Netflix: They’re all just dumping poison. You’re a victim no matter what you do, no matter how crazy you are, no matter how violent you are, you’re only doing it because this system is racist and because you’ve been mistreated,” Whitlock says.

“And this is where you and I disagree,” he tells Michelle. “Tyler Perry is the source of a lot of the delusion that black women have. His movies are there to create delusion among black women, to create a false reality.”

“His movies are demonic, and his movies are there to make black women think they can do no wrong, they’re a victim of everything, the world is against them,” he adds.

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Elmo-Wielding Hakeem Jeffries Hits House Floor Attempting To Stop GOP From Scraping PBS Funding

'Legislation that targets Elmo and Big Bird'

Netflix’s chilling new surveillance tools are watching YOU



There was a time, for a brief second, when Netflix felt like a genuine escape. No ads. No distractions. Just a moment of sacred silence before the next episode auto-played. YouTube, on the other hand, has always been the neighborhood hawker, jamming five-second countdowns and “skip” buttons between cat videos and clips of Candace Owens speaking with Harvey Weinstein. But Netflix? It felt different. Intentional. Entirely neutral.

Not any more.

We now know that YouTube, owned by Google (the company that famously deleted “don’t be evil” from its code of conduct), uses AI to analyze your viewing habits in real time. The company calls it Peak Points, a system that detects when you’re most emotionally invested. Not so it can recommend better content. No, it’s so YouTube can slice in an ad. A perfectly timed disruption — just as you’re crying, laughing, leaning in. Not after. During. Essentially, it’s manipulation dressed as optimization.

Soon you won’t be choosing shows. You’ll be chosen by them.

If Google pulling this stunt doesn’t surprise you, that’s because nothing Google does should surprise you. What should worry you, however, is Netflix quietly following suit, disguised beneath its polished UI and faux prestige. To be clear, this isn’t a case of algorithms nudging you toward rom-coms or action thrillers. This is full-blown behavioral harvesting, run out of what’s called “clean rooms," a fancy way of saying they’re still collecting everything, just behind closed doors. They promise it’s private. But they still track your habits, reactions, pauses, and clicks. They’re not watching you, they insist. Just everything you do.

Netflix’s ad-supported tier allows third-party data brokers — including Experian (more on this notorious credit score company in a minute) — to build a psychological profile on you. Your stress tells them what to sell. Your loneliness tells them when to sell it. Your late-night binge-watching isn’t just a pattern; it’s a profile. You think you’re relaxing, when in reality, you're participating in a lab study that you never signed up for. Not knowingly, anyway.

Netflix used to sell impressions. Now, however, it's selling intimacy — your intimacy. It's the kind of advertising that doesn’t feel like advertising because it’s been trained to mimic your tone, your mood, your hesitation. Mid-roll ads now talk back. Pause screens offer prompts and tailored suggestions based not on your genre preferences but on your emotional volatility.

Even rewinds are a metric now. Linger too long on one scene? It wasn’t just memorable — it was actionable. Every flicker of interest, every second you lean forward, becomes a flag for monetization. A signal to tweak the pitch, change the lighting, or modify the ad delivery window.

You’re not the customer any more. You’re the subject.

This is much more than targeted marketing. It is emotional extraction. Netflix and YouTube are conditioning you and your loved ones. The goal is no longer passive consumption. It’s emotive response mining. Once satisfied with getting your eyeballs, they now want what’s behind them.

And here’s the most worrying part: Their devious plan is working.

RELATED: Netflix shares blunt message to woke employees offended by its content: 'Netflix may not be the best place for you'

ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP via Getty Images

You feel it when your pause screen suddenly knows you’re restless. You sense it when an ad knows you’re anxious. But you can’t prove it, because this isn’t surveillance as we used to know it. It’s ambient, implicit, and sanitized. Framed as “user experience.” But make no mistake, the living room has been compromised.

Netflix used to say, “See what’s next.” But increasingly, the real motto is “see what we see.” Every moment of attention, every flicker, flinch, or fast-forward, is a data point. Every glance is a gamble, wagered against your most vulnerable instincts.

Which brings us back to Experian. By partnering with the same data broker that helps banks deny loans, Netflix is making a statement. A troubling one.

Experian isn’t just some boring credit bureau. It’s one of the largest consumer data aggregators on the planet. It tracks what you buy, what you browse, where you live, how often you move, how many credit cards you have, what you watch, what you search, and what you owe. It then slices that information into little behavioral fragments to sell to advertisers, insurers, lenders, and now … to Netflix.

With 90 million U.S. users, Netflix has now integrated with a company whose entire business model revolves around profiling you — right down to your risk appetite, spending triggers, and likelihood of defaulting on a loan.

So while you're watching a true-crime documentary to unwind, Experian is in the back end, silently refining your “predictive segment.” Your favorite comedy special could now become a soft proxy for Experian to gauge how impulsive you are. That docuseries about minimalism? Great test case for your spending restraint. They don’t just want to know what you watch. They want to know what you’ll buy after. Or worse, what you’ll believe next.

RELATED: Upstart streamer Loor.TV is out to televise the conservative revolution

Loor.tv

The future isn’t one of generic binge-watching. It’s curated manipulation. Your partner just walked out? Cue romantic dramas … with targeted ads for dating apps. Watching a dystopian thriller? Insert ads for tech “solutions” to the very problems being dramatized.

Soon you won’t be choosing shows. You’ll be chosen by them. Not because they’re good, but because they serve a data-driven purpose. If you're a Netflix subscriber, perhaps it’s time to consider whether it still makes sense to continue funding the violation of your privacy.

Play It Again, Spotify

Countless luxuries have become such commonplaces that we thoughtlessly forget them. We can control the temperature of our rooms with the click of a button, get deliveries of fresh food right to our door, and we have basically every song ever made, from every corner of the world, at our fingertips, ready to blast out of a crisp sounding speaker whenever we fancy. Gone are the days of illegally streaming music through a virus-filled desktop, or, God forbid, going out and buying a CD.

The post Play It Again, Spotify appeared first on .

Narnia’s Rich Allegory Would Be Impossible With Meryl Streep As Aslan

The consideration of Meryl Streep for Aslan shows, at best, a misunderstanding of Narnia and, at worst, disdain for what it represents.

War on masculinity: Why ‘Adolescence’ contradicts its own message



Netflix’s new show “Adolescence” tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who murders one of his female classmates after being radicalized online by the likes of Andrew Tate — a man whose influence had an episode of the mini-series devoted to it.

“The best thing you can say about this is that it is addressing a legitimate concern that you and I frankly have about who is discipling this generation of young men,” Steve Deace of the “Steve Deace Show” comments.

“The best thing you can say is it has stumbled upon a legitimate concern our worldview has, but it lacks the worldview to adequately address it, and so therefore is entangled in its own idolatries that contradict its own message,” he continues.


The first glaring point Deace makes is that the show is “based on a story that undermines the premise of the entire show.”

The show is in part based on the real and recent story of a black teenager in Britain named Hassan who brutally murders a girl for no reason. However, the series blames white men, masculinity, and right-wing influencers for the violence instead of what clearly is a deeper problem.

“This reinforces our lament about how the church has largely left young men behind in the last generation,” Deace says, “They’re not getting the proper discipleship at home.”

And in order to get the proper discipleship, they need proper parenting.

“This is why we need good dads to help us exercise and navigate this tension, and this is why dads need to be connected to their heavenly father who experiences the exact same tension with them, right out of the womb,” Deace says. “Look at this beautiful creation of mine, I’ve counted all the hairs on his head, and yet, in the not too distant future, he’s going to look at me and say, ‘I think I could be like God, I’ll call my own shots, make my own decisions.’”

“We used to societally understand these things. These things used to get preached and taught from our pulpits by men worthy of such teachings and preachings,” he continues.

“If we don’t tackle these dilemmas amongst ourselves within a biblical worldview, the culture will do it for us.”

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From Netflix to reality: Glenn Beck connects HS track runner’s murder to Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’



On Wednesday, April 2, Frisco Memorial High School junior Austin Metcalf, 17, was fatally stabbed at a track meet by Frisco Centennial High School’s Karmelo Anthony, 17. According to police and eyewitness accounts, Metcalf confronted Anthony about sitting in a tent designated for Memorial athletes.

Anthony refused to leave and taunted Metcalf by saying, “Touch me and see what happens.” When Metcalf grabbed him to force him out, Anthony then reached inside his bag, pulled out a knife, and stabbed him in the chest in front of his twin brother, Hunter, who held him as he died.

“I grabbed his hand and looked in his eyes. I just saw his soul leave, and it took mine, too,” he told FOX 4.

Glenn Beck is nearly driven to tears by this heartbreaking story. It’s uncannily similar, he says, to “Adolescence” — a four-part British crime drama miniseries that premiered on Netflix mid-March.

The show paints a clear picture of “what students are like, what they're talking about, how callous they are on life,” he says. “You see what school is like and what all of our kids are actually dealing with, and it's terrifying.”

Both the death of Austin Metcalf and the disturbing events in “Adolescence” seem to beg the question: “Is there no value to life anymore?” — especially in youth culture that has grown so ghastly in the digital age.

“Life has become so meaningless that that will get you killed,” says Glenn.

But it’s not just the children he feels sorry for. The parents have it rougher than ever, too.

“It’s so hard to be a parent now,” he admits.

All his kids have “finished adolescence” and thankfully “everybody made it out alive,” but the last 10 years he describes as “relentless.”

Your best efforts to be the perfect parent always fall short, he laments. “You just feel like a horrible parent because you're like, 'I don't know what to do'” — especially when you’re constantly facing one of the most sinister foes there’s ever been: the internet.

“I’ve always hated helicopter parents, but my gosh, if you're not a helicopter parent in your own home,” he trails off, insinuating that overprotectiveness is almost the only hope for parents these days.

“If you want to understand how screwed up our children are” — how something like a seating dispute at a track meet could leave a child dead — “just watch ['Adolescence'].”

To hear more of his analysis, watch the episode above.

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Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ and the war on white men



Netflix is up to its old feminist tricks with the new show “Adolescence” — a miniseries that initially appears to be a crime thriller but ultimately unfolds into blatant propaganda that paints white men in a negative light.

The story centers around a young white boy accused of murdering one of his female classmates, who cyberbullied the young boy and called him an “incel.” The term, meaning “involuntary celibate,” orbits around the online “manosphere” and red-pill movements.

“I don’t like the demonization of any group based on skin color, and I don’t like the denial that the demonization of white men and white people and particularly white evangelicals is going on globally, and we can see it right here in this miniseries that Netflix has put on,” Jason Whitlock of “Fearless” comments.


While the entire series is clear in its anti-man message, episode two is where Whitlock says, “They play a big card.”

That is, it brings Andrew Tate into the show by name.

“You’ve got this murder of a young teenage girl by a 13-year-old boy, and the next thing you know, halfway through episode two, they’re basically saying, ‘Well, you know what the motive is? He was radicalized by Andrew Tate,’” Whitlock explains, noting that this is where the show quotes the online red-pill accounts that say 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of men.

While Whitlock abhors much of what Tate has done or said in the past, he’s not on board with a “four-part series that basically says Andrew Tate is the driving force of this.”

“This all connects to the demonization of white men, ‘cause that’s what this miniseries is about, that the patriarchal ways of Western civilization have clearly outlived their usefulness, and that the solution to fixing angry young men is bowing, submitting to female leadership and more female involvement in everything,” Whitlock says.

“They’ve set up Andrew Tate as the scapegoat, as the distraction. The manosphere, the red-pill movement, all these angry men that reject feminism, they’re the problem,” he adds, noting that they’ll never go after the real problems plaguing society.

Which is why Whitlock is taking the conversation to one of the greatest conservative voices out there today on Friday, May 2.

“I just want to set the table for a conversation I’m going to have with Tucker Carlson,” Whitlock says. “Because it’s important. The demonization of white men that’s going on in global culture. Netflix, the U.K., everywhere. Everybody’s doing the Macarena on white men.”

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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Netflix sounds an alarm with painful 'Adolescence'



Let’s get this out of the way first. The new Netflix limited series “Adolescence” is utterly astonishing.

Astonishing in a good way, as you may never see a more amazingly crafted piece of television.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again.

The writing, acting, and production are top notch. However, the reason “Adolescence” stands out from other top-tier shows is that each of the four hour-or-so-long episodes is done in one take.

That means the whole one-hour episode is one very long camera shot. It also means the actors — including the young teen playing the lead role — cannot make any mistakes. All of the actors, for a whole hour, are basically performing live theater. No retakes, no catching their breath to refocus on the scene. Just one long camera shot.

And there are four episodes. They did this four times! So yeah, that’s astonishing. They deserve to win all the awards at those insufferable awards shows.

But it’s also an astonishing gut punch, particularly for parents of teens.

Telling it how it is, probably at your kids' school

I understand the story was based on real-life events, but the script seems to have veered off on its own, and this storyline is indeed all too realistic, not to mention incredibly painful to watch.

“Adolescence” tells the story of a 13-year-old boy named Jamie, who is attracted to an older girl at school who is bullied by someone sharing topless photos she apparently had taken. After Jamie tries to be kind to her, in a self-professed attempt to date her, she rejects him and then mocks him on social media as an “incel” — involuntary celibate.

The mocking escalates, and he responds, one night while he and his friends are out roaming the town, by stabbing her to death.

The four episodes explore Jamie’s initial denial of guilt and his father’s horror at seeing the CCTV footage of his son stabbing the girl over and over again. The second episode has the police interviewing kids at Jamie’s school, where it becomes obvious that these kids are living in a world that the adults are not bothering with; the disrespect shown to the teachers seems to underscore the fact that the teachers are not connecting in any meaningful way with their students.

The third episode aims to reveal what’s in Jamie’s head — it’s a long interview with a psychologist — and we get a pretty clear picture of a 13-year-old who is dealing with adult issues, over-sexualized behaviors, and social media bullying — all without the benefit of any adult intervention.

The most painful television I've ever watched

The fourth episode — quite possibly the most painful I have ever watched — concerns the parents struggling with the guilt that their neighbors and community have already assigned to them. The parents and their 18-year-old daughter endure a highly unpleasant family outing where the father is recognized as the killer’s dad. After the older sister shows love and compassion for her parents despite having just endured said outing, her father asks her mother, “How did we make her?” To which mom replies, “The same way we made him.”

The point being that they did the same things, and one child seems to be coping and well-adjusted and loving ... while the other stabbed a girl multiple times, in uncontrollable rage.

But let’s go back and talk about what is depicted.

  1. A hardworking father running his own plumbing business, who often leaves by 6 a.m., not to return till 8 p.m.
  1. A child trapped, spending all day in an institution where adult order and control has broken down, with rampant disrespectful behavior toward whatever authority does exist but especially among the teens toward each other. Young teens at the school engaging in adult sexualized behavior (nude photos, mocking a 13-year-old for being a virgin), and no adults caring enough to see or intervene.
  1. A 13-year-old who regularly comes home, marches upstairs, and spends the rest of the night on his computer by himself — except when he is out with his friends, fairly late at night with no adult supervision.

We find out about the dad’s long hours and the son’s computer time during the parents’ painful self-examination in episode 4. They rightly surmise that they could have done better, but regarding the computer time, the father points out that all the kids are that way these days.

'All kids are like that' — no excuse

Yes, they are. But they don’t have to be. And “kids being that way” — as well as tired parents working long hours — cannot be an excuse for no communication. Parents have to talk to their kids. A lot. There has to be a relationship.

The unsupervised roaming around at night goes hand in hand with the complete lack of communication. Obviously, parents should know where a 13-year-old is, especially at 10 p.m. That issue is never addressed, nor is the fact that the child’s school is a cesspool of toxic, inappropriate behaviors. Schools bear far too much resemblance to prisons — architecturally and procedurally — and the inmates can be feral in both.

I know. That’s pretty much every middle school, junior high, or high school, right? But if you’re thinking that — why are your kids there, again? Because there are alternatives. The point here is that the older your child gets, they continue to need plenty of time with you. And you have to be the one who makes sure that happens, because they won’t.

Failure of authority

Other reviewers are saying this miniseries is a referendum on “toxic masculinity.”

I guess it is a male child who stabs a female child, and that’s about as toxic as it gets. But it isn't because of his masculinity. It is a lack of masculinity.

We see teachers with no authority to provide a safe and effective learning environment; a father with no time to build trust so that Jamie can bring him his problems; parents caught up in their own problems and pursuits, who have a niggling feeling that all that computer time is not great, but they are willing to tell themselves “all kids are like that” while their son is alone in his room being torn to shreds, his confidence destroyed, his moral compass irretrievably broken.

Should you watch it?

I can’t recommend it, really. It’s peppered with profanity, but that pales in comparison to the emotional pain of watching it unfold. (The acting is exemplary, particularly Owen Cooper as Jamie and "Adolescence" co-creator Stephen Graham as his dad.)

However. If you have a teen in school ... or a teen who spends a lot of time alone in his/her room or on his/her phone or computer ... or a teen who’s out at night, you know not where ... then YES. You should watch all four episodes. In fact, you should go get that teen and have them watch with you. And then you should talk about it. All of it.

What could be a more important use of your time than that?

Another perspective

Dr. Justin Coulson raises some excellent points with his thoughtful review of “Adolescence” that I think are also worth consideration.