This Place Rules: A review of American journalist Andrew Callaghan’s first documentary

Practically jumping up and down on my couch at 10 p.m. on Dec. 30, I refreshed HBO Max to see “This Place Rules” drop — American journalist with Channel 5 YouTube Andrew Callaghan’s first documentary. With my Channel 5 merch on the way, you could say I’m a fan of Andrew’s on-the-ground reporting and casual interviewing style. 

I was first exposed to Andrew’s work with “The People’s Convoy” — his coverage of the truckers’ convoy protesting mask mandates in 2021. While mainstream news platforms also reported on the event, Andrew following the protests with his buddies and cameramen Nic Mosher and Evan Gilbert-Katz in their RV made him unique to watch.

But Andrew really began to gain traction in 2020 during the Black Lives Matters protests, using a microphone to humanize angry protesters and rioters that felt villainized by the mainstream news like CNN and Fox. This is also where he begins the timeline of “This Place Rules,” which was acquired by HBO Max.

The documentary depicts the state of American politics leading up to the Jan. 6 capitol riot. More uniquely, it documents the way tight-knit media bubbles agitated the riot by stirring the Left and Right to view each other as blazing targets. This phenomena caused by the 24-hour news cycle is not something we usually hear about, since they don’t want to uncover their way of putting our political views into a boxing ring for profit.

A humane way that Andrew documents the brainwashing effects of media bubbles is by spending multiple days with an everyday family in Atlanta who religiously subscribe to QAnon conspiracies leading up to the capitol riot – the Spencer’s.

These scenes in particular tug on my heartstrings. Seeing one of the family’s three children shouting, “Biden’s a child molester,” through a megaphone at a Stop the Steal rally should make any person feel guilty about allowing children so young to be eaten alive by QAnon theories and politics in general. 

I mean, 15-year-old me was in a constant state of anxiety because of leftist politicians telling my parents that there’d be a media blackout or a second Civil War. Upon the documentary’s many messages, the involvement of children in politics and the fear that the media uses to invoke their anxieties is certainly one of them.

After we hear about the Spencer parents’ reasoning for keeping their three kids out of school due to mask mandates and their political religion, Andrew switches beats to the Atlanta Housing Projects a few miles away from where the Spencer kids chant, “He’s still your president,” on their front lawn.

This dramatic shift from suburban, QAnon bliss to a community mourning the loss of Rayshard Brooks in an Atlanta police-involved shooting is gut-wrenching. 

Andrew says it best from the dimly lit stool he sits on to narrate his doc — the comparison shows the privilege certain Americans have to be invested in conspiracy theories and travel to invade the capitol, while many who live paycheck-to-paycheck don’t have the time or resources to “riot” for minimum wage or accessible healthcare. 

I usually don’t appreciate the modern-day callbacks to 2020 — whether that be through references of masks, online learning or presidential races. I don’t want to fall down the pipeline of the 24-hour news cycle and its fear-mongering machine once again, and the documentary avoids that — rather serving as a reflection piece.

Andrew Callaghan showed it like it was: a time where our political views were heightened and pitted against each other for the profit of those who aren’t affected by our everyday politics.