Protagonist Balthazar Malone, a wealthy New York teen played by Jaeden Martell, posts exaggerated crying videos pleading for stricter gun laws primarily to impress his activist classmate Eleanor and gain social media attention. He catfishes a potential Texas shooter named Solomon (Asa Butterfield) using AI to pose as a woman, escalates the situation through deception, and ultimately kills him before claiming hero status in a televised interview.

The narrative critiques fake empathy, class divides between privileged Manhattan life and impoverished Texas trailer-park existence, and the blurred line between performance and reality without endorsing activist solutions. This approach keeps progressive messaging peripheral by centering the story on online deception and male alienation instead of identity politics or systemic oppression narratives. The satire directly mocks the virtue signaling of the privileged protagonist and his gun-control activism, treating these behaviors as self-serving rather than heroic. Creator statements reinforce this restraint by stressing the deliberate avoidance of didactic messaging or calls to action on guns, masculinity, or activism, resulting in a low woke score that prioritizes entertainment over ideological instruction.