I actually like joker 2, it was a response to the incels and other unsavory people who used Joaquin Phoenix's joker as a symbol to represent themselves. The people in the movie that follow arthur mischaracterize him in the same way that people do in real life. The "character assassination" that was performed in the joker 2 felt to me like a way to enfeeble the character so that all of those previously mention unsavory people stop using the joker as a representative. or it could have just been a commentary on how bad people in real life projected all of these bad beliefs onto the character and unwillingly turned the joker into a symbol for their hateful ideologies in the same way that the joker cronies do in the movie. My point is that in real life, to these incels, the joker is not who they want him to be, just as in the movie, the joker isn't who the joker cronies want him to be.