Thoughts on “Internet Bad,” That Show About the Evils of Technology That Is Streaming Online - The New Yorker

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The latest season of the haunting series “Internet Bad” premièred exclusively online this weekend, leaving me, a humble blogger, no choice but to write an Internet article about the thought-provoking streaming show that has sparked quite a bit of discussion across the Web.

As in past seasons, “Internet Bad” continues to offer its lofty take on how technology defines us as a culture, addressing questions from “What if stray dogs had Wi-Fi?” to “Would I enjoy crime procedurals more if they were holograms inside my bedroom, or would that just be scary?” As my fiancé—whom I met on a dating site exclusively for people who had finished reading “Infinite Jest”—and I finished the Internet-science-fiction show on our Internet-connected television, I had a sinister, analogue thought.

“You know what?” I said, while on my phone refreshing our registry at Crate and Barrel. (Lots of rustic tableware. We’re salt-of-the-earth people.) “The Internet . . . might be bad.”

“As a matter of fact, Ben e-mailed me about that this morning,” my fiancé, Scott-Rick, replied. “The way we are constantly refreshing our feeds for likes? When the real likes are right in front of us?” Scott-Rick is extremely intelligent.

Internet readers, Scott-Rick and I are not alone in our newfound hatred of the Internet, which grew stronger as we binge-watched “Internet Bad” (now online) for eight consecutive hours. Like many bloggers, I was especially struck by “01000001 for Effort,” an episode that follows a young school principal so consumed by her own Twitter-esque feed (called Tweevil) that she lets her six hundred students suffocate in a massive, hot car. The closing moment of the two-hundred-minute saga cut me to my core—as the principal gazes into the empty gymnasium, she says, “It appears that fate has swiped left . . . on me.”

Another highlight of the season was “Society . . . 99% Loaded,” which centers on a man who misses his own wedding while waiting for a video of professional-wrestling highlights to buffer. The reveal that the video was actually a live stream of his weeping bride and family made me think twice before refreshing my feed on Monday morning. Unfortunately, because I am a professional social-media consultant, eventually I had to.

The Internet show “Internet Bad” was streamed more than three million times in its first weekend on the Web—a major victory for its writer-director, Garth Rugburn. Rugburn came up YouTube vlogging his thoughts on James Joyce books and posting memes about his parents and, after a brief stint in software development, began to write his Internet show about how bad the Internet is. This new season’s success came on the heels of the announcement that viewers will soon be able to experience “Internet Bad” on their V.R. headsets, allowing them to interact with fictional slaves to technology in high resolution and with surround sound.

While I could go on and on about this Web-skewering satire—the episode about cyber bullies who are mauled by a herd of baby boomers who turn out to be androids programmed by Internet viruses, or the episode about the woman whose Web series kills the President—I’ll just let you listen to my podcast later in the week for the full scoop. Joining me to comment will be a sentient 2002 Dell laptop and a man who thinks his fourteen-year-old son hacked him out of his marriage.

For even more thoughts on “Internet Bad,” e-mail me at internetisbad@yahoo.com.

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