Bionic Buzz® got to cover South by Southwest® in Austin, TX. SXSW dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW® is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture. An essential destination for global professionals, the annual March event features sessions, music and comedy showcases, film screenings, exhibitions, professional development, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together.

There we interviewed Arthur Jones & Giorgio Angelini the directors of the documentary THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK: Memes to Mayhem. The film about the psychic malaise consuming our online-obsessed culture and the profound effects it’s having on our collective reality. The film investigates a particularly influential piece of internet machinery—4chan—a website that has taken advantage of people’s alienation and loneliness, transforming it into unimaginable chaos.

The film chronicles the experience of a few early “channers” who helped to create this online community for self-described shut-ins. What began as a niche website, bringing together a shared love of anime, pop culture, and porn (lots and lots of porn), the site wound up becoming a powerful machine for warping reality. It’s a website that invented meme culture and birthed the creation of the hacker collective known as Anonymous. It’s also the place where the QAnon conspiracy theory was first conjured, and where the January 6th riots were seeded. Now adults, these early channers look back on their creation, wondering if the genie can be put back in the bottle.

People are feeling lonelier than ever. Working more than ever. And are generally unhappier than ever before. The advent of social media promised more human to human connection to soothe these woes. But it has only accelerated detrimental effects on society. To emerge from this modern ennui, the film posits a simple solution: touch grass, as the meme goes. There is no substitute for real human contact and emotional engagement, and we surely won’t find it in the portals of our computer screens, cell phones, or VR helmets.

Watch THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK: Memes to Mayhem world on NETFLIX April 5.

Connect:
https://www.giorgioangelini.co/
https://www.byarthurjones.com/
https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/81456528

Video & interview by Steve Sievers of Bionic Buzz.