(drew this a good while after the final episode happened- i wasn't able to get any official merch so i decided to draw my own lol. i did in fact print this out as a poster for myself afterward, and it's been hanging on my door ever since🔥🔥)
there's just something about this project that keeps having me come back to rewatch it. and it's not just the fact that it takes great inspiration from the truman show, my literal fav movie ever lmao
no, i rather adore the way it combines psychological horror and commentary on the humanity (or lack thereof) in todays content creation.
spoilers and a very yapful essay below🙏
i mean, what better way to visualize the feeling of being a content creator, having your whole life laid out publicly for everyone to see, having the line between your online persona and real life self blend into each other to a point you're not sure anymore what's "real" anymore and what isn't, not knowing what part of your life was all performance for whoever's watching, and what parts were something you've only done for YOU- what better way to visualize that than LITERALLY having your character realize that all their memories were all for the sake of content being made for someone else. (the scene of gl!charlie seeing the cabin in ep 3 stuck with me man)
the way characters like gl!niki or gl!vinnie water down their real selves to just a simple singular defining character trait like "the nice one" or "the in-denial gay one" are also just. beautifully and also horrifyingly reflecting how this happens irl too. as a content creator you do often end up getting defined by one thing only that you are, or do, and that takes away a lot of your own identity.
and how badly your own reality gets distorted in a world of fiction, that you yourself have been inserted into, is greatly mirrored in the gl!sneegs character as well. the pure terror on his face when he realizes that everything around him is fake, that his very PERCEPTION of his reality has been messed with, that his memories are all fake and everyone around him seemingly pretending that everything about that is fine, it's not only great acting on sneegs part, but a SUPER well done reflection of this.. distortion that the online world puts you and everything around you into.
and what better way to show just how badly detached from your own humanity you can become as soon as something isn't right in front of you, but on a screen- how to get that message across better than to confront you with gradually more complex viewer driven choices, that end in the straight up death of the very person you've taken all control over their own choices AWAY from this whole time.
that's all to say, i really do believe that genloss is an actual piece of modern art. i'll never not love this project and i'm still super excited to see where it goes in the future, but i think gen 1 will forever be the most dear to me (thanks for coming to my ted talk lol)
