Clickbait: Unfollowed (2024)

Clickbait: Unfollowed (2024). 1h 30m

“*** PREFACE: I may be the wrong audience to be leaving an opinion here, compared to the other first-time reviewers only gushing over it, but I wanted to touch on some thoughts about the actual story… ***u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e– PSYCHOSoShal:u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSo right off the bat, Iu0026#39;m sorry, but the title is pretty meh. I donu0026#39;t even know how u0026quot;Clickbaitu0026quot; has anything to do with the movie. You girls already had this perfect word you came up with that easily lent itself to any number of clever play-on-words titles sitting right in front of you with u0026quot;SoShalu0026quot;. You could have gone with almost anything related to u0026quot;Social _______u0026quot; (The SoShal Experiment? SoShal Media Challenge?), the possibilities write themselves.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e– SoShal STANDING:u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eIt was unconventional to say the least. Deftly produced as everything looked and sounded great and professionally put together, the lighting, the shot compositions, they all worked well… The dialogue however got a bit heavy with slogans, quotes, and influencer advice (which may have been apropos) but it all began to sound like fortune cookies to me.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eOverall it reminds me of similar movies OCTOGAMES (2022) and FUNHOUSE (2019) which had similar plots, budgets, and a similar presentation of the u0026quot;contestu0026quot; with the use of a virtual host. Even the NPC SoShal workers felt indicative of SQUID GAMES, except because they came in different heights and wore their pants up high they reminded of those u0026quot;Shy Guysu0026quot; from Super Mario Bros., but with fencer masks.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAnd speaking of costuming, why did yu0026#39;all have homegirl dressed up like one of those fortune teller machines (like from the movie BIG) the whole movie?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e– SoShal MEDIA INFLUENCE:u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThere is a lot about social media influencer culture that Iu0026#39;m just not familiar with, so I think movies like these would really benefit from having a proxy character for the audience to be introduced to things and how things work. A character who is discovering so the audience can discover (as commonly done in fantasy movies, card poker movies, science movies, stock trading movies) our own Neo in the Matrix.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eBecause as it stands I didnu0026#39;t quite get that these caricatures were indicative of whatu0026#39;s popular on Youtube (LookLoop). Or why these characters were who best represented it.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI wouldu0026#39;ve imagined in a story like this (and given what the villains were aiming to accomplish) it wouldu0026#39;ve also included like an InstaModel, a self-important outrage media critic, a watch me eat stuff guy, a sexy try-on haul girl, and a conspiracy theorist as well. A whole gamut of u0026quot;look at meu0026quot; personalities.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e– SoShal ISSUES:u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e1. I didnu0026#39;t get how they all mostly knew of each other if they only had followings of 250K. Coincidence or convenience, but there are YouTubers with millions of followers that I either never heard of, or watch, or discovered years after everyone else did (and I loathe the day I learned what a Pewtipie was) so I canu0026#39;t imagine like Ron Tron, Lele Pons, Legal Eagle, the Corridor Crew, and Ryan George all just happening to be fans of one another (much less with smaller channels at just 250K subs).u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e2. I also didnu0026#39;t get what made the kid unboxing things channel be so believably popular. He seemed to be so disinterested in being in anything (including the movie itself) and had to have his mom feeding him lines to parrot the entire time like itu0026#39;s all still new to him. How would his fanbase not be put off by her disembodied voice constantly yakking off-camera like heu0026#39;s a ventriloquist dummy? How is that entertainment?u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e3. Also were all of their fanbases just sitting around online in empty virtual rooms waiting for them to randomly pop in to livestream record their 1-minute hostage videos? And with them filming these things side-by-side within earshot of each other, that is exactly what these videos would look like to any longtime fans of theirs.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e4. Where would all of those new followers even come from and so suddenly if their uploads were being posted to each of their own hacked channels for their already existing audience? There was nothing mentioned about drawing in outside interest nor a hashtag from the start to encourage any crossover pollination from amongst each otheru0026#39;s followings.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eActually that wouldu0026#39;ve made more sense to have their live feeds simulcast across each others channels thus pooling all 6 of their 250K following into a potential 1.5 million net total.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003e– LAST SoShal POINTS:u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu003culu003eu003cliu003eWTF was on that eyeball? -u003c/liu003eu003cliu003eLOL! The gun poking in/out of the cubby. -u003c/liu003eu003cliu003eHUH? What happened to the rest of the Shy Guys? -u003c/liu003eu003cliu003eHEY, the poster looks like the Looney Tunes u0026quot;Thatu0026#39;s all folks!u0026quot; background. -u003c/liu003eu003cliu003eAND So what if some hacker deletes your faux-youtube account, itu0026#39;s 2024 and these are supposed to be successful influencers, wouldnu0026#39;t they have other social media accounts to fall back on if they had to restart their u0026quot;YouTubeu0026quot; channel?u003c/liu003eu003c/ulu003eu003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eWell thatu0026#39;s it for my 4 and a half cents and some change.”