The studio has seen the success of mainstream movies about consumer products, such as Air (Jordans), Barbie, Blackberry, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Tetris, and the new Pop Tart one. They also figure that The Social Network took home some Oscars, so what the hell... Now they've hired you to write and direct a movie about Reddit and the average Redditor. What is the story about? Who's in it? How do you depict the cursed site?
Something to do with the Reddit founders, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, as well as Aaron Swartz. Ohanian ended up leaving Reddit and marrying Serena Williams, Aaron got screwed over by everyone because he was a true believer and committed suicide, Huffman being a general weirdo and doomsday prepper. So there's potential there for a decent narrative. Incorporate some stuff about redditors being loser basement dwelling nerds and controversial subreddits like the head moderator of r/jailbait getting an official Reddit award and being interviewed by Anderson Cooper, along with the contrast of Reddit trying to go mainstream, and there's potential for a decent 7/10 narrative.
You could even spin it with a positive ending. Create the narrative of Reddit going from a "free speech" hate filled corner of the internet used by dubious characters, to "the front page of the internet", a website used by everyone which is socially progressive, with the ending cumulating with Ohanian leaving Reddit and demanding a black executive take his place after the George Floyd protests.
Of course, this narrative's relationship with the truth is weak at best, but this never matters with these kind of movies.
The title of the film needs to be called "We Did It Reddit!" Swartz's suicide and the Boston Marathon bombing, both taking place in 2013, could either be the endpoint of the film or the midpoint of the film when Reddit goes horribly wrong.
Aaron Schwartz should be the only story worth telling about that place. It wouldn't be a hopeful one, but at least something worth letting people know about.
A dark comedy about the front page of the internet being a pedophile’s safe haven. An actual alien controlling the minds of millions of users through Brainwyrms that make them speak like cringy idiots and turn into racists, evil assholes.
I would depict it as a place where there are a moderately small amount of good, fine, people; is a large amount of insufferable, smug assholes, masquerading as the first group I mentioned, then all the rest of the website is insane right wing freaks. There are ads everywhere, the sites culture is heavily poisoned with liberal “civility” culture, left wing voices are often shadow banned, censored, and otherwise suppressed. The farthest “left” you can really be is a most moderate fascist (social democrat). Many larger subs are very clearly astroturfed by the three letter organizations, with some posts even being sent from the addresses of these organization's hqs, Ive seen one of these posts. It was a post which was blatantly lying about the writing on the entranceway of a mosque in the PRC, they claimed that it was in praise of the current leader of the CPC, Xi Jinping, this was untrue, the writing was actually about praising the community and workers that helped build the mosque. That is just one of many innumerable examples of three letter agencies using reddit as a front to proliferate their imperialist propaganda.
it's a 36 hour, experimental art film "about" a group of poorly socialized chihuahuas that spend their every waking moment fighting with each other, eating cat turds out of a litterbox, and fighting each other over cat turds in the litter box. there is no dialogue. the viewer is invited to thank me that they cannot smell the experience.