From the minds of Lester Trips (Theatre) founders winning creatives Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton and produced with Archipelago Productions, CONTENT FARM is a satire series that riffs on the proliferation of endless clickbait to playfully critique our relationship to the internet.
Follow the mayhem of two halves of a neural network as they learn to be human on the internet, where nothing is original and people’s lives are ruined for fun and views.
Each episode is composed of sketch comedy shorts, which are self-contained mashups of sketch comedy and horror, rooted in internet culture. The idea is to examine topics like intellectual property and ownership, the slipperiness of identity, and failures of human communication and connection
Cringe comedy and social commentary clash in a deepfake reality dating show, a washed-up comedian platforming bot conspiracy theories, and of course, AI-generated melting dog faces in this three episode doom scroll through social media.
After watching all three episodes in the series, I picked up on the satire and thought-provoking humour that Alaine and Lauren are known for through their work with Lester Strips (Theatre). The series includes an array of funny, cringe, questionable content, which in my opinion, cleverly replicates what we currentlly see happening online these days. The concept of AI is not new but we are seeing how AI-generated content is proliferating at ‘warp’ speed; leaving us scratching our heads at times.
CONTENT FARM is adding to the ongoing conversation of what is real and what is not on the internet. To learn more about the concept for the series, the research involved and the actual content created, I spoke with Lauren and Alaine. We had a great chat.
CONTENT FARM is currently available to stream on CBC Gem.
