Some trolls experience buyer’s remorse, Margera says with a laugh. He says a Texas man recently spent $5,000 the morning after he sent a variety of messages in the email, “Wake up, cat!” He pleaded his case: He had been drinking and had become unconscious. Margera was not sympathetic. “Eat a dick!” He said. “This is what you get.”
The team welcomes me to the control room, where several other creators are clicking away diligently behind custom multi-monitor displays. The fish mill keeps moving from one bait to another on its screen. I can hear their footsteps upstairs.
The control room mirrors the bunker of an insurgency, or the lair of a useless supervisor – it’s all screens and pieces, guitars and whiteboards, cables and empty cans and canisters of pepper spray. At least eight producers huddle around the largely windowless space or move around in their chairs. Neptune gives me the tour: one configuration of monitors displays indoors, another outside (to provide advance notice to the police in case fans call them as a joke); One desk controls sound effects and commercials, the other controls paid fan messages. I’m told that most of it was coded using AI. I ask where the team sleeps. Neptune points to the couch and the floor under his desk.
“Luckily the carpet is nice and soft this season,” says Ottman.
“I like sleeping on the floor,” says Taylor, who wears a knit cap, untucked dress shirt and Japanese-looking slippers. He has an overgrown beard and dark, tired eyes.
“It’s nice and insulting,” Neptune agrees.
“It’s punishing,” says Taylor. “I don’t want to sleep in the bed anymore.”
“I don’t deserve this,” Neptune says.
“I don’t fucking I deserve it,” Taylor reiterated. “When we’re filming, I feel very macho. like it, Go to hell.
“Shame! Neptune says, “My silly life.” “I’m just one dumb who sleeps on Field“
They both laugh, then become silent. Just then, a printer in the corner beeps, and out come fresh pages. With the help of Chatgpt, he has written a love song to a fish named Landon. Landon, twenty-something, is a janitor from Wisconsin, who I’ve learned from watching the show is the team’s favorite tormentor. A few days earlier, Taylor had challenged a drunk Landon to a boxing match and brutally threw him to the ground.
The previous night, Landon had gotten drunk again and spent several hours begging another artist, Wimp, to kiss him. Today he is experiencing a lot of regrets, and the producers want to make sure he doesn’t abandon the story.
“Do we want this to end with Landon getting a kiss?” Taylor asks the room.
“I just want this to end for the worst and for her to never get a kiss,” Neptune says. Everyone agrees. He decides to tell Landon, who is naturally trustworthy, that the wimp is just playing hard to get. Lyrics in hand, Neptune and Taylor climb the stairs and a few moments later, in miniature form, appear on the monitor. The wimp is in the bathroom away from the camera. They bang on the door, yell, “Cut, cut!” And then find Landon, lying on a couch, hungry and sad. The audience kept taunting him the whole day, but now some people are trying to console him.
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