What Happened To The Web Series
It’s 2012. Freddie Wong is an internet sensation. A former guitar hero champion, his Youtube accounts blowing up. Videos focusing on video games and special effects had ballooned him to a million subscribers in only a year. Medal of Army Cat, Key and Peele Mexican Standoff, RollerCoaster Tycoon;
And then [This is the fundraiser for video game high school]
Back in the days when we all still trusted kickstarter, the fundraiser was an immense success, and I remember as I waited desperately for the first episode to come out that there was an immense optimism there. The internet had been busy revolutionizing everything; comedy, communication, business… and now the internet was about to revolutionize television.
And then it didn’t.
HOW DOES THE INTERNET TELL A STORY?
Do you guys remember Quibi?
Quibi was going to be the Netflix of phones. They spent 1.5 billion dollars on producing vertical programming to watch on your phone; each episode was only going to be ten minutes. Each movie was going to be split up into 10 to 12 minute chunks. It was going to make stories not for the TV or the laptop but for the phone.
15 years after the foundation of Youtube, Quibi launched in April of 2020; when we were all staying indoors. It had programming from Christoph Waltz, Will Arnett, LeBron James: it was nominated for 10 Emmys and won two-
And it shut down in December of 2020. It ran for just 9 short months; it fell short of its projected users by a ton. It was filling a niche that didn’t exist. It turns out that people didn’t want to watch television the way that they watched TikTok-
Storytelling has always been deeply tied to the technology available at the time. Memento would never work as a stage play. Jim and Pam would never work as a movie, the build up and the realness is important; Infinite Jest has to be literature, it could never be a movie.
When Video Game High School first started airing in May of 2012 it seemed to me at the time like this was what storytelling on the internet was supposed to look like.
Crowdfunded, amateur in origins, available for free: Video Game High School was the platonic ideal of the web series. Which at the time seemed like it was going to be the next best thing.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along blog; a production of Joss Whedon’s released for free during the writers strike showed what could be done with the format with some talent and some know how. Three 20 minute episodes, playing with the idea of the “blog,” it was a massive creative success winning 4 streamy’s and a Primetime Emmy.
And if you want something more long-form there was the Guild, building on similar themes between the two: also starring Felicia Day, the Guild was about a group of players of an online mmorpg, like World of Warcraft. Each episode started out with a “vlog” by Felicia’s character and then it would get into the nitty gritty of it. The Guild ran for seven seasons and won multiple streamys.
And then along came VGHS. Freddie Wong wasn’t a Hollywood player, he wasn’t like Felicia Day or Neil Patrick Harris or Joss Whedon; born and bred on the internet, he was about to do something different.
Once a week for nine weeks “rocket jump” Freddie Wong’s production company released a nine to twenty two minute long episode about the exploits of Brian D, who in the near future after killing a celebrity gamer almost on accident, gets sent to the most prestigious institute in the country to become the worlds best video gamer.
And it’s good. I know the premise may seem juvenile, but it’s genuinely good. And not in a, I was 11 when I watched it and so it’s important to me sort of way. Not like Sharkboy and Lavagirl which I ironically revisited recently and had to question whether I’d ever had taste — but in a genuine way.
Like this joke in the first episode-
[The Presidents gone missing, but first-]
And yeah it’s a little corny at times with things like the “Pwn Zone” or saying “Noobs” a lot. It’s a bit dated in that regard, but that’s the nature of making something relevant.
It’s a high school show that is themed around gaming, but it’s also about the classic high school show things, first loves and rivalries and all of the stuff that good TV is about. Brian Firenzi plays a fantastic villain “the Law” who clearly looks too old to be in High School, but who cares.
It’s silly, joyous, and not cynical, in a very, very 2010s way. It’s really fun. Will Brain D finally get Jenny Matrix? Will Jimmie Wong get his dad’s approval?
And I’m not necessarily saying that it was the greatest show of all-time, but it was so exciting. We were only 7 years into this great Youtube experiment and we were already getting stuff like this. What were we going to get in 10 years, in 15, in 20?
[]
Video Game High School ran for three seasons, ending in 2015. And as it went on it got more polished and a larger budget. And what I realized was; as the show got better and better, it started resembling the internet less and less and television more.
It’s the same thing that happened to the Guild. As the video quality on Felicia Day’s vlogs got higher and higher quality they stopped representing the thing they were based on more and more. The fate of all web series is to become television, and betray themselves in the process. There’s a reason that the Guild, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog, and Video Game High School have all appeared on Netflix.
And almost as if the internet recognized this the Web Series began to disappear. It doesn’t really exist anymore. For the first ten years of the ward the “Streamy’s” final awards of the night were awarded to the best scripted comedy and drama series. Now those are an afterthought.
What VGHS, the Guild, and to a lower extent QUIBI had failed to ask was why would storytelling on the internet look like storytelling on TV? Fiction on Youtube is competing with fiction on Netflix, both pages are opened up in the same browser.
You’re probably not going to be able to tell a Netflix story as well as Netflix without a Netflix budget. But that doesn’t mean you can’t tell a great story, or a story better or more interesting that Netflix.
The mistake that Quibi made, and the mistake that I made in predicting Video Game High School was going to change the world was that they were making TV for the digital age — but what we should have been thinking about is how we tell stories in the digital age-
[]
On March 12, 2017 a video was uploaded to Youtube titled; Petscop. Petscop is not a video game. It is not a TV show. It is not a blog, or a let’s play, or a podcast. It is something different.
Clocking in at 9 minutes and 7 seconds Petscop opens up with the Sony computer entertainment logo; and then the playstation logo. In the video the unnamed narrator, who we can assume is named Paul, plays through an unfinished playstation one game that they found. At first glance it seems like a fun, silly family game that you may have played in the late 90s or early 2000s.
But, the game box came with instructions on how to access a hidden section of the game, and as the video progresses and Paul delves deeper into the game a darker side comes out. And as more air quotes episodes are released it gets darker and darker and more complex.
And through it all it remains different than the Guild or Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog, because while those pay lip service to blogging and start their episodes with it, they deviate, they show things off the screen. Petscop never does.
Each video with Paul’s narration isn’t uploaded for us, it’s uploaded for an unnamed “you.” The videos are created to be sent to one specific person, not for us, the audience/viewer.
24 episodes, some with narration, some without, but all uploaded with the premise of somebody finding an old video game. We never break character, we never meet the narrator - we never pan out and have a guy be like, what’s happening in this game, I guess we have to figure it out. When “Paul” later does check out a real life location they don’t film it. Other than a couple of hints dropped in dialogue. There’s nothing else there.
And the game, is completely fake. Completely made up. There’s no such thing as Petscop, there’s no such company as “Garalina.”
And it’s hugely popular. Millions of people have watched videos explaining the lore. Or analysis of the themes. Or the fan theories. And it’s complex, it deals with heavy themes of abuse and trauma; it’s masterfully made and has earned all the praise that’s been heaped upon it.
Petscop, and the story around it, the lore, the theories, the excitement, the unblinking commitment to format- is the sort of story that could only be told on the internet. There’s a layer of realism or commitment to it that is endlessly fascinating. In its casual uploading to a random website, Petscop allows itself to sit in the amateurism and quote unquote reality of how we consume on the internet: it tells an internet story.
Or, another internet story; let’s flash back to 2006.
[]
It’s 2006. The year after Youtube was founded. Even before Freddie Wong had founded RocketJump. For a brief time the most subscribed to channel on the internet was LonelyGirl15. Her channel was made up of mostly the zany, quirky, low-fi type of content that categorized the internet before the entire place got so corporate and official.
These videos were all about two minutes long and featured her and her friend “Dan.” And the videos were dumb bits with the occasional allusion to some low level relationship drama; there was continual tension regarding the relationship between her and Dan as well as hints about her relationship with her parents and their weird, unnamed religion.
And much like Petscop, though silly at first the videos got more and more serious: Like here’s a video where our protagonist thinks she’s being stalked.
And everyone was talking about it until some true fans did some digging and found out… it was fake. GASP.
Miles Beckett and Ramesh Flinders had concocted the series after Beckett had realized how hard it was to tell whether something was real or fake on the platform. Lonelygirl15 had a budget and writers and plans to build to a sci-fi element.
As time went on the channel began to feature cults and religions and cyphers and more traditional sci-fi, horroy-y elements. The illusion had been shattered. The main actress wasn’t even American, she was Australian.
And people had suspected the show before; but even before it was revealed for sure that it was fake Lonelygirl15 was the most subscribed to account on the platform: there was a clammer for the reality and for the fiction of it.
I have to imagine it felt like it did when the train didn’t hit those people watching the first movie. Relief at first, but then surprisingly, maybe an element of disappointment. But what I think is also worth noting is that the channel became even more popular once people realized that it was fake.
What Beckett and Flinders had seen, and attempted to capitalize on, was the potential to use the language of the internet, short form video and blogging to tell a story. A new type of storytelling: fiction for the digital age.
[]
What I like most about Petscop and Lonelygirl15 is that they’re not trying to be TV. They’re playing on the even ground of the internet and using the language of it.
And I think it makes sense that they’re both playing at the real; The first writing was list making. The first oral storytelling traditions were myths. The first photos portraits. Movies documentaries. Whenever a new format comes around the first pieces of fiction tend to be obfuscating the fact that they are.
“The author has not given his effort here the benefit of knowing whether it is a history, autobiography, gazette, or fantasy.” That isn’t a quote about Lonelygirl15 or Petscop; that’s a quote from the New York Globe about Moby-Dick in 1851.
And as time goes on we become more and more willing to agree to the big lie, to believe the fiction. To suspend our disbelief, and as we do it allows us to create more and more interesting art.
Take for example another great piece, which I think is almost creative progression from Petscop:
The Monument Mythos;
The Monument Mythos is a web horror series that uses the language of reality: documentary, footage, interview; but instead of being about a video game or a girl it’s about an alternative history where James Dean becomes president of the United States and there are “creatures” hidden beneath American Monuments. And it’s fantastic. It uses a completely different language than traditional television to tell a gripping story about a world where something’s gone wrong, and though you don’t realize it at first, a story that keeps coming back to one family.
This episode is done like a family trip video made in movie maker. This one is done like an interview from a woman reflecting on her childhood. This one is an excerpt from a fake documentary.
Some of them are 3 minutes, some of them are 18. But all of them exist in a format that wouldn’t work on TV, that isn’t trying to be TV. What executive would let you put something like this out there:
It tells a story in the fractured way that we view the world now: I don’t follow a character or watch the news; I see clips, I read comments, and I scroll: this is a storyline that speaks to me. It’s fractured. It exists almost to be talked about and theorized and engaged with, as much as it does to be consumed. What makes more sense in the digital age?
[]
I think that it makes sense to me that the most exciting new media is in “horror.” It’s the same reason that so many directors or writers get their start in the genre, it’s the cheapest to make and fear is the easiest and quickest emotion to capture.
Creepypastas as a whole have always been a huge part of internet storytelling. Local58; the backrooms - which is less a specific series but more of a communally built mythos; or the SCP foundation, which is such fascinating storytelling because it doesn’t exist as anything other than a wiki- and yet there’s lore and storylines and games built off it.
I think it’s very exciting, there are new ways to tell stories that we’re just getting started at.
[]
FreddieWong and the RocketJump Youtube channel haven’t posted in 7 years. After VGHS finished they kept up for a while, including another series “Anime Crimes Division,” but eventually the key creators all went into different ventures.
Brandon Laatsch went on to make popular VR video games. Freddie runs a popular dungeons and dragons game; which is another type of storytelling that maybe I’ll talk about at some point.
It’s hard not to look at RocketJump’s disappearance as a sort of signal that some era of storytelling on the internet is over. The Youtube algorithm has shifted from incentivizing short, high quality content, to longer form. And with it the world that Freddie inhabited is gone. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a 12 minute video isn’t economical anymore.
But I was browsing the RocketJump subreddit and I found Freddie’s reddit account. And I did a deep dive and what I found was that Freddie was not bitter about anything; in fact almost every one of his comments is on a post of somebody being overtly negative about the state of filmmaking and him responding with optimism about the future of storytelling and filmmaking in general. An immense knowledge about different formats, and what to me reads as genuine excitement.
And in the spirit of that I want to pitch some of my favorite things in fiction storytelling that are happening. This is not an expansive list, merely some things that I think have the potential to be really cool.
-The Instagram account where the city gets updated for every real life subscriber to it.
-HaveWeMet - a subreddit where hundreds of people build a world together and role-play in a quiet, real way.
-The Veronica and Kyle kiss at New Years, two roommates who make sketches about themselves? About each other - with a long running bit that Veronica is in love with him. And then on New Years Eve she kissed him and it seemed, real? I don’t know because I’ve only viewed their storyline through scrolling and the algorithm
-The same guy from the city instagram account who does an animated series where people vote on what the characters do.
-The clear and obvious fiction of Am I the Asshole
-Life of Norman; slice of life fiction on a subreddit about a really, drab guy.
You go through more entertainment in a day than your ancestors did in their entire life. And the language of the internet is non-fiction:
Podcast clips, day in the lifes, top 5 best sports plays: the fictional content you consume is probably all comedy sketches, which aren’t really telling stories. I mean people have even begun engaging with fiction through non-fiction. Like watching a two hour analysis of a tv show you’ve never watched.
But fiction is really important. Roger Ebert says Movies are the Great Empathy making machine, and I think that holds out true for all fiction. It’s easy to see someone on the internet telling you to hate somebody, but if you watch a movie or read a book from their eyes it makes it a lot easier to understand them.
Fiction translates ideas into feelings, and feelings are digestible. It’s possible to change our minds through it.
The internet is the lens through which we see the world, and even though a lot of stuff online isn’t true, that doesn’t mean its fiction. It doesn’t allow us to walk in somebody else’s shoes. That’s why I’m so excited about what fiction is happening on the internet. I think we’re just getting started.
When the camera was first invented the first movies were just plays that they filmed. You know why Citizen Kane is probably the most influential film of all-time? Because it asked what can we do with the camera? How can we take it to the extreme?
I’m so convinced that there’s some 16 year old out there right now who’s going to make the Citizen Kane of digital storytelling; maybe its multimedia, maybe its analog horror, I don’t know! But I’m excited. And you guys should be to.
I would love to know what fiction you guys are excited about on the internet.
Love, Paul.
