Oh good, someone’s decided to make a show out of the comments section. And Twitter. And Reddit. You know what? Basically the internet itself.
Image: Alex Cranz/Gizmodo
EW reports that Jeffrey Reddick (Final Destination) and Stephen Twardokus’s pilot The Feed has been bought by Hood River Entertainment. Not to be confused with the Australian SBS news and satire program of the same name, the idea comes from Roy Crabaugh, whom I imagine must have spent far too much time online.
The Feed, named presumably for things like the Twitter feed and an RSS feed and also, you know, a pun on hunger, is about a demon who springs forth from the black hole of hatred that the internet has been so kind as to provide a home for.
Even though the pilot hasn’t been shot yet, ideas for seasons one and two already exist. The first season would revolve around a smart house taken over by the demon and powered by racism. Smart House 2: Your Mum’s a Racist (suggested title) will have the demon use the house to attack the black family living in it, powered by the local community’s latent hatred for them. Which isn’t quite online hate, but I’ll go with it.
Season two is described by EW as being about a “middle-class, Christian family whose beliefs are warped by the demon to turn their town against them”. The seasons will be connected by the group of demonologists and hackers (sure) who fight the demon.
It’s an interesting idea, with not a little bit of Black Mirror in it (which the buyer explicitly mentioned in a statement). Pairing tech and the supernatural is a classic combination, like chocolate and peanut butter. That said, most of us who work here have violent and angry flashbacks to actual things we’ve experienced at the mere mention of “online hatred”, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to watch this without anti-anxiety medication of some kind.