More on Humane’s ‘Change Everything’

Two more thoughts following up on my item this week regarding Humane’s Change Everything short film:

  • I got more notes from readers than usual about this item — it seemingly struck a chord. But one thing that surprised me were the number of people who wrote to me who admitted that even after my post, they hadn’t watched the film. I realize that in the mass market, most people spending time “on the internet” do little other than watch videos, but for some people, I think there’s severe video fatigue. Some people want to do anything but watch yet another video. (If that sounds like you, Daring Fireball is here for you, baby.)

  • For those people, and for posterity, allow me to summarize Humane’s short film in prose. Our protagonist is a young woman, in full color, lost in a crowd of thousands of faceless, monochromatic people who are all either staring at their phones or wearing XR headsets. Our hero has neither a phone nor headset, and thus she’s the only one who notices a solar eclipse is occurring. She follows the direction of the sun and finds herself in a jungle or forest, discovers something mysterious projecting onto the palm of her hand, and is happier for it.

    She spends most of her minute-long journey staring directly into the eclipse.

★ Friday, 22 July 2022