‘Pluribus’ messaging took a dark turn… or did it?
The conversation surrounding Pluribus is growing impossible to ignore. The Apple TV+ series already had enough hype, thanks to the reunion of Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan and star Rhea Seehorn, but the actual twists and turns of the show have also kept people talking.
That talk recently spun into a viral post about a piece of Pluribus‘ real-world marketing… but it might not be what it seems. Over the weekend, a Reddit post from user Fun-Blueberry-2147 garnered a lot of chatter, claiming that their sister was hospitalized in a psych ward after encountering an advertisement for the show on her smart fridge. The advertisement, a stark yellow background with the words “WE’RE SORRY WE UPSET YOU, CAROL”, allegedly caused the sister (whose name is also Carol) to question her sanity and admit herself to the hospital.
“That’s my sister’s name,” the post reads in part. “Carol. I sent her the photo and asked if this was what she saw. She confirmed it. Some creepy advert in a place where an advert shouldn’t usually go has sent her to the bloody hospital and triggered a review of the efficiacy of her antipyshotics. Is this even legal in the UK? Running creepy adverts like that on a smart fridge with absolutely no way of knowing who could’ve seen them?”
Posts and articles about the Reddit post became impossible to ignore… but upon further inspection, they might not be what they seem. Internet sleuths have discovered that the Reddit account was newly created, and that the story lines up pretty perfectly with a joke that had already been made on the Pluribus subreddit when the topic of the fridge was first brought up… nineteen days earlier.
Either way, this is weird…
No outlet has been able to get in touch with “Carol” or their sibling to get further information, so it’s not impossible that this is all a fake story destined to go viral. It’s easy to see why it would, thanks to the growing fandom around Pluribus, and just the unhinged nature of the world we live in. And as someone who has been way too online for way too long, I have endured my share of fake folk tales through my days on Tumblr.
But the fact still remains that… the fridge advertising is still weird. Regardless of a person’s reason for willingly buying a smart fridge, I can guarantee that it probably wasn’t to receive unsolicited advertising. Sure, it does fit the bizarre, borderline-ARG way that Pluribus‘ mystery has unfolded so far. Even when I was searching for an image for this article, the Google page asked “What are you searching for, Carol?” That level of reality-blurring conspiracy is fun to a extent, but it might not land well with someone who is just trying to grab a snack.
In hindsight, we all should have listened even more to 2016’s modern classic Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. One storyline in the film involves Conner4Real’s (Andy Samberg) music automatically being downloaded onto a popular brand of appliances, which soon causes literal chaos and people to turn on him. At the time, it was an escalation of U2’s iTunes gimmick with their 2014 album Songs of Innocence, as well as a showcase for Maya Rudolph’s scene-stealing Deborah. But just barely a decade later, it is now a reality… and it’s understandable for people to feel weird about it regardless.
(featured image: Apple TV+)
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