Concept:

Our video centers around a connected social media companion named Pooh. Pooh encourages its owner to engage with social media and generate content online. At first Pooh’s owner, the protagonist, is lukewarm about posting to social media and only does so sporadically.

After being unboxed, Pooh makes a recommendation of what to post, based on its knowledge of what is popular on the internet. That post garners the protagonist an unprecedented number of likes. She is not used to receiving that much attention, and becomes enamored with the sensation of her temporary internet fame.

Pooh however, begins posting on the protagonist’s behalf with no regard for the cultural sensitivities associated with posting online under one’s name. Pooh is only programmed to create posts that receive the most number of likes; it either disregards or does not comprehend other potential negative outcomes.

As a result of Pooh’s narrow focus, the protagonist unknowingly offends a number of her friends. Because Pooh has been operating independently of her control, she does not realize what she has posted or that she may have offended people that she cares about. She finds out before her party that several of her friends will not be attending due to Pooh’s social media activity carried out in her name.

As the protagonist falls asleep one night, despite have several friends less than she used to, she has become obsessed with her followers and likes, and drifts of into sleep asking Pooh about her social media stats…

We feel this concepts demonstrates both the dangers of social media and of automation in the context of social relationships. As products are designed to be more predictive and thus provide more convenience to the user, they increasingly carry the risk of making assumptions that could be detrimental to the owner they are meant to assist.