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This is me when I'm feeling nothing.
No joy. No sorrow.
No pain. Just nothing.
Maybe that's just what scrolling on your phone is.
But according to my therapist, the
problem is that the numbness is spreading.
I have been working with patients for 20 years now,
and formerly they've come in to the session rooms,
complaining about strong emotions.
That they have this anxiety or depression,
feeling abandoned and feeling alone,
but now they have the opposite.
They don't feel anything anymore.
They are, what do you call it... some kind of flatliner.
What is happening? It's not just me.
So many people sense that something
is messing with their emotions.
I want to find out why.
My job is to make prime-time science and
tech documentaries for public television.
Can you guys wear these? Is that like a thing?
For years, I've covered stories all over the world of tech.
So I decide, as I travel the world
reporting on stories about the internet,
I'll seek my own answers.
I'll film how cutting-edge technology hacks our emotions.
Every single one of them.
The thalamus is not consciously controlled.
Yes!
Big response in the brain.
Kiss my ass.
Who are the people that change the way we feel?
And I'll smash you.
And how can I make myself feel again?
I don't get why you're here filming us.
I am a troll, and...
I'm like a low-down, dirty troll.
And it doesn't make sense to me why
you'd be here filming me or him.
And I just... I don't get it, so...
We can do it, though. If you wanna
come and film me, talking about this
and let me keep going on and on, I can do that, too.
But we're not... I don't think we are what you're looking for.
Unless we totally are, and I just don't know.
If some scientist told you,
"Hey, go film some low-down, dirty dude at a video store,
because he's gotten a few people to fall for his trolls."
Great! But it still just doesn't
make any sense to me. That's all.
I don't know why you're here. Why are you here?
At the dawn of the internet,
trolls were some of the first to recognize
the power of manipulating emotions.
While other early users of the web saw it
as a way of exchanging simple information...
... the trolls recognized how powerful
pushing emotional buttons could be.
Andrew is a prime example of a present-day troll
with an almost scientific approach to pissing people off.
So I can say something like,
"LOL, kid." Just throwing in the
word "kid" will get their attention.
Here on the word "baby doll".
"Maybe someday...
... you can cook breakfast for me...
... in the kitchen..." You can do this thing.
"... where you belong."
He shows me around the adult video shop in Orlando, Florida,
where he works as manager.
Andrew's also a semi-professional wrestler,
which he sees as an extension of the trolling lifestyle.
Why are all the world-class trolls
that you know also wrestlers?
When you're a pro wrestler,
you are playing these psychological
games with people and their emotions.
And that's what you do as a troll.
In wrestling, it's the same thing. It's just...
A lot of it is make-believe, but you're
making people believe, basically.
Slam!
Yes! Yes!
Andrew sees himself as something
of an expert in channeling anger.
To see what this could do to someone, I meet with Kim.
She had been personally trolled by Andrew for more than a year.
I met him online in a Facebook chat room.
He was trolling everyone and playing tricks on everyone.
Just trying to get a negative reaction out of the group.
Do you sometimes feel like your
emotions are being totally messed with?
Yeah, it's so frustrating the way
that he just has to engage with people
by pissing them off, offending them.
"I was thinking, let's do another women's
march. The last one was so effective."
"What do you say, ladies? How about
we go out tomorrow and march?"
"Or are you too busy drinking wine?"
Trying to get attention in this way,
almost drawing power from annoying other people
and keeping himself in your thoughts almost gives him power,
almost dominating.
This guy did not get enough attention as a child.
Andrew is an OG internet troll.
He sees himself as an avant-garde
artist, working pro bono.
But at the same time, other parties
see the potential capital gains
of messing with people's emotions.
In China, I see this become the basis of entire industries.
Our company was China's first to
professionally produce internet stars.
We are the first company to specialize in beautiful women...
Let me start over!
I enter a large factory complex.
The hundreds of people working here are the opposite of trolls.
While trolls master anger, these
workers craft a very different product.
Shengxi Entertainment is a live-streaming talent agency.
From a complex with countless fake bedrooms,
the company's entirely female
talent livestream their lives 24/7.
Thank you, Mr. Luo, for the donation!
Is it about to stop?
How did starting this company
become such a moneymaker for you?
Currently, our office employs more than 200 livestreamers.
We "manufacture" new livestreamers in this facility.
They stay here and are trained for anywhere from 1 to 4 months
and work in the 20+ livestream rooms in our office.
Ultimately, we set them up to livestream from home
after we mold them into form.
Steps 5, 6, and 7 are a bit tougher.
Ankle out for 5.
For 6 you need to look as adorable as possible.
7 and 8...
No, the hands are up higher.
Do you think we can move this a
little bit over here? Is that okay?
Jin is the biggest star at the love factory.
No makeup.
She's a master at making people far and
wide develop strong feelings for her.
I want to know how she does it, so I ask her manager, Emma.
Our goal for Jin He is to develop
her into a top-tier livestreamer.
So we manage her quite strictly.
Wow! Thanks so much for the donation.
Mr. Honey! I didn't see you come in.
It feels so good to have you guys all here!
When Jin He first came to us, she was
on our minimum salary of $120 per month.
Now she receives $30,000 to $45,000
worth of donations every month.
Look, another one of my darlings is here. I'm so happy.
Revenue is generated from direct donations from fans.
Thanks for the generous gift from
Mr. Honey. You're a great guy.
Thanks for the gift from Mr. Piao. Yes, give it to me!
The company plans for you... As you know,
originally it was to make you a singer,
but the new plan is focusing more
on becoming a big livestreamer.
Nowadays, livestreamers are more profitable
than all but the biggest traditional celebrities.
I don't mind. I'm OK with anything
as long as I can still make music.
Today's lesson is a journey into the world of naive rich people.
I'm sure you all want to increase profit
by getting rich guys to visit
your livestream rooms more often.
Some of you have beautiful features,
so we go the "beauty route".
Others of you aren't very pretty.
You might opt to go for a more "innocent" style
to give the user a feeling of a pure "first love".
Regardless, it's crucial to determine
which users are big spenders.
Otherwise, don't waste your time.
Remember, time as a livestreamer is very valuable.
A real rich guy won't be bragging about
his money in your livestreaming room.
Anyone doing that is full of shit.
Here are a few characteristics of rich users.
They're lonely. They're looking for a spiritual connection.
He comes in,
and he lurks in the livestream room for a while.
At first he's just observing you.
But then you suddenly say the
right thing, sing the right song.
Then the donations start coming.
Ignore the people who are all talk.
A real rich guy won't start small.
Their first donations will be big.
I want to talk about your
feelings. How does Jin affect them?
I do think that virtual relationships
can replace real-life relations.
She makes me feel warm, and I think the feeling is mutual.
It definitely can replace real-life relationships.
In South China, I meet another one of Jin's most loyal fans.
I have a present here that Jin He gave me. It's a spicy sauce.
Beef and pickled peppers hot sauce.
It's true that I already ate all of the sauce.
But I would never throw it away like some normal hot sauce.
I'm keeping it preserved in this box.
She isn't even in my real life at all,
but she still does this for me.
It truly touched my heart.
It makes me feel like she really looks at me as a friend.
I'm now only $10,000 away from being a "7th-level fan".
I've already given Jin He about $75,000. Yeah...
Thanks. That one's for you, Mr. Long.
Maybe it isn't surprising that
there's a huge demand to feel loved.
But actually, it seems there's a
market for every emotion conceivable.
Even the ones we try to avoid.
Veles, Macedonia, became famous in 2016
as the fake-news capital of the world.
Some say that the town played a critical
role in the election of Donald Trump.
The work done here made local
fake-news kingpins very, very rich.
Fake news is something that we engineer
to get maximum clicks and attention.
It's easy to make news for people
like Trump voters, for example,
because they are rednecks in some way.
People who'll click on almost everything.
Another category of people who are easy to work with...
... is feminists.
It's easy to manipulate passionate people
because they truly believe in something.
The local gold rush was financed by Google.
They placed ads on the fake news sites.
And the income was a lifeline for average
Macedonians struggling to make ends meet.
Including Elena, Alex's protégé.
It's surprising to learn that Elena is a
doctor and surgeon at a local hospital.
She's also an activist,
who in the past protested against
fake news in her own country.
But now she's in debt and only sees one way out.
Can I sit here? Or not?
- Sit down. - Or sit down.
Generally, you need some European states,
Western-European, definitely America,
because their clicks are worth more, they pay more.
Fear is the key to choosing the subject you write about.
You need to consider human psychology.
People have a long history of living in fear.
Yes.
The general key is to exploit this fact.
You find a trending fear... Let's call it "trending fear".
And you report on it.
And you work on that subject. Yeah.
You just find a fear out in the world. Find a fear, that's it.
The more mysterious you make it sound,
the more paranoia it will create.
Elena's task is to find something scary to write about.
But it actually isn't so easy.
Most scary topics already have
fake-news people writing about them.
I found a Facebook group.
Look at these people, they're so... How should I put it...
They're so into it. They live
with these thoughts, these fears.
They believe that there's a looming
danger, that something bad will happen.
These people are paranoid, and that's exactly what I need.
Elena probes the recesses of people's insecurities.
She finds fear and reinforces it in the articles she writes.
A trail behind an airplane.
Is it just water vapor?
Or maybe it's a perilous chemical
cocktail that controls our brains.
In California, I meet up with Elana.
She had shared the articles that Elena in Macedonia wrote online.
This is the air we breathe that this is affecting.
If you think it's natural clouds
over your head... If only you knew.
We're breathing it, and it's going
into our lungs, messing up our lungs,
and then going into our blood
and then moving to the brain, where it can,
because of the nanoparticles, easily
go through the blood-brain barrier.
Oh yeah, that looks like a trail.
It's unusual, because it's just sitting there.
I can say it's scary. Of course it's scary.
And now they can use the 5G-6G system
to beam into us
and make us complacent, make us angry,
make us have certain thoughts...
So they can affect our emotions?
Emotions, thoughts and behavior.
That's what they claim.
So the point of the chemtrails is to
influence our emotions and our thoughts?
Yeah, the endgame is that,
along with full-spectrum dominance over the planet.
Full control over every aspect of
life on Earth. That's what they want.
Maybe she's a conspiracy theorist,
but I recognize what she's feeling.
Even if her theories aren't the right answer,
it is true that forces around the
world are messing with our emotions.
Including some of the most brilliant minds of our time.
I'm at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hate.
To see how the world of computer science approaches emotion,
I meet with Dr. Rosalind Picard.
Can you show me anger now?
That's not allowed.
She's the founder of the field of affective computing,
a branch of computer science that
researches how to influence human emotion.
She's showing me a sentograph, a
machine that measures your emotions
based on the way your fingers touch a button.
It's the very first machine ever made
for measuring someone's emotions.
Grief.
And the first one of these represents anger.
Invented by the scientist Manfred Clynes,
the sentograph assumed
that the body channeled emotions
in a universal and measurable way.
Wow!
It was one of Rosalind's inspirations to
start an entire field of computer science.
Originally, I defined affective computing as
computing that relates to, arises from
or deliberately influences emotion
and more broadly affective phenomenon.
And when you are crafting the computer interactions
so that you are mindful of the person's affective state,
what it's likely to be and what you wish it were,
then it's an example of affective computing,
trying to directly influence
those emotions with the computing.
What started with the sentograph has now
evolved into endless new technologies.
Your pupil would get a little bit larger.
Billions of dollars are being invested
in the companies that make them.
The seven core emotions are joy...
They're building a future where paying
customers can see what people are feeling.
At all times.
This is the future. Everybody is going to read your emotions.
Do you think, now that people can
measure emotions with such precision,
that more people will mess with our emotions?
People did this before the technology.
They just watch what provokes people.
Uh, if I pull the girl's hair, does that provoke her? No.
If I kick her in the shin, that
provokes her. I'll keep doing that.
There are people who just like to get reactions.
Now that you can get them at scale.
I can't help but think that affective
computing companies have a curious way
of looking at our emotions.
One that traces back half a century.
Emotions are centered in the lower part of the brain.
The thalamus is not consciously controlled.
In the 1950s, one of the most famous
psychologists in the world, B.F. Skinner,
was experimenting with how to use
technology to condition people's behavior.
In the process, he created a new way of seeing human emotions.
An emotion to me is like a need. Fear is
a heightened probability of running away.
Anger is a heightened probability of attack.
Emotion, as far as I'm concerned,
deals with changes in the probability of
engaging in certain kinds of behavior.
And we're going to try another pigeon
now, and I will try to pick out...
To Skinner, emotions were only interesting
when they encouraged subjects to act.
The bird has been already conditioned to eat
when the magazine sounds and the light flashes.
For most of history, feelings were dark and mysterious.
But what if they were brought into the world of science?
Perhaps by stimulating certain emotions
you could control a subject's behavior.
There we go, all the way around.
I doubt there's a risk that affective
computing will induce brainwashing.
There are so many stages that the brain has to go through
before a decision is made, that if
those stages are not lined up and met,
you're not going to be influenced by this.
And yet, what social creatures do
all the time is influence each other.
That's what it means to be a social creature.
You're embedded with other members of
your species and try to influence them.
You know what, the dogs are actually here.
In Los Angeles, I arrange a meeting with Dr. Paul Zak.
He's the cofounder of a firm
that helps clients take advantage
of the insights of affective computing.
There's the dogs. Hi there. Look at that.
- This is Dozu. Wanna say hi? - Sure.
Hello. Oh, look at that.
Paul is about to give me a demonstration
of his company's technology.
Look at these sweeties.
For this, he's joined by Loni Edwards,
one of America's leading dog influencer agents.
So, there's a ton of money in the industry.
The most high-level way to bring joy out of a fellow human
is to have something that makes them happy.
In the industry I'm in, pets make
people happy. Dogs make people happy.
So having them in the content really brings out joy.
- Gracie... - Good boy. Roxy's here.
Good girl, good boy. Good girl!
- No, no, no! - Stay.
- Good dog! - Good girl.
Perfect, that's it. Gracie.
While Loni and the team have done well,
they're still interested in learning
how they can generate even more views and income.
For this, they turn to Dr. Zak's technology.
It can help them figure out which of
their dogs make people feel the most joy.
And why.
I watch as Loni and Dr. Zak read results from two subjects
wearing biosensors.
Big peak. Big response in the brain.
Flight attendants are holding them.
- Did that impact at all? - No.
Seeing actually inside the human is next level. So exciting.
85 out of 100. Outstanding.
We look at the second-by-second
data, 91. It's out of 100, right?
Your brain is just working the whole time.
I believe Paul when he says he
isn't trying to brainwash people.
But still, something seems off.
So here's where we're seeing nothing.
Curtains are closed, curtain opens, big peak.
Big response in the brain.
You know, it's like seeing your
infant child or your romantic partner.
It's that good. We are in love with these
dogs though we've never seen them before.
By the end of the evening, Paul uses science to show
that Gracie Doodle brings people the most joy.
Whether they like it or not.
That's amazing. That's so interesting.
I look into the very image of modern mind control,
and maybe it's not so scary.
I ask myself, maybe there's part
of us that wants to be controlled.
What's going through your head right now, Robert?
I'm thinking about how totally screwed
I am and how I'm at your mercy,
and there's not a darned thing I can do
about it. This is something I ask for.
I honestly have no idea what's gonna
happen, or what you're gonna make me do.
Oh look, a camera. Let's turn this on
and see if we can see his dumb face.
There's his dumb face!
He looks very pensive. He looks nervous.
He's just sitting right there.
Just sitting and watching and terrified.
Sometimes you meet someone who gives you
a new sense of clarity and perspective.
I'm the one and only Tech Dom,
the mistress of hi-tech domination.
Mistress Harley holds the trademark
for the term "tech domination"
along with countless other iterations of the term.
I'll take care of this right away.
Yes, you will!
I go to Beverly Hills to meet her
along with her manservant, Dick Jones.
From her home, she shows me the surveillance footage
of the thousands of men she controls over the internet.
She says that you don't need whips and
chains to truly dominate a human being.
Through using technology to control their emotions
she can dominate people on a deeper
level than was ever possible before.
Starting with her tool of preference.
I'm Mistress Harley's slave. I'm a
complete loser, totally pathetic and weak.
I do anything Mistress Harley tells me to do.
If she tells me what to eat or to make a confessional video.
She controls what I wear, so she doesn't
let me wear clothes when I'm home.
She makes me wear this collar.
She controls my privacy, so she can
make me make confessional videos.
She has cameras in my home.
I have one here in my room. I have another one in my bathroom.
I'm getting one for my living room
so I'll have no privacy at all.
The only freedom I have in my life is
stuff she hasn't decided to dictate to me.
Otherwise I just do whatever she tells me to do.
If you think about the physiological
sensations of shame or humiliation,
they're very similar to the
physiological sensations of arousal.
To make somebody feel shame, you need to get to know them.
Not everybody is ashamed of the same things.
Some people are ashamed of being called a slut.
Other people are proudly sluts.
So the more you know about someone,
the easier it is to figure out what they are ashamed of.
And gathering data on someone will
give you great insight into that.
Google knows how to sell you peanuts.
I know how to make you feel bad.
You're bad, and you should feel bad.
I want you to go find something heavy,
because every time I sink a pool ball in this table,
you're gonna smash your dick with that heavy thing.
Oh, there's goes one. Punch yourself in the nuts.
Aha?
There's another one. Another one. Another one.
Are they hurting yet? Are they all big and swollen and painful?
Oh, keep hitting them.
Punish your nuts. Punish your nuts.
Because I always win.
You always lose!
I'm trying to comprehend what I see.
What Harley does doesn't seem to be much different
from the other tech stories I film.
She manipulates emotions in order to
completely dominate the human being.
She's just a lot more honest about it.
I can see everything he's doing.
He doesn't know that I'm watching him,
but I could speak to him at any moment.
This must be how God feels.
That's fascinating. So...
A lot of similarity but then a couple
of interesting individual differences.
Ale had the 4, the corrugator muscle,
the furrowed eyebrow plus a little
bit of the upper eyelid raise.
Very strong 23, which is that tightening
of the lip, the buccinator muscle.
Facial-action coding turns emotions and
feelings into a simple set of numbers.
All discernible through scanning a face.
It's the cornerstone of tech that
reads and manipulates our emotions.
Joy, love, sorrow.
Just a number
that's the same for everyone in all places and all times.
I think it's heated because people feel
that emotions are sacred qualities of their identity,
or what we used to call the soul.
And they're... that...
I am the only one who can be the
arbiter of the meaning of my emotions.
There's this feeling like, my
passions are just uniquely who I am,
and that's sacred. And it turns out that's wrong.
A machine can only understand our
inner world by reducing it to numbers.
But I can't help but think it can't be right.
If our emotions are just numbers,
then the right formula can make us feel anything.
We're going to try another pigeon now.
And I will try to pick out some particular pattern of behavior
and make it a more frequent part of the repertoire.
My thoughts were turned to B.F. Skinner.
After years of experimenting on
pigeons, he discovered something.
Behavior can be molded pretty much any way you want.
You've talked about the need for a technology of behavior.
Yes, well, we certainly do need one.
All the great problems today need a behavioral solution.
How are we going to get people to stop breeding so much,
to cut down on the consumption of goods
that we're running out of, supplies.
Stop glutting the environment.
Stop beating each other up personally or internationally.
These are all behavioral problems
and have to be solved by something like
a behavioral technology, it seems to me.
He became obsessed with creating a
machine that could build a better world
by controlling everyone's behavior.
A playpen has been selected for our experimental environment,
because it is one to which the child is well-acquainted.
The unfamiliar additions include a
food dispenser loaded with snacks.
The Skinner Box was meant to
revolutionize the raising of children.
By keeping a child confined to this space,
they could be connected at all times to a powerful technology
capable of molding their behavior.
It is best to separately establish
the function of the light and sound
as stimuli which reliably signal an upcoming reinforcement.
What if children could always be connected to a machine?
A device that could use light and sound
to shape the way they act, think and feel.
No recurring group of activities immediately preceding the action
of the light and sound is singled out for reinforcement
in order to avoid the building in
of an unwanted form of behavior.
Skinner dreamed of a day when this
technology would take over the world.
Maybe Russia wasn't quite what B.F. Skinner was dreaming of.
The airborne brigade made a big
contribution to the Soviet Union!
Human emotion is the biggest battleground in this war.
How do you make the youth of a country
proud of their nation, of their military?
Well, with a tool like TikTok, you
can make them feel anything you want.
Ivan is the fake name of a social-media
entrepreneur in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The hashtag with my name gets 1.5 billion views.
I'm basically a household name here.
Our company has a lot of talent.
These guys behind me can sing, dance.
They're sexy, cool, goth.
Ivan creates TikTok content
funded by the Russian government.
Like, yeah, Russia! Awesome!
He shows us some videos that represent his work.
You're 10, scrolling through TikTok.
Then you suddenly see one of your favorite
stars reading lines we wrote for them.
Russians are the genetically strongest, most sincere
and most persistent race in the world.
Don't be scared now. History shows
everyone else was always afraid of us.
Strength and justice is rooted in our superior genetics.
It may seem crude, but there's an art to it.
Russia is full of fire and power.
This word is the flame of victory.
Let's raise Russia's flag.
We also have talent for the really young target groups.
We're making a public service announcement
for TikTok. Do you know what that is?
Of course.
Let me get you something to stand on.
Who doesn't need a stand? Who's the tallest one?
- I need a stand. - Me too.
OK, step up.
- World of Tanks. - Our poor tanks.
These are all American tanks. In
our video you shoot at these tanks.
An average kid is watching hundreds, even
thousands of videos on TikTok every day.
Never before have human beings watched
videos at this speed and volume.
The kids don't even remember anything they
watch. But they're left with feelings!
Fire!
Fire! Fire!
We are proud patriots!
Fire!
My own son? I'd never allow him to touch a phone.
I'd do my best to keep him away from it.
Because I want my children not only to have brains -
but also to be capable of using them.
Why am I showing you these things?
Maybe I'm just looking for someone to talk to.
This is our world now, not just in Russia but everywhere.
This is it. This is all there is.
I feel like I've hit a dead end.
Everyone I've met seems to be perfectly
happy living their lives on the internet.
Am I all by myself?
I think maybe I need to talk to someone else.
Near where I live in Copenhagen, Denmark,
I meet with therapist Morten Fenger.
He's one of Denmark's leading experts on
how the internet affects our emotions.
He's passionate and committed to raising awareness of the issue.
I feel sorry for mankind
and for people, parents, children, everyone,
because the telephone has hijacked your brain, your mind.
You're not yourself anymore.
What shall I do? I tell people, come on, wake up.
But they will not wake up. They prefer to be on their... phones!
I'm... I'm so annoyed by this, frustrated.
What shall I do? I keep telling
people, get away from the telephone.
They will not listen, they prefer the telephone!
What is happening here?
What shall I do? I still keep on fighting, but I'm exhausted.
I'm so tired of being this expert nobody will listen to.
Every day, people come in and out of Morten's office,
feeling exactly the same way I do.
Maybe they're better at talking about the problems than I am.
Is it okay for us to film, or would you rather we go outside?
I'm okay with you staying here.
I can stay? Okay. Then, all right.
Welcome, Jonathan.
I feel sad about not trying to see
what else the world has to offer.
One thing that scares me is
that it just feels better to be on the computer my whole day.
Is there anything in the real world better
than what a modern computer can offer?
I can go through the whole
emotional spectrum in 10 minutes.
I experience everything, even faster than that.
It's a totally cold and empty feeling.
I feel the same way,
no matter if I'm happy, angry or affected by it some other way.
It's like...
... like an addiction.
This feeling that I get.
So, like, how does it happen? Why are we feeling numb?
So you have this concentration of the
feeling of joy, of anger, of anxiety.
Everything is so concentrated.
The internet creates feelings for people.
They have all the feelings served to them.
They just have to eat them
and then after a while, they feel empty again.
They don't create the feelings
themselves. They don't know how to do it.
It's the first time in history, they
have experts to create feelings.
So you have experts creating feelings on the internet.
That's the new stuff. You aren't accustomed to that.
Do you have some personal reason
for your thoughts on the internet?
The job or challenge for me as a father is:
Every day is a struggle to keep their attention with me.
Getting them connected to me instead of the internet.
I feel like every day I lose ground to the internet.
I feel defeated by the internet.
They've taken away my children from me.
They have abducted them, or kidnapped them.
So... I'm in great despair.
We're all exhausted.
But what about the people who exhaust us? How do they feel?
I'm sort of lonely, and...
I'm forced to be independent,
obviously. And I always have been.
I've known for years that I have
these values and the strong belief
of having a family and coming home and taking care of everyone
and having dinner on the table and feeling love inside and out.
You give what you get.
- Hello. - Hey, Mom.
I saw the video you sent the other night
with the eyes popping out of the head.
I never saw anything like it before... No.
The other internet things I saw were very... disturbing to me.
Some of the other... things.
I kind of feel like maybe sometimes
you guys aren't looking hard enough.
I have this talent...
I don't even know your artistic ability.
You've said you've done all sorts of art.
I've never seen anything that you've done.
Right.
Do you think there's like something behind the trolling?
I don't know. Just maybe part of it is...
... things that I don't want to confront
about myself or that I hate about myself.
That does what?
It's hard to explain, man.
I mean, there's gotta be a reason
for all the trolling, right?
That's the thing, though. I'm not
necessarily super-mean to anyone.
I mean, I like getting attention... I guess.
Not as much anymore. I don't care as much anymore, but...
This might be what messing with other
people's emotions does to a person.
But I'm starting to see an entire world
that runs on manipulating emotions.
Yiwu, China, is the e-commerce capital of the world.
This is the place that brands and sells the Chinese products
flooding the internet.
People in this part of China once made
money by making things in factories.
Now, they work with emotions, trying to
prod people into buying stuff online.
Just in. Order now and get a free case!
Interact with the livestreamer, and you might get free gifts!
Buy now and get a free pair of socks. Just do it now.
For a boomtown, the feeling here is melancholic.
Nearly everyone who arrives in Yiwu fails at breaking it,
returning home to the countryside to live in poverty.
Are you ready?
More established streamers help
newcomers learn the tricks of the trade.
Even if sometimes, it's a little bit of a struggle.
I'm going to kill you!
"What product are you selling?"
No one's hired me to do that yet,
I'm just opening my account now.
- He just opened his account. - It's my first livestream.
I used to have a workshop making
purses, but now the economy is failing
and my business has collapsed.
It's OK to tell them that you're nervous and scared.
I want to see if I can... improve my life through TikTok.
You're here because you've heard
about the opportunities on TikTok.
We all know it's hard to make
money nowadays in the real world.
It's the same all over the world.
There's nothing left in the real world.
Your idea to come over to TikTok really deserves a thumbs up.
Lee is a seasoned trainer in Yiwu
with a company that's instructed hundreds of newcomers.
But to me, he seems kind of burned out.
Many people come here with a desire to make money.
People who owe money, who need money
quick. People who have run out of options.
Us e-commerce livestreamers...
90% will fail.
These products are quite pricey
if they buy them in a store.
But if they buy them in your room,
they get a good deal! So TikTok is a special place!
- What is your own dream? - My own dream?
Actually...
We all have our own desires.
But I'm tired. You asking this question...
It's a question that really affects me.
I've endured one year.
I haven't seen my son for one year.
If only my life situation was better,
I could have just stayed home with my family.
This is the honest truth. I'm hurting my son.
Yiwu seems like a city of broken dreams.
But I still want to see what success looks like.
What about the people who do land
contracts working on the internet?
To make it in a place like this,
what special something do you need to bring to the table?
What I do is all about making something shocking.
It's about showing a test of strength.
I got into this because of problems with internet gambling.
A lot of young people are doing it now,
often drawn in by internet scam websites.
I saw it as easy money.
That's why I decided to enter this industry.
Time to spin the wheel. Good luck to all of my viewers.
Let's hope it's red, so I can get more of your donations.
Doesn't look good for me. It landed on black.
Black is a punishment for me. Red is a reward for you.
This is how we spinning-wheel livestreamers are doing it.
3 liters of red wine.
I'm not sure I can drink this in one go.
Thank you for all the donations. Thank you, everyone watching me.
Thanks, bosses.
Time to drink.
Mom, Dad, bring a bucket.
- What? - A bucket.
This isn't enough to floor me.
This is normal.
Today is a special occasion. It's really special.
I haven't been streaming for a month.
If you're drinking for us, please stop.
No, no no. Not at all.
- I do this on every livestream. - Don't drink any extra for us.
A normal day is 5 liters of liquor.
You're going crazy with the drinking.
Today, they make you drink 10 drinks. Tomorrow, 50.
- I'm in control. - The next day, it's 100.
200 drinks, is that enough for you?
I can handle that.
People are calling me all the
time, trying to make me stop you.
I say that I've tried, but you keep livestreaming.
It's not about that.
I know what I'm doing.
No matter what you do, it's hard to make money.
We can't make it if you're dead.
There's so much left.
My dad says there's 1 liter left. I think it's half.
This is a family operation.
This is my mother cracking raw eggs for me.
My hard work has resulted in getting a work contract.
The platform signed a contract directly with me.
TikTok pays me directly to livestream for them.
I think I finally feel something.
I feel despair.
But then I realize
this feeling is shared by nearly everyone I've met.
In Macedonia, the fake-news writer
Elena tells me she feels stuck,
navigating between different lives.
It's sad, because people who share fake news are earning more
than I could earn as a surgeon.
Everyday life is just a fight to have a decent life.
You can't just sit here, thinking
about the meaning of life
if you don't know if you can afford to
pay for your semester or feed your family.
After a while, you're just...
You just ask yourself, why not?
I'm just one more fish in the sea.
I was protesting against fake news,
corruption and everything in my country.
Students must wake up to the problems in civil society!
It was all for nothing. You see all the politicians
that are just telling lies every day, and nothing is changing.
After a while you say, I really
love my country, but I love me more.
I love myself more.
Nobody attends the real world anymore.
They prefer the telephone all the time.
They're just like zombies. What shall I do?
This woman posted this heinous picture of her
just super-pregnant, alien-like pregnant with two twins.
And she saw fit to post a before-and-after pic.
I'll just go right into it. I wrote, "Oh, fucking gross."
"You women are becoming assholes on
this thing nowadays. Just being honest."
Maybe she'll see it and respond,
or other people will see it and...
... they'll start... talking to me.
11 million impressions.
- I can see you're tired - My heart feels tired.
I know. This is going to be a tough month.
Actually I'm not giving you a day off in the coming months.
Once we've earned enough, we can rest.
Until then it's every day?
Yes, seriously, a day off can't
happen. You'll be this tired every day.
Welcome, everyone.
Welcome.
Today... No songs today, guys. No songs.
We can just chat a bit tonight.
I know you're tired and had a tough day,
but how could you go on camera like this?
If you're going to be like this, just sign off now.
We need to talk about your attitude.
Are you OK, Jin?
Tired.
Morten, you've been treating internet addiction for 20 years.
Is there a big thing that you've learned?
The biggest horror for me in my profession is
when people come to me for my service,
they actually prefer the internet to being alive.
When they have to create their feelings
themselves, it's too difficult,
so they prefer to stay in the artificial world
with these artificial feelings making them feel empty.
People want structure and control.
They want a power and balance.
They don't want to be free. They
want someone to tell them what to do.
In some ways, there's a liberation in submission.
I see that people prefer to feel
nothing, to be left without feelings
because it's easier.
They don't want to be in the real world
because it's too flat, too ugly, too gray.
It's a much better life on the internet.
I can remember a time when I felt
things stronger than I do now.
Sometimes, when I'm scrolling away in my bed, I ask myself:
Is this just how it's going to be now?
Or is there a way out?
Back in Copenhagen, I'm trying to digest what I've seen.
I go back to my normal job as a science reporter.
So, what percentage of Copenhagen's
fecal matter is processed here?
On this plan, it's about 70% of Copenhagen's sewage water.
What have you learned through working
here? The most interesting thing.
How many resources we can take out of
the water and bring back into society.
So you can make a lot of good things of out shit.
I decide I want to make something
nice out of everything I've seen.
So I invite Morten to my editing suite to get some advice.
Alright! You did all of these feelings, all these emotions.
Fascinating. Good movie.
Over there, propaganda, TikTok.
Oh yes. A huge phenomenon, TikTok.
What's it called, the Chinese version?
Douyin.
I don't know what I learned, so much.
I went out to find all these people,
and I guess all I saw was that for every emotion we have,
there's someone really good on the internet at manipulating it.
Yeah, some kind of wizard out there.
Yeah, there's like a wizard for every emotion,
completely changing the way we feel it and overloading us
and warping that emotion. I saw that.
They crap on our feelings. They control us completely.
Right, and... you know.
You don't think it would be
practically and academically sound for me
to give this film a happy ending,
like a hopeful ending in some way.
Let me think about it, David.
I think that there are always two ways to go.
One way is to change people's understanding of the world,
and the other is where you tell them what to do.
So, you can be a prophet saying, "Say no
to the internet because it will harm you."
The other way is that we have a much better solution.
You can be with your loved ones.
Go out and have feelings right now.
Just go out. It's so simple.
The model for a better world is to be in
real life. It's already there, for free.
You just have to be with people you love. Just do it.
I return to Florida to help Andrew pack up his house.
He's getting ready to drive to
Vermont to move in with a girlfriend
he met on the internet.
There comes a point in time
where you wake up next to no one.
So much that it... becomes like the
normal. It's comfortable enough, but...
She actually makes me feel like I deserve somebody so nice.
The curious thing is that this nice
girl was not just any nice girl.
She was a very specific nice girl.
This guy did not get enough attention as a child.
Hey.
- I love you. - I love you too.
Do you see me as a low-down, dirty...
No, no.
But I see your social-media presence and whatnot as...
A slimeball?
No, just sort of irritating at points.
And it's just like, come on, man. Just be yourself.
Because I know that's not who you are.
Oh!
You did it. I'm proud of you.
Is this the hardest thing you've had to do in your life?
- It's definitely not. - Exactly. So let's keep going.
But usually the hard stuff has a reason.
The reason for this you'll find out.
- So close. - I just don't care about it.
Well, what do you care about? That's something to explore.
Can I please not do it? I'll do anything else.
Feeling terrible is recovering from surgery.
There's nothing you can do about it.
There's something wrong with me. I'm sick or ill. I can't do it.
No, you just let your mind get the best of you.
That's fine.
And you say, "I can't do this!"
If you said, "I can do this," and
took your time and smiled through it,
it would be more enjoyable, it would move quicker.
I'm sorry if, "Come on, you can do it," is upsetting you.
I don't know how else to motivate you.
I just don't want to do this anymore.
- Will you do it for me? - I guess, yeah.
So come on, let's go.