Making Connections: A #NOFILTER ARX Diary & Review (Updated 11/28/2018)

The following is a first for NoPro: an ARX diary. This post will be updated as the story unfolds. Disclosure: Psuedonym’s Ricky Brigante is a contributor to No Proscenium. He has no input in, or foreknowledge of, this diary.

What It Is

In September, Pseudonym Productions announced #NOFILTER, a six-week tiered ARX taking place primarily in digital space, with pop-up live events in select cities. In the weeks leading up to #NOFILTER’s launch, the public was given a chance to purchase participation in one of three tiers — Follower, Verified, and Influencer — each with different levels of participation. Regardless of tier, Pseudonym’s website promised a “horrifyingly satirical, totally narcissistic thriller starring YOU.”

The premise: America is in crisis. Popular social media sites have taken a severe toll on mental health, and have been linked to depression, abusive behavior, harassment, and more. On top of that, these social media sites have proven to be security risks, leaking private information. It’s time for the government to step in, providing their own safe and private alternative. Introducing CONNECTIONS…America’s nationalized, mandatory social media network.

As their story unfolds, I’ll be updating this space. (All experiences recounted from the top tier, “Influencer”.)

Week 1

The experience began with a bang, with characters appearing on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr to build out the world. Nolan Stauf, the tech genius who won the government contract for Connections, was celebrating on Twitter; Taylor Hill, the new face of Connections, was encouraging participants to raise their Wellness Scores by posting mantras and poses on Instagram; and the Tamarind Martini Society, a fan club of Nolan’s, was avidly documenting every martini he consumed on Tumblr. The countdown to Connections’ launch had begun.

But before it had even launched, Connections experienced controversy.

An eerie video released by the Tamarind Martini Society showed Nolan appearing to fall under the spell of a mysterious woman called “V,” signing a contract in a daze. A Twitter account popped up, wondering “#whoisV” and calling the woman a “TEMPTRESS”. The video was several weeks old: had Nolan signing the contract before or after winning the Connections contract? What did it say?

Meanwhile, Taylor Hill seemed to be experiencing some odd glitches in her videos, and sometimes seemed to blankly stare off in the distance. And anonymous texts went out to participants, from someone questioning Nolan’s deceptions.

The Los Angeles Event

It all culminated in a small Los Angeles pop-up event — Pseudonym’s first production on the west coast. In the 60-minute event, a small group of influencers and active participants were given the opportunity to meet two members of the Tamarind Martini Society — Elizabeth and Jeffrey (played by Karlie Blair and Terence Leclere) — and hear their story.

At first, Elizabeth and Jeffrey seemed excited about Connections. It was the latest effort from Nolan Stauf, after all, and they were longtime “Staufers” — Jeffrey even followed Nolan around the country, documenting his martini consumption with creepy devotion. Elizabeth encouraged us to share the aspects of Connections we were most excited about, and took dozens of selfies. But as time wore on, their excitement seemed to fade. Jeffrey, it turned out, was the one who had recorded Nolan’s meeting with V. The odd thing was, he couldn’t really remember it. He often spaced out when asked about it. And he hadn’t edited the video’s sharp cuts and glitches…that’s just how it had all recorded. Meanwhile, two TMS members wearing creepy emoji masks hovered in the background, refusing to tell us their names; and when asked about them, Jeffrey and Elizabeth simply went silent.

As the night wore on, they pulled us aside for private conferences, asking us strange questions. Would we call someone out on social media? Would we call out, say, Nolan? If we had to choose between Connections and Nolan, what would we choose? Had we ever done something we’d regretted on social media? What, exactly? They also told us that we’d been flagged as “troublemakers,” people who might be a problem for Connections. That, they said, was why they wanted to talk to us.

The night took a turn for the twisted as we were led to Nolan’s old apartment, which the TMS had preserved and turned into a shrine. There the TMS encouraged us to enact social media-type rituals. They called up two participants and demanded they recount their “something they regretted on social media” stories; then they pushed the rest of us to put on emoji masks and mock and vilify them. To be trolls, as we would be online. When participants refused, they mocked the participants. They simultaneously seemed to hate Connections and social media, yet wish to see these online rituals enacted in person; to loathe the lack of privacy in social media, yet expose our intimate stories. They railed against bullying as they bullied.

This was perhaps the most confusing aspect of the night: puzzling out what, exactly, TMS wanted. Did they want to create a society of rebels, ready to wrestle Connections for Nolan’s soul? Why estrange their potential recruits by betraying their trust? Why urge us to do something, then berate us for doing it while also berating us for not doing it? Their determination to see us as trolls was off-putting, and seemed poorly calculated if they wished to garner our support.

As the event ramped up to the end, we were walked through a ritual of smearing fake blood on the naked bodies of Elizabeth and Jeffrey. The ritual ended abruptly: when a video of “V” began to play, Jeffrey had second thoughts, seeming to panic. Elizabeth coolly knocked him down. We were disoriented enough that her final injunctions slipped past us, and we stood frozen as she walked away.

The event ended with a masked figure encouraging us to post images of the fake blood on our hands on social media, then instructing us to wash the blood off our hands, a perfect illustration of TMS’s self-contradictions.

It was chaotic enough that, as we gathered up our things and left, we struggled to make sense of what we had seen. Why was the video of V being shown? How did they get it? Was V a member of TMS, or was she the enemy? Was Connections TMS’s primary enemy? Or was it V? TMS seemed to be in a struggle for Nolan’s soul, but who was on the other end of it? And above all, what did they want from us?

We could only hope that the coming weeks would bring some answers…

Week 2

As we moved into Week 2, Taylor Hill’s Instagram mantras changed in tone. Her memes had always had a kooky, AI-generated feel to them, but now they seemed to be getting markedly darker (“Lobsters scream not from pain, but from ecstasy,” one claimed).

The anonymous texter also seemed to be entering a dark headspace, expressing disdain for “you humans” and recalling having been tormented by inauthentic people.

Meanwhile, Connections was starting to unravel. After the release of the “contract” video, suspicion was already high, and the government appeared to be monitoring Nolan’s email. When participant Erik Blair emailed Nolan about the strange events of the Los Angeles happening, the government reacted to the information by putting the Connections launch on hold for several days pending an investigation. In consequence, Taylor went dark on Instagram. The fate of Connections was uncertain.

On Muttr, someone who sounded an awful lot like Nolan fretted, “this g**d*** video could wreck it all. and it’s all my fault. #Vworry” He reported rewatching the video compulsively, trying to remember what exactly had happened that night: he remembered V (“HER. or it.”), and he remembered making a deal with her…but he had no memory of what his end of the deal entailed. (Note that the letters of Nolan’s last name, Stauf, are an anagram for FAUST…) What he did know: V, despite his hatred for her, had “lived up to her promise”. The nature of that promise, we could only guess — but Nolan did reveal that his real goal in creating Connections was finding and reconnecting with the woman he loved and lost.

Was V responsible for Nolan winning the government contract? What did she expect in return?

Despite its increasingly shady origins, Connections was given a second chance. Mid-week, phone calls went out to participants, allowing them to vote on whether Connections should indeed be launched. In response to popular vote, Connections at last went live on Friday.

The Orlando Event

Over the weekend, a Connections launch party was thrown in Orlando. Nolan, Taylor, and RJ from “Connections PR” all attended, RJ carefully monitoring Nolan’s every word. Taylor led attendees in NeoGa poses; Nolan gave inspiring speeches.

Nolan seemed every bit the starry-eyed visionary — until he saw V herself sweep in. Participants had begun to think of V as someone in the shadows, but she made no effort to hide herself, cheerfully befriending Taylor and seeming to be on good terms with Connections PR. (Her appearance seemed to cause glitches in all known camera recordings of the event.) After Nolan clocked her arrival, he appeared to grow increasingly agitated.

Over the course of the night, Nolan was seen drawing V (aka Vokorev) aside for a private conversation, and later appearing to argue with RJ about Vokorev’s presence. As his agitation grew, he nursed his tamarind martini: one participant reported that the bartender claimed he was told to “change the recipe” for the tamarind martini, and wondered if that meant that Nolan’s drink was spiked. At any rate, Nolan proceeded to give a passionate and seemingly drunken speech, in which he described falling in love with “Megan” in Thailand during a deeply sad phase of his life. (Note: Megan was, by some reports, the name of the woman he lived with in Los Angeles, and possibly the woman referenced on Muttr as the one he loved and lost.) He called Taylor “our Megan”, a phrase that baffled Taylor as much as it did the attendees. But by now, Taylor was also drunk, perhaps egged on by V, and between the two of them the event ended in chaos, with Taylor stumblingly unable to do NeoGa and Nolan collapsing.

Who would want to sabotage the Connections launch party? Signs certainly seemed to point to V…

Week 3

Rolling into week 3, the Connections site expanded in functionality. There were a number of ways to earn Wellness Points — posting NeoGa pictures, memeifying mantras, joining groups, commenting on posts, and posting regular selfies and other photos in a variety of contexts. Wellness Points earned users badges, and it was promised that these points could in the future be used in “transactions” of some kind. The site was promptly flooded with cooperative users.

But the “connection” function itself was confusing to many. Wellness Points “earned” users “connections” to other users, but the connections were one way. Thus, we might be able to view a user’s profile without them being able to view ours, or vice versa. Further throwing things into confusion, some people received a notification that AnonAmbassador had “approved” them as a friend, phraseology that no one had heard before. And the flood of notifications on every possible interaction, including someone else commenting on a photo that you had “liked,” made it difficult to sort out meaningful interactions from noise.

Which, perhaps, was the point.

Meanwhile, Taylor’s story took a turn. Taylor had been delighted by V at the launch party, and revealed that V had talked her into opening up about another side of herself (“#multipleselves”) — a side she had hidden out of fear for a long time. As it turned out, Taylor was a former cam girl. After being doxxed, she’d turned to the government for help, and the government had helped her to set up a new identity. (As for the doxxer? She had been assured that the government had “taken care of it”.) But now, at the encouragement of Vokorev and others, she wanted to dip a toe back into that life, under the pseudonym “Abigail Vex”. In a 38-minute livestream, she teased participants, asked about their pseudonyms, vented about the stresses of living a specific identity on social media, and confessed herself to be aroused by watching people perform transgressive tasks for her. Lying, cheating. She vaguely suggested that this wasn’t about sex, or about being a dom, and clarified that people were not watching her cam…but she went on to urge people to surrender to her by posting pictures of the contents of their wallets, pictures of themselves licking the floor, sharing what “excited” them, etc. She followed up with further instructions on risks to take and rules to break, giving feedback on the results in another livestream.

All the while, someone going by “V” was commenting with helpful links. Was Vokorev the one orchestrating “Abigail”? Based on the pictures Taylor posted on Connections, which showed Taylor and Vokorev spending more and more time together…it seemed very likely.

Week 4

Week 4 was the darkest and most overtly supernatural week to date. To kick things off, while two Connections members were live-streaming their thoughts on Connections, they were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was unclear what happened next, but they appeared to be highly alarmed. Later they posted an Instagram video promising, with tense smiles, that everything was fine and that Connections was great. What really happened at their residence that night?

The next day, AnonAmbassador posted security cam footage of Nolan’s apartment, showing Nolan shockingly ratting Taylor’s personal computer (i.e., sending a Remote Access Trojan malware program to her, without her knowledge, in order to control her computer). Now Nolan had access to her webcam, microphone, speakers, and more. As Nolan used Taylor’s webcam to spy on her, it was unclear what he was looking for — titillation? Something specific? He seemed relaxed, even chuckling at one point. But he tensed up once V came over to Taylor’s apartment. V flirted gently with Taylor for a while, before showing her a video of an Abigail Vex fan — Isaac — leaping from a building and falling to his death, all in the name of following Vex’s instructions. Taylor was horrified; V was callously amused. As Taylor screamed at V in a panic, Nolan impulsively broadcast his voice through Taylor’s computer speakers, offering to call the police…and, of course, outing himself as spying on her. Triumphant, Vokorev somewhat confusingly told Taylor that “this” had to happen, so that Taylor could see Nolan for what he truly was. As Taylor fled the room, upset, V turned to Taylor’s webcam and told Nolan that he’d brought this on himself when he signed the contract. Static creeping over the screen, her eyes glowing eerily, V arranged to meet with Nolan the next day.

Nolan immediately took to Connections to protest his innocence, claiming that he only ever intended to benevolently “check on” Taylor, and pointing out that users had pressured him to make sure that Taylor was OK. His protestations were met with mixed reactions.

Taylor, meanwhile, announced on Connections that she was going to be taking a break to recover from the news of Isaac’s death.

The Orlando Event

In the second Orlando event, V invited dozens of Orlando participants to join her at a local bar in waiting for Nolan to arrive. While they waited, she told them the allegedly true story about Megan. Nolan had always been somewhat vague about how he “lost” his true love. The truth? Nolan had stalked Megan, and Megan had fled. Now, V claimed she was concerned that Nolan was similarly fixated on Taylor.

When Nolan showed up, Connections PR in tow, V confronted him with the contract he had signed in the bar. The contract — dated September 13, 2018 — revealed that Vokorev had pulled strings to get him the government contract for Connections. In return, Nolan was to promise never to invade Connections members’ privacy, and never to reveal or perpetuate details about V’s personal life or birth name. Crucially, if Nolan ever violated the terms, V would become the full owner of Connections and all its data.

Nolan and Connections PR tried to stop her, standing in her path, but V “Force choked” them, Vader style, until they fell to the floor, then strode away — the new proud owner of Connections.

Week 4 — continued

Newly empowered, V messaged Influencers and gave them the opportunity to vote on the fate of Connections. (The options included “porneoga” and “unleash the fires of hell”.) Meanwhile, Nolan reached out with his side of the story, calling users to explain that he was worried about Taylor, and worried about what V was doing to her. He asked users to trust him. Users who wrote back noticed that the name “Nolan” was now censored on the Connections platform.

The New York Event

The New York event was attended by two users. They reported that they met with Gary, a Connections PR rep, who had alarmingly thorough files on both of them. Gary claimed that their information was well protected under Nolan, but under V’s leadership he seemed to have more access. And PMs, he noted, were not private. Gary had been instructed by V to lead them through specific NeoGa poses — poses that looked sinister and sexual — and take pictures of them.

Then they were led to a meeting with a shaky, unstable informant called “H”, who played an audio recording of V in which she mentioned her own death in past tense. H read a letter from V — a letter he said that she gave to him on her deathbed — in which she described being physically and emotionally abused by her father, bullied by classmates, and finally making a “choice” while underwater. (It was unclear if she drowned: she recounted intentionally staying underwater until her mind became blank.) That choice was to “go down [with] those who felt that the humans that were left behind were in need of some lessons”. It seemed that V had attempted suicide, and possibly passed away shortly after.

He then took out a photo of Nolan and ripped into pieces, seemingly as an act of fealty to V. Sabrina from Connections PR joined in with enthusiasm. The meeting concluded shortly after.

Week 4 — continued

Taylor returned to social media with an off-putting post about how V was making her feel much better about everything. She posted a picture of her and V laughing and drinking wine…and digitally defacing a picture of Nolan.

The next day, AnonAmbassador released yet another video showing security footage of Nolan’s apartment. Nolan was once again ratting Taylor’s laptop. And yet again, he was just in time to catch V arriving. As Nolan spied, V told Taylor they should get back at Nolan. Maybe, she suggested, Taylor should pose as Megan, and message Nolan…then talk Nolan into killing himself. In fact, Taylor had so much power, she could get back at everyone. Taylor, confused, pushed back — Connections users hadn’t done anything, she didn’t know what they had done, why should she punish them? Upset, V escalated, shouting that this was what Taylor was doing, she was revealing the bad people. That was the point. As V shouted, all cameras — including the one in Nolan’s apartment — began to glitch with static. She stared furiously at Taylor, who went quiet and appeared to fall under a sort of spell, eventually collapsing on the floor. When she awoke, she appeared to be pure puppet. Vokorev told her to rise: she rose. Vokorev told her to smile: she laughed uncontrollably. V looked at the webcam and smiled at Nolan. “She’s stronger than we thought, Nolan. Don’t worry. She’ll be there soon enough.” The clip ended on Taylor’s sudden scream…

Nolan called users to rally them to his side. He asked for them to help him fight V, changing their profile pictures as a code to show that they were on his side. Next week, they would come up with a plan.

But some were skeptical. After Nolan saw that his security cams had been hacked, why wouldn’t he disable them? After Taylor saw that her webcam had been hacked, why wouldn’t she cover it up? Why did Nolan announce out loud what his intentions were before logging onto his computer? Did he think he had an audience? The questions of who was staging what for whom became increasingly tangled.

Week 5

As Taylor returned to Connections, after being “taken over” by V, she seemed less and less like herself. Her NeoGa poses seemed strange and uncomfortable; her writing style involved more and more ellipses, similar to V’s writing. She released everyone from their daily mantras and poses, and instead told them to express their truth. Her own truth? “life is so much better now…its like im sleeping but am awake and someone moves me around, like bouncing from one great dream to the next.” She fawned over Vokorev, who now had her own Connections profile; as Halloween drew near, she posted, “i like halloween. its honoring dead people. i like dead people. my favorite person is dead. or is she? i want to dress like V for halloween.” But an email that went out to Verified members and Influencers seemed much less placid: she begged to be told what to do, to be given a way to surrender. She needed commands…”or I soon wont know who I even am anymore.”

Meanwhile, V released the results of the prior week’s poll. The winner: “unleash the fires of hell”. Soon passwords on Connections seemed to be malfunctioning…

And Nolan called an emergency online meeting, for Influencers and Verified members.

Before Nolan’s meeting could come together, V sent an email out to her followers. She had decided to get revenge on everyone who pledged their loyalty to Nolan (and, to be fair, some who hadn’t), by leaking the personality tests they’d taken when they first joined Connections. She was also changing their Connections accounts over to a single universal password, meaning that her followers could have free access to them. She suggested letting chaos reign, putting words into their mouths…just, not being cruel. Being “hellish, inappropriate, and damning” was one thing — being truly hurtful/exposing was another.

Chaos ensued.

Reports varied widely on participant behavior during this time. Some victims seemed to find it all in good fun, leaving the “hacked” comments and posts up for laughs; others seemed disappointed it wasn’t more sinister, noting that the obvious coordinated takeover made it very clear when people were being hacked. Others were harassed, some with comments on their bodies, some with disturbing content posted to their feeds. V’s instructions on not exposing people in a hurtful way still left very large loopholes for anonymous misbehavior, and results were deeply mixed.

In the midst of the chaos, Nolan held a baffling online meeting. He revealed that V was indeed a demon…but aside from that, he seemed to have little useful to say, instead asking users to come up with their own plan for stopping V.

Many users instead decided to create their own third option. Rather than siding with Nolan or V, they created the hashtag #weconnect, expressing their desire to side with the community over either character.

As war waged between factions, V released videos of the “commands” that people had sent Taylor. Part 1 showed Taylor following commands; Part 2 showed her darker alter ego Abigail Vex following them. Some requests were clearly taken out of context. Escalating matters for no apparent reason, V then announced that ALL users’ passwords — except for a chosen few of her followers — had been changed to the universal password, making their contents fully accessible. All hell broke loose. Two users quit. Another was banned.

At last, Nolan sent users a poll via phone. He had found a way to shut down Connections altogether. Should he do it?

On Connections, V supporters got wind of the poll and threatened Taylor’s safety if Connections was shut down…

“…if connections closes down, her blood is on your hands…”

Sure enough, the results came in: users had voted for Connections to shut down. Connections went dark.

The Orlando Event

At the third Orlando event, participants were invited to a solemn ritual.

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When they arrived, they were given placards identifying their username, number of connections, and wellness score: they then were photographed in “mug shot” style, as if their complicity in the Connections chaos was being highlighted. Connections PR member Sabrina then coldly directed them onward, one by one.

Taylor was waiting for them, in the center of a circle of papers. Her face painted grotesquely white, her movements feral. She appeared to be a shell of herself.

As participants took their designated places in the circle around Taylor, Vokorev arrived. She spoke to them about how they were responsible for bringing Taylor to this point. She highlighted the lies that had been told, the negativity that had been spread. She had attendees read their Connections profiles to one another, including falsified “confessions” of sordid behavior. She ordered them to berate each other with the confessions, their voices rising and filling the space. She said that confession was once an act shared between confessor and priest: Nolan had tried to make Connections a church. Yet then she seemed to pivot, from blaming participant behavior to taking credit for it.

“My dears,” she said, “you are too easy to control. So easy to make you do what I want you to do.”

But she almost immediately pivoted again — from taking credit for users’ behavior to blaming Nolan. Gesturing to Taylor: “Look what Nolan did to this poor girl.”

She offered to share the “truth” about NeoGa poses. She said that they had chosen Nolan to run Connections, that he was everything they wanted for their purposes, but that in order for their plan to work they’d had to lure Megan away from him with NeoGa. She’d used Sabrina (whom we knew from the Connections PR team), whose real name was “Arethea”, to teach Megan NeoGa. (Here she had Taylor demonstrate several NeoGa poses, which seemed to induce some sort of psychic pain in Taylor: she howled and fell to her knees.) And it had worked. Free of distractions like Megan, Nolan “led the way to Connections”.

And why did V want Connections to exist? She wanted to know who people really were. And now she had her answer. Some users had almost restored her faith in humanity — but in the end, it was not enough. Taylor, she said, was “the embodiment” of the doubts, fears, hypocrisies, and cruelties on Connections. This was the cause of her pain.

And now Taylor joined in, instructing attendees to read toxic comments from the website, berating them. When they resisted, trying to choose positive comments, she angrily steered them back. The toxicity was what mattered to her. But as their voices died down, she switched to blaming herself. “If I hadn’t wanted to connect with all of you, none of this would have happened in the first place. It’s all my fault.” As attendees attempted to comfort her, she sobbed, begging them for forgiveness.

As she watched, V wept. She approached Taylor, sending the attendees back a few paces. She told the attendees that they may all be human, but deep inside them was a demon trying to get out. She stroked Taylor’s hair comfortingly, held her hand. Kissed her head. And then — appeared to reach into her chest. Taylor screamed and collapsed, blood covering her chest.

It was unclear if she died. But as she lay on the ground, V cradled her body.

Participants were led out in silence.

Week 6

Going into week 6, it was unclear if Taylor was still alive. Participants were largely bemused, still unclear who or what V was, who or what Taylor was, and what their role in events had truly been.

On the Abigail Vex Tumblr, V released a video of Taylor, recorded prior to the last Orlando event. It depicted her fulfilling more participant requests. In the text below the video, V referred to her in past tense.

“…i know she wanted you to see this. …you affected her… changed her… she was you.”

But the content of the video was anything but comforting. In the video, Taylor obediently confessed her greatest fear: “not being able to be the real me…forced to laugh and cry…having no control…” The video appeared to end with V forcing Taylor to fall asleep.

Nevertheless, in a desire to honor Taylor and promote the spirit of #WeConnect, several participants sent flowers and a cake to the address at the foot of Pseudonym emails…V’s address.

Meanwhile, Nolan had invited V to a private encrypted chatroom. (He emailed a recording of the chat screen to users.) When V arrived in the chat, the two of them immediately started playing out old patterns — V scoffingly belligerent, Nolan protesting and wounded. They had been friends in real life, back when V was human, but now they had both lost respect for each other. Nolan railed at her for what she had done to Taylor; she mocked him and appeared to supernaturally harm him, causing him to briefly smash-type gibberish.

But then, somehow, the video switched to V’s POV. We were in her head, looking down at her keyboard. And as we listened, we heard Taylor’s voice, like an inner monologue. Telling V that her spirit was still here, fighting for V. The ambassadors’ goodness and strength was keeping her spirit alive. Taylor said she felt V’s horror and pain, understood her need for revenge on humanity — but that she would be ok.

Dazed, Vokorev looked out her window, at the spot where Taylor had photographed many of her NeoGa poses.

When she returned to the chat with Nolan, V’s tone had changed. She confessed to having visions of Taylor. She seemed shocked that after everything that had happened, participants had still shown her kindness. Still tried to connect. She seemed to be softening…but she was afraid of letting Taylor’s voice sway her. She was strong now, and Taylor was weak. She wasn’t going to be weak ever again.

Nolan responded with an offer to help. V wanted access to the whole country…and after that, the whole world. If she brought Connections back and put him back in charge, Nolan would still deliver that…as long as he was spared. Amused, V agreed. But after she logged off, in a private message to participants, Nolan promised us that he wasn’t truly making another deal with V. This time, he had a plan.

The plan, he continued in a separate Soundcloud recording, was to flood Connections with humanity. From cat memes to selfies, from hearts to hashtags, he wanted to see the best of our humanity on display. In the recording, he referenced the user-started movement #WeConnect. Users were making a difference after all.

When Connections went live again, users flooded it with positivity. Memories of Taylor, well wishes, hearts, memes. Multiple users presented Vokorev with a gift of Wellness Points as a gesture of goodwill. Some used the hashtag #vconnect.

In response, Vokorev shared a video of another vision. (This vision, like the last, was captured digitally because V was somehow bound to our digital world.) In this vision, images of Taylor flashed before her eyes. Taylor’s voice told V that she was growing in strength, thanks to users. Then she warned V: “You need to stop. You need to back down…This demon is everything you never wanted to be.” And somehow, supernaturally, she appeared to thrust V under the water in her bathtub.

V was torn. Was it possible for her to balance the darkness and the light?

One notable person didn’t think so. RJ, of Connections PR, posted a scathing Connections post as he left his job, fired by V. He alleged that V hadn’t “found” that video of Isaac dying — the video that had so deeply freaked out Taylor. V had recorded it herself. She was there. And Isaac hadn’t leapt, or fallen, to his death. V had pushed him.

Was V beyond saving?

Final Orlando Event

For the final event, participants were invited to The Woodshed, a “premiere adult play space”. There they were greeted by Nolan, who had some surprising announcements to make.

For one thing, Nolan had been behind “AnonAmbassador”. With the help of Gary and Sabrina in Connections PR, he’d documented everything and gotten the word out to us. (This cast some of AnonAmbassador’s snider comments on Nolan in an amusing light.)

Why was Nolan so coy? Why not be forthright with us?

Well…it’s complicated. Especially for those of us who were unable to attend the live event. But I’ve pieced together his stance based on footage from the event and on a subsequent email he sent.

At first, Nolan was bound by the contract — he couldn’t share the truth about V, or he’d lose Connections to her. And later, once he was no longer bound by it…that part was more unclear. He said that leaking this information was all he could do.

He clarified that he had indeed put digital surveillance on Taylor, and that this was wrong, but that he had also put surveillance on himself. Leaked footage of himself, in his apartment, spying on Taylor. Knowing full well that V would use the surveillance to her advantage. It was all part of his plan: he wanted us to turn on him. Because then he knew V’s full evil would be on display.

(To be honest, his train of logic was difficult to follow here, and it’s possible my summation is incorrect.)

Of course, he hadn’t counted on this escalating quite as much as it did. He hadn’t counted on V puppetmastering Taylor. And he hadn’t counted on users turning on him to the extent that they’d let Taylor slip through their fingers. (It’s not clear how users were responsible for that: Nolan continued to sloppily dodge responsibility.). But now, at long last…HE HAD A PLAN.

He had summoned V to meet him. Or V had summoned him, it was a little unclear. But now, she arrived, and the two confronted each other. Nolan dropped the biggest reveal of all: “I know how to make people COME BACK. Even if it’s just for a little while. I know how to make you submit.” And somehow, he summoned Taylor.

Taylor had indeed died. But she was here, for a little while.

V panicked. Ordered attendees to love her, listen to her, obey her. Tried to Force-choke someone. But Taylor stopped her. It was unclear what, exactly, she was doing, but V writhed and wailed for several seconds. Then Taylor approached her with compassion. “Let me help you.”

She helped V to undress down to her underwear, then told participants to write words of love on her body. They did. “Love is beautiful.” “Hope is real.” “We care about you.” “We are one.” “You are my family.” It appeared to be a gentle group exorcism. As V read the words and wept, Taylor asked her to “come back”. The real Vokorev, not the demon. V screamed as Taylor held her, then slumped, seemingly exhausted.

Taylor turned to the participants and urged them to show forgiveness and light to the world. It was up to them to carry out what they believed to be good. She moved around the space and embraced or touched each attendee individually, before drifting out of the room.

Once Taylor was gone, Nolan announced his intention of taking over Connections again — but to everyone’s relief, V informed him that this was a terrible idea.

“There will always be trolling,” she said, turning to participants, “there will always be harassment, and there will always be this dark world in every single one of us…especially when we have the safety of our screens. But hopefully, as you all have learned over the weeks, as I have, that there is goodness, and there is light, and there is love. And hopefully, moving forward, Connections can be all of those things.”

The attendees promised to help be safeguards, and make sure that none of this happened all over again.

And #NOFILTER came to a close.

Overall Review

First, a disclaimer. Pseudonym Productions is based on the east coast: I live on the west coast. That means that, although this experience is most effective when experienced in real time, I was usually at least a day behind. Morning phone calls came in before I was awake; evening phone calls came while I was still at work, logged off. So I often didn’t take the initiative in voting, texting/emailing/Tweeting with characters, or participating in any time-sensitive “movements” on the Connections platform — simply because I wasn’t caught up in time to participate. I’m sure that experiencing #NOFILTER retroactively, for the most part, colored my experience.

(This isn’t to blame the ARX for being Orlando-centric! It’s simply the nature of the beast…”the beast” being, in this case, every online ARX with time-sensitive player engagement. Not everyone will be able to keep up in real time.)

With that said — this ARX was beyond ambitious. Hundreds of players across the globe. An active custom social media platform for four weeks. Characters who, to some extent, texted, emailed, and Tweeted with participants. Live events in multiple cities. A risky “doxxing” storyline. A story arc that evolved and adapted based on participant voting and behavior.

And, on top of that, the unenviable balancing act between serving different “tiers” of participants according to their paid tier, and rewarding all active players for their engagement, without stirring up resentment on either side.

Did they pull it off?

Arguably, yes. But not without tripping over some common ARX stumbling blocks.

What They Got Right

The number of participants admitted was just right. After some predictable participant drop-off in the first few weeks, there were still enough people to form factions, create movements, compete for points, vote on group decisions, and make sweeping changes. But there weren’t so many that the noise drowned out the story. People could share emails and texts they received from characters, post accounts of local events, etc., with little comparative risk of being lost among hundreds of similar accounts. (Granted, several participants took it upon themselves to streamline this info-sharing, which helped immensely.)

Different tiers were treated differently, without depriving lower tiers of story. Tiered ARXs are a delicate subject. It’s easy for lower tiers to feel resentful, as if they are being prevented from experiencing the full story; and likewise it’s easy for upper tiers to feel disgruntled, if they feel that they spent more but received an equivalent experience. But Pseudonym handled the division quite fairly, by distinguishing between story access and story direction. Upper tiers had the ability to vote on certain issues, and thus shape some of the story’s big turns. But they weren’t, for the most part, getting privileged information — and when they were (as when they were added to private Connections forums), they weren’t penalized for sharing that information freely. Ultimately, for the most part, everyone had access to the same story.

Active participation was rewarded. The creators made an enormous effort to make participants feel acknowledged. Weekly newsletters included screenshots of notable participant activity; participants were referenced in blog posts and vlogs. After events, it was easy for participants to find photos and footage of themselves. Pseudonym went above and beyond in making the active feel noticed, regardless of tier.

Players didn’t have to be local. The AnonAmbassador account provided an in-story way for long distance players — or players who couldn’t purchase tickets in time — to experience the salient parts of local events, without relying on the memories of attendees. Nobody had to worry that they were missing important information.

Factions weren’t toxic. Some people sided with Nolan; some sided with V; some wanted only what was best for Taylor; and others rejected all characters in favor of community. But, from what I saw, players on all sides knew the boundary between IG and OOG (with some exceptions when V activated chaos mode). And they knew that blaming one another was a sucker’s game. Was this due to Pseudonym’s management, carefully crafting a story without a clear “morally right” path? Or was it because savvy ARG players knew to share information, not be gatekeepers, and check in privately before/after theatrical public aggression? There may be a third, more inadvertent reason: when Nolan tried to berate players, his hapless nature simply made players laugh. They were not easily shamed, and they did not feel motivated to in turn berate one another. But regardless of the reason, it was encouraging to see factions interacting with common sense courtesy.

What They Can Learn From

They didn’t have a centralized place for sharing information. Although someone created a Discord, the link wasn’t easy to find and relatively few players ended up using it. Most people ended up consolidating info on Google Drives and sharing stories on other Slacks. Once the Connections site went up in Week 3, it was pretty unusable as an information repository — it was cluttered, posts were hard to find, and of course, Connections went offline as part of the story, and was closed permanently once the ARX ended. Their weekly newsletters were helpful in documenting important plot points, but they weren’t thorough. While AnonAmbassador went a long way toward explaining and clarifying, it would have been wise to designate a single accessible place to share information, and make that place clear upfront. (And yes, I know, I know, #toomanySlacks.)

The plot wasn’t airtight. Most ARXs are going to have some unanswered questions. But it’s a problem if it feels like most of the central questions haven’t been answered by the end.

• V often spoke of a “We” who planned things, orchestrated Nolan’s government contract, lured Megan away, had big plans for Taylor. “He had everything that we needed…” “She’s stronger than we thought, Nolan.” Who was “We”?
• What was NeoGa? V told participants she was going to tell them “the truth” about it, but the truth seemed to amount to “We made sure Nolan’s girlfriend was obsessed with it”.
• How did Nolan and V know each other? When Taylor first referred to them as “old friends,” it seemed suspicious. Later, the leaked contract arbitrarily specified, in great detail, “Both parties agree that heretofore V and N may be publicly known as ‘old friends.’ … It is important that both parties do their best to uphold this image, for the sake of both parties if ever questioned about the relationship between the parties.” All this seemed to pretty strongly indicate that Nolan and V were not old friends, and that players should be questioning what their real relationship was. Yet in their private chatroom, Nolan asked, “Can we just be people? Like we used to…?” And, “V…we used to be friends.” Why build up the great mystery of Nolan and V’s “alleged former friendship” only for it turn out to be…an ordinary former friendship?
• How much of Taylor’s backstory was real? Did the government really take care of her stalker, or was her stalker…V?
• How was Taylor’s “Abigail Vex” persona related to anything?
• When and how did Nolan learn to bring people back from the dead?
• Whose side was Sabrina really on? V called her “Arethea” and said she had been instrumental in luring Megan away from Nolan. She actually made it sound like Sabrina was a demon. And people in NY reported Sabrina supporting V with off-putting enthusiasm. Yet Nolan later claimed that Sabrina had been on his side all along. Did Nolan have a demon ally who was working with him undercover? How was this not part of the story, if so?
• Why did V kill Taylor? The OOG Pseudonym newsletter said that V absorbed Taylor’s pain by compassionately killing her. But what V posted online about the killing shortly after — “ambassadors… grab some popcorn… this is a long one… but so worth it… if nothing else watch the final 3 minutes… some surprises await you, as promised…” — that didn’t sound like someone in grief, or someone who had absorbed unspeakable pain. She sounded entirely like her cold, sarcastic self. This was the most bewildering moment of the show, and it deserved some IG context so it didn’t feel arbitrary.

The creators were bent on telling a story of “participant complicity,” and that felt forced. Participant complicity is often treated as the holy grail of interactive storytelling. I.e., letting participants make choices in the passion of the moment that they will later regret. It’s understandable: guilt, shame, and regret are all shades of the emotional palette that other storytelling mediums can’t evoke in the same way. Done well, these can be the moments that linger the longest. But often, these ploys results in participants feeling tricked, manipulated — or, worst of all, unseen. #NOFILTER had tinges of all three. At times, it seemed that participants were being berated simply for playing the game properly; at other times, it seemed that participants were being unfairly lumped into a category regardless of their actual behavior. For instance, V and Taylor were determined to berate players for toxicity…as #weconnect was taking off and most people were rejecting the Connections chaos. And when characters pointed out “choices” that could have had other outcomes, those choices were sometimes obvious false doors. (In one slightly comical example, Nolan hacked Taylor’s computer using the excuse that we’d told him to “check up on her” — then blamed players for slowly neglecting him and stopping telling him to check up on her, implying things could have gone differently if they had. He had intentionally allowed footage to leak of him looking like a peeping Tom! Did he really think players would continue pushing him to monitor her?) The result was a frustrating lack of accountability for characters, and a feeling that guilt and shame were being awkwardly thrust upon innocent players.

The Connections account-hacking, and the doxxing, were risky — and while damage was mitigated, the show trusted participants too much. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want a movement toward infantilizing players. And the show made it clear early on that no information handed over was truly private. (Abigail Vex in particular made a point of this, soliciting photographs and actions that she then occasionally described or showed to the camera.) I doubt anyone who filled out a questionnaire was surprised when their answers were leaked. But “doxxing” is a symbolic act: it represents exposing someone to danger. And when it was followed by V handing over account passwords, with instructions to “dig deep into their actions, their posts, their private messages…don’t hold back…” with a single vague caveat not to expose horrible confessions from people’s pasts — it was no surprise that some players took it too far. V spent 370 words on her instructions for using other players’ accounts: she could have been more specific about forbidding ban-worthy behavior.

Conclusion

In the end, #NOFILTER was a logistical triumph. From participant voting to the custom Connections platform, they handled a lot of moving pieces with relative aplomb — especially for their first digital experience. Emotionally, the story sometimes missed the mark. Building characters with consistent motivations — who carefully time-release information week to week, hiding information from participants while also interacting and corresponding with them — is a complex business. But Pseudonym sent out a survey following the ARX: they’re looking for constructive feedback, and excited to improve. If this is what their first attempt looks like, I’m looking forward to see what comes next.

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