All the screens across the nation, whether wall-mounted monitors, cell phones, or retro-designed television-like models, are equipped with Stimulant-Attention-Sensors (SAS). These gauge audience news-approval based on metrics like eye-dilation, heart rate, hydration levels, and facial muscle contraction, doing real-time national data analysis to measure not only favorability of current events, but also things like credibility, sexual arousal and addiction capacity. More primitive recording devices are also employed for capturing what people say, and more commonly, to measure cheers, jeers, booing and crying. A citizen data-point is also registered if the SAS registers any human absence.
Welcome to the Nightly National News. I’m your host. Cool of y’all to join us.
Flash into the current newsreader. Their age, gender, ethnicity, as well as personal style and vocal attitude are defined based on an aggregate national approval rating from over the last 30 nightly news episodes. This timeframe has been algorithmically proven as the optimal mix of enduring approval and sensitivity to changing opinion-trends.
Tonight we have a helluva show for y’all.
He begins as an 18-year old emo skater with a face tattoo of a unicorn based on a popular Instagram influencer. Within the first few seconds, as new likeability data streams in from the nation’s screens and tweaks the 30-day aggregate newsreader approval, he begins to morph. People now register his looks and attitude unpleasant and aggressive due to the actual influencer’s having earlier that day released his first track on Spotify that reached number one within seconds but was canceled a few hours because graduate students at the Harvard University Musicology department found lyrical patterns which had vibes ranging from Satanic-worshiping to critical of private property.
Based on these ever-changing reactions being picked up by the SAS, he ages about twenty years; the arms and shoulders become muscular while breasts also appear; his hair grows shorter and shaved on the sides, its color changing to metallic blue; the cheeks get sucked in; the face tattoo disappears; the eyes become larger and spread farther apart, giving the now androgynous looking newsreader the air of being seductive prey. The overall effect reaches its positivity threshold and the sensors register a viable degree of sexual coding that the system earmarks for further use in state-sponsored Pornhub productions.
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We begin this edition of the Nightly National News with a story of massive damage occurring to one of our transcontinental subterranean pipelines. The SAS registers medium-level engagement and the newsreader enhances the drama accordingly. The pipeline was carrying highly-refined oil necessary for the energy needs of the entire East Coast. Engagement wanes a bit. This damage could leave thousands of families without power… leave tens of thousands of families without power… leave countless families starving and freezing to death. The news cuts to footage of a crater. Dark pools of thick liquid are filling up the crater and spreading outward over the terrain. But this image scores poorly and the neural-network focus-group simulator spits out the idea that the pipeline could be carrying toxic chemicals instead of oil.
The footage shifts to a massive gorgeous blue-metallic miasmic shape and an infographic shows it casting a psychedelic shadow over several states. The latest revelation is that Aramco-Dow, the pipeline’s operator, falsely registered the pipeline as carrying harmless refined oil, when it was actually transporting highly toxic experimental chemical substances. This news is shocking not only for the level of deception, but also because we have no idea how to handle such a spill nor can we predict the kind and degree of consequential fallout. On the bright side, Aramco-Dow’s scientists are promising that for now, immediate hunger and freezing conditions have been averted. Instead, they are speculating on generations of physical mutations and possibly even instances of ESP like telekinesis, telepathy and mind control.
The first season of the Netflix show based on this future scenario has already been released.
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Moving on to arts and entertainment. We’re covering the ongoing divorce trial between NFL superstar slash Goldman Sachs CTO Belvedere Rogue-Nutz and actress, singer, supermodel Prya J.J. de la O’Hara, who is also the founder of a global fashion, wellness and rare metal mining conglomerate. Patience analytics finally pre-triggered a climax for tonight’s episode. We believe the jury is due out any moment now so let us recap quickly the details of the case. It was de la O’Hara who initially sued for divorce, accusing Rogue-Nutz of sleeping with several of her adopted children, only for Rogue-Nutz to counter-sue, accusing de la O’Hara of fabricating the story to deflect from the scandal that she’d been using child labor in her mines. At the beginning of the trial, audience empathy consensus was clearly in support of de la O’Hara, but when the narrative began dragging, new revelations were injected into the piece to split opinions. Phone recordings, deemed authentic by wide credibility margins, had de la O’Hara admitting to several of her board members that she used “sensitivity” doubles in all her fan meet-and-greets to avoid accidentally appearing bored or disgusted by “the plebs.”
So the jury is getting up from their table, says the newsreader, as fans and supporters of both sides across the nation begin cheering on their desired verdict. They’re walking now toward the courtroom, people at home hold up signs to their screens with slogans supporting their celebrity team. And here they come, we go live. The camera zooms in on the jury spokesperson whose mouth begins to move in strange distorted shapes, as behind the scenes the analytics machines calculate the final audience emotional-reaction verdict. We the jury declare as winner of this divorce case between Belvedere Rogue-Nutz and Prya J.J. de la O’Hara to be… Prya J.J. de la O’Hara!
A live screen capture of both parties’ bank accounts display in bright colorful infographics all of Rogue-Nutz’s assets being transferred to de la O’Hara’s. The image of Rogue-Nutz on screen disintegrates as we cut to a New Yorker ad for Prya J. J. O’Hara’s brand-new autobiography “My Enduring Trial,” already climbing to the top of this month’s most-downloaded book list.
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Turning now to global politics and the conflict with Russia… the impending war with Russia… with China… with Russia… with Iran, with India… we turn now to the inevitable war with the Russo-Chinese alliance. The sensors are overloaded with conflicting audience enthusiasm. Talks are underway in Dubai between heads of states. The question of sanctions quickly transforms into threats of active naval skirmishes… threats of nuclear attacks, as “economics” fails to reach the excitement thresholds demanded of the Nightly National News’s corporate sponsors, among them the GE-Hitachi Group. The question soon becomes one of a preemptive nuclear strike versus the delayed gratification of a possible peace via mutually-assured destruction. Footage of the talks in Dubai glitch-cut between world leaders chatting amiably, arguing heatedly, and violently wrestling. In living rooms and on cell phone screens across the nation, the populace stare eagerly, grimacing, giggling, fretting and frothing in all manner of facial expression and automatic physical-sensory reaction codes.
The “dial feature”: appears on every monitor showing a scale from left to right, red to green, with a twitching needle bouncing wider and wider from side to side until it hits a critical mass and the news is decided. A timer appears beside it counting down from 10 to 1, urging the audience to opine and emote with frantic enthusiasm for their desired outcome. The needle gets closer, alternately to the left and to the right, for optimized tension. As the countdown reaches 1, the feed cuts back to the newsreader.
The results are in, and we’ll announce them at the end of the final segment, after a word from GE-Hitachi. Analysis has determined that emotional news generation benefits from occasional dips in audience participatory engagement, and such segments are strategically inserted for the sake of public order and corporate sponsorship messaging efficacy.
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Welcome back. We look now at a report on the state of the new tax policy. The economic recession czar has laid out the public tax and spending reforms. The SAS picks up confusion levels which threaten attention lag. To break it down, it’s a question of how much we tax, or cut taxes, from which segment of society, and where those tax dollars would best be spent, or which segments should lose funding. Mass understanding levels out again.
In such stories, it’s uncommon knowledge that data sources are pre-weighted to favor the more affluent members of society. The Nightly National News is listening and based on audience participation and reaction, corporate taxes will be cut to a historic 0.666% low, with the resulting cut in funding applied to healthcare, education, public transportation and environmental initiatives.
The SAS picks up dispersed but highly acute data points of indignation and antisocial ideation, and red flags are entered into the system appropriately.
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Finally, as we sign off on tonight’s episode, we’ve got a special sneak peek at the latest hit single and music video by pop sensation DJ Pie Krust in collaboration with the proprietary machine learning data-extension of John Lennon… of Elvis Presley… of Prince… Of Prince Presley, and using an original tune based on the synthetic analysis of the Mozart piano sonata melodies most widely-used in movies and TV commercials. This segment is brought to you by Disney-Kraft and CoreCivic.
The video shows DJ Pie Krust twerking on Elvis-stylized-as-Prince while riding in a convertible Hummer limousine in downtown Dubai at night; Pie Krust is smoking a spliff which emits metallic-blue miasmic smoke over the city, engulfing ethnically-diverse child miners on the side of the road, while the crowds of mutants hang out the windows of the all the passing buildings. The video lasts long enough for the main melodic refrain to hit the right predictive balance between catchiness and embeddedness so that audiences are guaranteed to have it stuck in their minds for a pre-paid amount of time.
As the video nears the ending, the Nightly National News end credits begin to roll, pulsating in size and color to the beat underlying the Mozartian melody. The song finally fades completely, and we hear the newsreader’s final message: Breaking news from the state department. Y’all out there should brace for an immediate nuclear impact. We’re looking at a survival rate of 0.000001%.
For those who make it, we’ll see you back here tomorrow, same time, same place.
Written by Michael Zuznenshine
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