FOMO House
SCENE 1: INT. A BASIC MEETING ROOM, LONDON OFFICE
Wiston was late again — he’d been up all night — but it didn’t really matter. Might even be a bonus, depending on what level of grindcore masochism the client team were operating on. His job today was to pitch to Cthulhu Taps, an “edgy” brewery that had recently been acquired by a bigger megacorp, who planned to take its craft beers mainstream. They were planning on a national advertising campaign, and for whatever reason Wiston had seemingly been trusted to hack this process wide open. He was to disrupt the shit out of it.
He had — to be fair to him — a decent idea; the kind of thing these people would lap up. He was confident. Not in himself, obviously. But he was broadly confident the meeting would go OK.
He entered the meeting room at 8 minutes past, apologising to the assembled group as he shuffled past the rows of chairs, round to the front of the table. They were too engaged in an animated chat with his boss, Guillem, to notice him. They were all laughing; laughing at something Wiston suspected wasn’t funny.
Guillem was twice Wiston’s age, and had recently sold his previous social media agency to GroupM for — if you know the phrase — a fuckton of money. He was a multi-millionaire, but he’d made the decision to continue working, which was certainly suspect. Saying that — Guillem’s mid-life-crisis had worked well for Wiston. His new venture — FOMO House — was an advertising agency predicated on the idea that young people — young people like Wiston — were the not just the future of the industry, but the present. The idea was that the youths’ innate creativity and vibrancy would easily outstrip and outpace the 40 or 50-somethings who dominated the industry’s higher echelons. Young people were digital natives — born into the hyper-connected, irony-exhausted world of Twitter, TikTok and existential depression — with an instinctive feel for the ever-changing, fast-moving zeitgeist. Plus — as Guillem was strangely unembarrassed to say in meetings — they were a lot cheaper to hire as well.
“Aha! Here he is!” exclaimed Guillem, about a minute after Wiston’s arrival; an apt metaphor for exactly how on-the-pulse he was.
“Hey everyone. Sorry I’m late.” Wiston busied himself in his bag. He was not the talker in situations like this.
“So Wiston is exactly the type of person I’ve been talking about,” Guillem continued. “He went to university, and studied philosophy.” Jeez — why the italics Guillem? “But he leaves, and discovers that’s totally not connected to the real world.”
Wiston noted that the definition of ‘real world’ was in fact basically one of the modules he’d taken.
The tagline Guillem had conceived for the FOMO House was “same day, different shit”, which not only was what it was, but had also become a perverse kind of ethos for the company. The kicker he would deliver at the end of his initial chats with clients was that if they went with FOMO, not only would their ideas be miles ahead of their competitors, but their delivery would be too. They were so nimble and so agile that they’d be able to pitch them the very same (or next) day. And by they, he meant Wiston.
That’s where they were today. Cthulhu Taps has come into the office for a chat yesterday morning, and by early afternoon Wiston had been told he had a pitch to deliver the next morning.
And now it was the next morning. Guillem continued introducing Wiston with heavily embellished details. He was only 26, how could his biography already contain such inaccuracies? He set up his laptop, fiddling around with dongles and adaptors, trying very much to embody “digital native” despite the distorted version of his desktop currently showing through the projector.
The usual Guillem phrases made their appearance as he frantically live-Googled his computer issue. “archaic education system…” “unemployed for 2 years…” “no traditional pathways…” “giving young people a chance”. He idly wondered whether he fit the portrait of the disadvantaged youth being painted of him, as the projector screen recalibrated, his screen appeared correctly on the projector, and he was good to go.
“Thanks Guillem,” said Wiston, taking over. “Look, I appreciate I’m not the typical, traditional advertising guru you guys are used to seeing”. He was, in fact, exactly that. Just fifteen years earlier in his career. “And I don’t know how to give a flashy presentation with all the right buzzwords like you’re used to.” He did, probably. He’d been to private school. “So what I’m going to do is just show you the concept, and let it speak for itself”.
Obviously this was all basically a scripted opener — part of the brand — but it did actually reveal a key part of why Wiston had appealed to Guillem when he first joined. Wiston was in fact… a digital native. He was basically a nerd. During his unemployment, he’d spent a lot of time looking into AI; in particular its growing capabilities in image and video generation. He was always keen to stress that this was in no way equivalent to an interest in deep-fake porn — often to people who’d until that point had no idea of what deep-fake porn was, or a suspicion he was into it. Still, it felt best to say it.
Anyway, his interest in the field meant that he was able to generate “prototype” videos of an idea relatively quickly and easily, just by giving an intelligent and nuanced prompt or script. While he wasn’t himself involved in any of the technical coding, he was immersed enough in the area to know how to run its most powerful technologies on his laptop effectively, and how to appear one step ahead of the more mainstream accepted limits of what was possible. He could filter, refine, and conduct the creation of these masterpieces as well as anyone, and therein lay his potential to Guillem.
In truth, sometimes Wiston resented the fact that he was pitched as an “ordinary” digital native more than the fact that he was falsely sold as a disadvantaged NEET struggling to make his way in the world. The latter was obviously morally a lot more cynical, and had the consequence of ameliorating and disguising the true extent of prejudice and inequality in the industry, but on the other hand the former did attack his ego. He was special. He was vaguely creative AND a fucking nerd. He was the whole package! Other than everything else.
That Guillem had created a business from his talents, thinking them universal… it rankled. Wiston was a one-off, and eventually the whole house of cards would fall down when that became apparent…
Anyway. The main point was, he’d come up with a good ol’ advert for these cunts, and he was going to play it for them.
The lights dimmed (they just turned off really), and he hit play.
INT. SHOPPING CENTRE — DAY
[A MAN, our protagonist, is being dragged around a Shopping Centre by his materialism-coded GIRLFRIEND, looking bored and exasperated. She is blonde, unreasonably slim, wearing a lot of make-up, and carrying multiple designer bags. He is scruffy, slightly bloated; an everyman.]
GIRLFRIEND: Oh I just need to get something from here.
MAN: Oh what — really? This is the 10th shop today — the game’s on soon…
GIRLFRIEND: Oh just come on, it won’t take long.
[They enter the shop, and immediately we see MAN’s shocked reaction. As soon as they enter, he is met by a couple of bikini-clad models, who seem delighted to see him, and tell him to follow them while his girlfriend shops. GIRLFRIEND kisses him on the cheek approvingly (“Enjoy!”) as he is lead away, already in a daze.]
[He is lead into a separate area, big screen TVs showing the football all around. He is immediately handed a pint as he walks in. He looks over to his left and sees his mates; they cheer his arrival with the usual “here he is”/”they let anyone in here” bonhomie, and the bikini models pinch his bum cheekily as he is left to join them. He looks to his right and sees GARY NEVILLE and JAMIE CARRAGHER providing live commentary on the match. He’s interrupted by his mate shouting “Finally! He’s got a round in!”]
[The camera spins round to JACK GREALISH, approaching the group with 4 pints of Carlsberg.]
[The screen fades to black. Some white text appears.]
“If Carlsberg did clothes shopping.”
Wiston looks back at the room. The clients look slightly confused. No worries. This is exactly where he wants them. The advert continues…
EXT. 5-A-SIDE PITCH — DAY
[The scene fades in. A football game in a park between regular blokes is taking place. Suddenly, one of them pulls up injured, shouting that he can’t carry on. The teams look annoyed, a few “for fuck’s sake Gaz”s are muttered. But suddenly… what’s this? A voice from the side.]
PLAYER: I could step in?
[Everyone looks over. It’s CANTONA. Eric Cantona. Already somehow kitted up in the vague red-tshirt-with-bib uniform of the player he’s replacing, he joins the group. Over the next 30 seconds, we see him perform a couple of incredible bits of skill. At one point CANTONA beautifully passes two players, leaving them on the floor, and sees our MAN screaming for the ball in the “box”. He scoops up a lovely cross, and our MAN dives through two opposition players to smash a diving header past the goalkeeper. As he celebrates with CANTONA, he looks to the sidelines, and sees a group of BEAUTIFUL WOMEN are watching them, and cheering. Cheering him. They giggle and wave as he looks at them.]
[A whistle blows. The game is over, won. He is carried by his celebrating teammates to the sidelines, where a PHYSIO (?) is stood crouching over a cool box, handing out bottles of ice-cold CARLSBERG. The sound of bottles being cracked open, and our MAN toasting his success with his mates, CANTONA, and the BEAUTIFUL WOMEN.]
[The screen fades to black. Some white text appears.]
“If Carlsberg did 5-aside-matches.”
There’s some shifting in the seats at this point. Some of the Cthulhu team trying to catch each other’s eye. What’s he up to? Who is this kid? Wiston smiled. This shit was so easy.
INT. HOLIDAY — DAY
[I’m actually not going to describe this one — you get the idea…]
After this scene, there was visible discomfort in the room. Open sighing. Almost a tut. Wiston could imagine their confusion. Not only were these adverts not even for Cthulhu Taps (perhaps this was the first draft? Perhaps their branding would be added later?), but the adverts were grossly outdated. Completely not in keeping with their modern values (had they established their values yet? Probably not, but they weren’t these).
It was only the relaxed, confident countenance of Guillem, smiling serenely at the screen, that kept them quiet, and focussed on the advert. Next scene…
INT. PUB — EVENING
[A MAN walks in, the pub is low-key, normal even. A traditional, standard, British pub — no frills. Compared to the previous scenes, this is already mundane.]
[Our hero walks to the bar.]
MAN: One beer please.
[We are shown gratuitous, almost sensual shots of a cold Cthulhu tap, glowing with an ethereal light, as the barman smoothly spins a pint glass into his hand, and starts pouring. We are transported into slow motion, as we see the usual shots of cold beer hitting glass, bubbles rising in amber, golden liquid, condensation forming on the glass.]
[The barman finishes and puts the pint glass onto the bar, Cthulhu logo centred in shot.]
[A beat. The screen fades to black. On screen, the text says:]
“If Carlsberg….”
[Screen transition]
“..did beer”[A pause]
[Back in the pub, see our hero with his mates, taking an appreciative sip. He holds the pint glass back away from him, almost out of deference, and nods slowly.]
[A black screen.]
“Cthulhu Taps. Finally…”
The lights stayed off, there was excited chatter, some confused and tentative laughter, Guillem quickly taking back over and talking them through further iterations, possibilities, how quick this could all move. There was the vague mention of data targeting, of The Database… but he’d discuss that more later. Before anyone could get into anything further, anything practical, he was ushering them out the room: off and away to a brunch and schmooze at a nearby member’s club.
Wiston surveyed the room. He was knackered. Luckily, the flip-side of the demands placed on him in having to pull these all-nighters lay in him then being free to largely dictate his own work when not involved in a pitch. Sometimes he could completely work on his own projects (that would of course be ‘owned’ by FOMO House — but still), sometimes he had to do small little internal projects, but sometimes he could even just sack off work for a while. Today was going to be one of those days. After working through the night and delivering a successful (?) pitch, he felt he’d earned it.
He started packing his stuff away, disconnecting his laptop, all that. As he unplugged from the projector, he suddenly heard a flash of audio from the room speakers. A bit of static, a jumbled tape-loop, sounding like a snapshot of sped-up crowd noise from a busy room…
He paused. GLITCHCORE. He smiled to himself as he put his laptop into its felt cocoon, and into his bag. Perhaps he’d imagined it.
But then. The noise again.
He was sure he’d heard it this time. He instinctively swung round to look at the screen. The noise flashed again, louder this time, and the vague blue of the screen’s disconnected screensaver turned black. As he stared at the screen, the noise started again; continuous, mocking, definitely real. It survived blinks!
In the following second or two of disjointed, discordant noise, words and phrases seemed to flash on the screen, in exactly the same font and style as his “If Carlsberg made…” screens earlier.
He struggled in the chaos to make anything out. He was sure he saw the phrase “go deeper”. “Level 3.1”. Some Latin. “Ex falso something something.” But above all… the phrase that stuck out… “advert scab”…
Wiston was thrown. His penis and bumble clenched involuntarily, in a combination he remembered trying to achieve during a challenging yoga/meditation session he’d been on a few years previously. Enlightenment! However, almost as soon as the mad cycle of words on screen had begun, the noise turned to a static, high-pitched hum — reminiscent of a failed broadcast — and a singular white dot appeared in the centre of the black background. Thinking about it, it was quite similar to the Black Mirror intro, which he had recently been watching. Even his nightmarish hallucinations were derivative.
Wiston, confused, exhausted, disbelieving, struggled to get his bearings. The noise stopped, and the dot disappeared. The room appeared to lurch back into focus with the same jolting force of being awoken from a dream; at once both disorientating yet a return to complete mundane familiarity.
He stood alone, blinking in the tired, stale meeting room.
What the hell was that? How tired was he?
He tensed — completely still — probably for up to a minute, waiting for more. Something to validate what he’d just experienced. But nothing — there was only silence. He slowly finished packing up, trying to put this weird hallucination out of his mind. He left the room soberly, setting off home, trying to forget this temporary lapse into… whatever it was. He headed out of the office, onto the tube, and back to some much needed sleep at home.
SCENE 2. EXT. A SUNNY CANAL PATH
That evening Wiston went for a run. He had a real love/hate relationship with running, in that he hated doing it, but he loved telling people he did it. He’d taken it up during the first Covid lockdown, as he found that nothing made him appreciate being trapped inside so much as trying to force himself to go out.
He was keen to stress, however, that he wasn’t a runner. Not one of those wankers. He had a slight aversion to running or any form of exercise on ideological bases. It all seemed a bit too optimal. A bit too much life extension-y. LinkedIn. Hustler’s University. Diary of a CEO. Some sort of internalised capitalism, somehow. A lot of people like Guillem and the investor crowd he hung out with did a lot of things like tough-mudders, and triathlons, and ultra-marathons; almost like they were trying to ground the esoteric corporate bullshit they built their empires on with something real, earthy, and painful. A penance, misinterpreted by them from a piss-weak Ayahuasca Trip they’d had at Burning Man ’09. It was like they were trying to run away from their problems, but were so unimaginative that this simply manifested in running.
Not Wiston though. “3km, 16 minutes, 3 seconds, last km, 4 minutes, 55 seconds”, his headphones said.
Worms. The lot of them.
He was nearing the end of the canal part of his route, coming up to the last of the bridges he ran under, and he could see beneath it was a group of young lads — three 15-ish-year-olds — who automatically looked intimidating purely based on the fact that Wiston was bullied at school.
Normally it was OK though — this route. Normally anyone he encountered on the canal path kept themselves to themselves, especially when he was running past them. He felt that being in athletic-mode — by running — it insured him against any trouble. He’d be past before anyone had time to start on him, and by conveying for the few seconds he was in their radius the power of a great runner, he told himself that they’d feel they couldn’t chase after him even if they wanted to. Ironically, halfway into a run was probably the point he was most likely to capitulate in any physical challenge posed to him.
As he approached the group, he saw one of them finish his drink, and then casually throw his Lucozade bottle (one of the new, flashier flavours. Colourful. Not for replenishing nutrients after diarrhoea. This was recreational Lucozade) into the canal.
He immediately bristled.
However, to be fair to these kids, they were probably living in this area before him. He was a gentrifier of course; living in a new-build flat, and part of the tension of the area’s changing and shifting culture (and house-prices). Who was he to complain about what these teenagers did? People here had probably been throwing Lucozade into canals before he was even born.
But then again… it was nature. A canal is nature, isn’t it?
He’d run past them by now, but with each step he was getting angrier and angrier thinking about it. About the disregard of it. The needlessness. Think about the ducks! I mean… it’s not quite climate change, but it’s certainly not NOT climate change is it? Impulsively, he stopped just a few yards past them, and turned back to face them. He was doing this.
“You dropped your bottle”, Wiston said, instantly disassociating as he did so. He did that during most interactions to be fair.
Instantly he realised he’d made a mistake. The group did not look at all ruffled, or defensive. They were as relaxed as ever. Had he completely misunderstood working class culture? Was he a Tory?
“And?” one of them said. Wiston noted that this guy would’ve killed at Footlights improv.
“Well…” The guy had a point. “…Why did you throw it in the canal?”
Wiston had never got this far in his imagined scenarios before. He had of course imagined similar situations 1,000 times over. Typically, his imagined confrontations ended with his violent beating; of being permanently disfigured, disabled and destroyed. In a fight, Wiston’s Oedipal absence of genitalia would be shockingly revealed and exposed by a real man who had the instinctive understanding of conflict and violence he was missing.
And of course it wouldn’t end there, would it? He’d be unable to work, and his subsequent failure to navigate the Tory’s increasingly punitive disability safeguards would lead to a life of hellish cataclysm on the streets of England’s most hostile and cruel streets. He’d probably get addicted to something like Spice 3.0, reflecting the hellishness of his physical reality in his brain, until he’d access a form of suffering that bordered on definitive.
He should probably take up boxing.
Of course he had also allowed himself to imagine the opposite; his victory in a fight. The way he’d punch someone — not knowing quite how hard to pitch it — and unexpectedly knock them out. They’d fall awkwardly, hitting their head on a curb, dying instantly. The Weakest Punch Ever to kill someone. He’d be arrested, sent to jail on the wave of some tabloid-campaign to suddenly stamp-out street violence, and then… well… he wouldn’t do well in prison would he? He’d be bullied for his weakness, raped for his attributes. Uniquely unsuited to prison, he’d kill himself in his cell, instantly triggering the two-strike policy of Celestial Justice (murder AND suicide), condemning himself to an eternity in Hell with no questions asked.
Despite this, he still hadn’t quite planned what he was going to say next.
“Fuck off, dickhead white boy” said the smallest of the kids.
The group were Asian, probably Bangladeshi based on the makeup of the area. Wiston was indeed white, to be fair. But Northern! Were they accounting for that?
“Listen, I’m not trying to start anything”, he said, calming. “But I just think there’s no need to do that is there? It just makes the canal shit for everyone, doesn’t it?”. He’d pulled up a chair, flipped it round, sat on it backwards, and sworn. He was one of them.
“And what?” said one of them. “What are you going to do about it?”
Was it weird he’d mentioned them being Bangladeshi?
Anyway. Long story short; from there, it all basically escalated. There was a bit of back and forth, Wiston losing ground during every exchange, lacking the intelligence to connect to the basic human instinct of conflict management. He hadn’t even reached the Second Circuit!
Before he knew it, there was some pushing, a bit of a scuffle. How had this happened? He was completely out of his depth here. The guy who’d dropped the bottle suddenly had him grabbed by his running top, and was pushing him backwards, away from the group. “Look, look… it’s fine,” he said desperately.
Wiston grabbed onto the kid’s arms, in attempt to counter his control of him — he was 15 for Christ’s sake — he should be better than this — but all it did was cement the hold he had of him. They shuffled backwards, locked in this movement, Wiston trying to wrestle free, until he tripped, falling over backwards as the teen let go of him. He stumbled away from the grip.
Fuck. Shit. SHIT. He was in the canal. He’d fallen in the canal.
There was a shocked silence, before the group erupted in amazed celebration.
“Nooooooooo”
“Oh my God!”
“He fell in the canal!!!”
Wiston really felt like he hadn’t fell. But it was irrelevant. He was humiliated. His nemeses were laughing in hysterics, doubled-over, slapping each other on the back; a cliché of mocking shame. Fucking hyenas.
“Get the bottle while you’re in there will you?” one of them laughed. Fair play.
Wiston swam to the edge, in a daze. He was shocked by the cold of the canal, but the ringing in his ears and the tunnelling of his vision was caused more by the utter humiliation of the situation. Of the utter weakness of it. He was powerless, and emasculated, and all at the hands of 15-year-olds. OK, 14.
He climbed out, drenched. As he straightened up, and patted himself down — the group still cackling — he felt something in the pocket of his running shorts. He realised without even putting his hand in to feel it that it was a knuckle-duster.
That was odd. He’d never owned a knuckle-duster, but there one was, in his pocket. He slipped it on as the kids continued their hysterics.
“Oh my days! He is mad!”
“He’s absolutely raging”
He was, tbf. But still… don’t say it. You don’t say it if you respect it. Why does no-one respect his rage?
He walked up to the one who pushed him in. He felt feral, wild; a swamp-creature birthed up from the very depths of hell. He was a devil. A pond demon. The kid saw it in his eyes.
“Shit bro, chill!”
In the second before Wiston hit him, he felt the guy turn from cocky to apprehensive, a brief flicker of fear. It was actually elating.
The teen collapsed instantly from the impact, out cold. His mates, suddenly quiet, shuffled-backwards, grabbing at each other desperately while still staring at their unconscious friend — almost trying to check the other was there witnessing this with them. They looked at Wiston — still demonic — and promptly turned and ran. As they sped off, a pool of blood slowly pooled out from under their friend’s head; proof he was scientifically dead.
Wiston stood there, unsure at exactly what had just happened; at how it had happened. He could feel his heart thumping, his breath moving his shoulders hypnotically. A chill of wind against his wet clothes suddenly brought him back into the reality of the situation he was in. The canal was quiet. He looked down at the teen, panic rising from the depths of his stomach, up into his chest, to his throat. The fucker was dead. He’d killed him. Shit, this was serious. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he needed to get out of there. Now. He slipped the knuckle-duster into his shorts pocket, and looking up and down the path… he ran.
He ran and he ran, past his usual exit from the canal, three bridges further down. As he passed under the final of these bridges, he quickly threw the knuckle-duster from his pocket into the murky, shadowed water, before heading up the path to the road, and then looping back round a long route back to his apartment.
“Last km: 3 minutes, 38 seconds,” he heard through his headphones. It was his best split in months!
=========
Part 2 will be released 1 December 2023
