Revisiting Internet Culture: Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared
All the way back in 2011, a small channel released the video: Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared. The title was simple, and one would expect it to be a short indie horror film, as was common in that year. But when you clicked on the video, it was a puppet show. A duck. A “yellow guy”. And a “red guy”, who was a literal talking rug.
A children’s show. This seemingly plain scene morphed into an educational music number, which slowly started getting creepier and creepier, until it became a psychedelic horror show with extreme bodily (puppet-ily?) horror.
I mean, it was obviously a big hit. What started as a small indie film, with a small crew of 10–12 people took off like a rocket. Episode 2 started off in much the same way, but this time we anticipated it. This time we knew what was coming and it still punched us in the face, this time with a singing clock and existential crises.
Episode 3 introduced a cheerful little butterfly happily inducting yellow guy into a sacrificial cult, all in the name of understanding love. Oh, this was a song by the way. Yeah. 2014 was a weird year.
Well, I won’t spoil the rest of the episodes further, but as you progress through the series, the plot becomes clearer and clearer, but never quite fully presented. There are tiny slips, like glitches in this woolen matrix, that reveal just a little bit of the actual plot.
Recently, on the 19th of June, 2022, DHMIS uploaded a new video simply titled “FLY”. Since this was their first upload after 6 years, the internet immediately jumped on it, scrutinizing every last pixel of the video. The team behind DHMIS definitely has some big plans for the future, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Welp, revisiting such a gem sure has been fun, but I’m afraid this is THE END.
