Who Created ANGELA?

Why does she do this? The reason is quite straightforward – to increase traffic. With more traffic comes the opportunity for substantial benefits. Such behavior may seem baffling at first. But in this era of “traffic is king,” almost anything can be packaged as content and sold. There are examples of people pretending to be sick in exchange for attention and business opportunities. One such example is Australian health influencer Belle Gibson. She falsely claimed to have had cancer and recovered from it through natural therapies and even sold books and treatments. There was a major uproar when her fraudulent behavior was exposed.

However, we cannot simply think of the phenomenon of Internet celebrity as an expression of narcissism on the part of some people. In actuality, our society “needs”Internet influencers. We need opinion leaders to guide us and people to make us forget about our own powerlessness and ordinariness for a while. Such needs are more obvious in a society in which there is strong collectivism. When people lack confidence in their own choices, they are eager to find someone to imitate.

However, there exists a contradiction. Do influencers set the trends or do the trends create the influencers? Is it because the public likes watching others share their pain and weaknesses that ANGELA came into being? Or, is it because of ANGELA that we learn to like and even desire such content?

Both answers are disturbing. For the former, to cater to their audience’s interests, Internet influencers continue to push the limits – even resorting to harming themselves and oddity seeking to gain attention. In the seventh season of Black Mirror, there is an episode in which some Internet influencers, desperate to earn money, do not hesitate to drink urine live on camera or even pull out their own teeth. Such behaviors, which once may have seemed absurd, are no longer just found in works of fiction.

The latter is more common. From politics to social issues, the phenomenon of Internet influencers leading the trend is ubiquitous. In Taiwan, I believe no one is a stranger to the involvement of Internet influencers in public forums.

Is there an ANGELA in each of us? 

Maybe you are not an Internet influencer, but do you really live “autonomously?” Are our choices and actions really based on free will? Or, are we just following a script written for us by society? In ANGELA (a strange loop), the director arranged for all the characters to lip sync their lines, as if to say as long as the “performer” looks like he or she can speak, the show (life) can go on.

In one interesting scene, Brad wants to eat an apple that is on a table. ANGELA reminds him that the apple is fake. At the end of the play, Brad takes a big bite of the “fake”apple. This not only signals a plot reversal, but also brings up two core questions: What is real? What is fake?

As AI technology matures, perhaps we should be asking: How much of “the real me”remains? How much has been shaped by algorithms, online opinions, and even AI tools?
When all that is left of the value of your existence is “giving instructions,” is it you or your AI substitute that is alive?

We all want to truly live. But, what is the mark of being alive? What kind of existence can be considered “our own?” Perhaps in ANGELA (a strange loop) you will find the answers.

If you do, you may be clearer about whether you want or don’t want to be the next ANGELA.