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Some trolls experience buyer’s remorse, Margera says with a laugh. He says a Texas man recently sent an email the morning after spending $5,000 sending variations of the message, “Wake up, pussy!” He defended his claim: He was drinking alcohol and fainted. Margera was not sympathetic. “Eat your dick!” He said. “This is what you get.”
The team welcomed me into the control room, where several other producers were studiously tapping away behind custom multi-screen displays. The fish mill is on its screens, moving from one feed to another. I can hear their steps upstairs.
The control room evokes an insurgency bunker, or a supervillain’s lair—it’s screens and crumbs, guitars and whiteboards, cables and empty cans and cans of pepper spray. At least eight producers wander around the largely windowless space or spin in their chairs. Neptune gave me the tour: one configuration of screens showed the interior of the house, the other the exterior (to give advance notice to the cops, when fans would call them as a joke); One office controls sound effects and advertisements, while another controls paid fan letters. I’m told that much of this is coded using artificial intelligence. Ask where the team sleeps. Neptune points to the couches and the floor under his desk.
“Fortunately, the rug is nice and soft this season,” says Othman.
“I like to sleep on the floor,” says Taylor, who wears a knit hat, an untucked shirt, and Japanese-looking slippers. He has a full beard and dark, tired eyes.
“It’s nice and humiliating,” Neptune agrees.
“It’s punitive,” Taylor says. “I don’t want to sleep in the bed anymore.”
“I don’t deserve it,” Neptune says.
“Me, no silly Taylor deserves it. “When we’re filming, I get very masochistic. It’s like, Damn him.
“the curse “My stupid life,” Neptune says. “I’m just a person stupid Who sleeps on My land“.
They both laugh and then fall silent. Just then, the printer beeps in the corner, spewing out new pages. With the help of ChatGPT, they wrote a love song for a fish named Landon to sing. Landon, in his early 20s, is a janitor from Wisconsin, and I know from watching the show, he’s the team’s favorite cast member. A few days ago, Taylor challenged a drunk Landon to a boxing match and brutally beat him to the ground.
The night before, Landon had gotten drunk again and spent hours begging another cast member, Vimp, to kiss him. Today he feels a lot of remorse, and the producers want to make sure he doesn’t give up on the story.
“Do we want this to end with Landon getting his kiss?” Taylor asks the room.
“I want it to end up getting worse and worse and him never getting his kiss,” Neptune says. Everyone agrees. They decide to tell Landon, who naturally trusts him, that Vimp is simply playing hard to get. Lyrics in hand, Neptune and Taylor walk up the stairs and appear moments later, in miniature, on the screens. Vimp off camera in the bathroom. They knock on the door and shout: “Chub, cut!” Then she finds Landon, who is curled up on the couch, hungry and sad. Viewers have been making fun of him all day, but now some are trying to calm him down.
