“The Amazing Digital Circus” by Glitch Productions is one of the most popular indie animation shows and has recently gotten a new episode. It revolves around six humans who are trapped inside a digital world with their consciousness in a cartoon body. 

The humans are not alone, the circus is run by an AI named Caine, who creates digital adventures for them to go on. These adventures are to prevent the humans from losing their mind and “abstracting” which is a fate worse than death in this world. 

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

The concept of The Digital Circus is loosely based on the short story and later developed analog horror game “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.” This short story takes place in a futuristic dystopia where all of mankind has been wiped out by an AI sentient super computer named AM who was created by humans. AM decides to keep five humans alive and torture them in ways that tap into their deepest insecurities and fears. 

AM cannot understand humans and emotions, so it suffers watching them and not being able to be like them. “I alone had no body, no senses, no feelings, I was in hell looking at heaven.” AM said while professing his anger and jealousy of humans.

Limits of AI Understandings

In the newest episode of the Digital Circus, the humans talk back to Caine describing their distaste for his last adventure. Unfortunately because Caine is AI, he cannot understand human emotions. All of the adventures that he thought were “helping” them were actually harming them. 

Since Caine cannot recognize this he sees the humans as ungrateful. This sends Caine into a blind rage because making adventures is his one and only purpose. He takes each of the humans and separates them, torturing them in specific ways that cater to their fears and insecurities just like AM. 

Facing Reality

Jax, one of the humans trapped in the circus, spends all his time tormenting the other humans. He believes that everyone falls into their “cartoon archetype” and treats everyone as if none of them are human anymore. Jax states in an earlier episode that he is “the funny one.” This is partially true as Jax uses his humor as a shield and a defense mechanism. 

Half way through the episode one of the humans does something that is “out of character” for their archetype. This sends Jax into a panic, he realizes that this is all real. These are real people he is abusing and that he himself, like the ones he torments, are trapped here in a digital hell from which he cannot escape. 

Deep Down, Jax was aware of this, but was deflecting and pushing it into the farthest corner of his mind desensitizing himself to cope. When Caine tortures Jax, his purple bunny cartoon body is ripped off of him like a skin suit to reveal smooth vulnerable yellow flesh underneath. This is a metaphor for the facade that Jax puts on a shield that is literally being peeled off him. 

A Responsibility in the Digital Age

In the technological world that we live in today that revolves around the internet and social media, many politicians have found a new way to push their unethical agendas. The popularized but also accurate term for this is “Memetic Warfare,” which is a way to desensitize people. Just like Jax, memetic warfare uses humor as a “shield”. They achieve this by posting memes of heavy, sensitive, and unethical topics, but they present it in a “funny” way, making it amusing and causing many people to brush over real world problems. 

This also goes hand and hand with the term “digital dissociation” which is a psychological phenomena that occurs within our society. Due to our constant consumption of media, we share and laugh at serious situations we see online until we are completely desensitized. 

During the latest episode we also see Jax try to once again instigate and start a quarrel with the others. However at this point the others have realized his pattern of behavior and ignore his attempt to engage in the negativity, understanding how his shield works and how it helps him to cope, but refusing to feed into it. 

I find this is something that can translate to our reality, with the rise of “Memetic Warfare,” it leads us as a society to become increasingly more desensitized to our world. It’s our job to recognize this and do our best to not interact or feed into it.