Kinda Nervous About Hosting My First Funeral 🤵

After a month of extensive planning and making, other creatives and I hosted the Internet Funeral at Pebblebed on March 28th. We said goodbye to the web as we knew it — now buried six yottabytes deep under mountains of AI content so convinceing you can’t tell what’s human anymore. RIP reality!（;<)

At the door, we ran a CAPTCHA test to filter humans from sus bots (gotta keep those bots out.) Despite how *easy* the test was, some guests were still suspiciously bot-like.

After packing the place with ~160 humans, a number of guests delivered funny as hell deeply solemn eulogies for the pre-AI Internet and paid tribute with personal belongings. Seeing everyone wearing BLACK while making dark jokes about internet made it easily the BEST funeral I’ve attended.

Then, guests dispersed to attead various type of installations that were themed around forgotten online games, early youtube videos, 2000s audio recorder, and much more.

COOL. But what did you do, WOLF?

As one of the exhibiting artists, I created Pick Me Up, a multiplayer scam-detection game with a simple premise: Two groups face separate screens showing callers, but can't see each other's screens.

How to play?

Players must describe their caller and decide if both groups are seeing the same person.
If both screens show the same caller → It's a friend → Stay on the call!
If screens show different callers → It's a scammer → Hang up before the 25-second timer runs out!

Although the concept is simple, when you can’t look at the other screen, the game can become very tricky. Players would find themselves struggle to describe even the simplest face. Plus, not knowing if you made the right decision before the time’s up can stress you out at just the right amount.

The phone booth created a perfect mystery box. Outsiders couldn't hear the gameplay, just see players making bizarre faces and hand signals. Seeing people lining up to wait for my game is 100% a dream come true.

By the end of the event, about ~50 players had the chance to interact with my installation and many of them played for more than one time.

My greatest appreciation goes to everyone who played through my game!

I love how people got beaten by the level but still laughed it out. It’s a sign of my game design paying off! I wanted the players to feel “How could I not have seen that!?“ when they lose. And to achieve that, I made the difference very noticeable once they see the faces yet difficult to notice while playing. Then, I created numerous types of differences with a learning curve, forcing you to think differently each time you describe.

If you are interested in playing and are in San Francisco, let me know. I’d love to bring this game to your event.

More updates will be shared about the journey of creating this game and future plans for it. Stay tuned.

Hopefully I captured 1% of what this event delivered. Truth be told, I initially didn't understand the nostalgia for the old web. Isn't today's internet more convenient and polished? But now I see that as the internet evolves, pieces of it vanish forever, taking memories with them. Something’s worth mourning there…… I’m simply too young to experience that ;)

My sincere appreciation towards all the talented artists, team members and volunteers who poured their heart into the funeral:

Nicole Levin - Instagram, X
Julien Ann - LinkedIn
Bansini - Instagram
Ash Herr - Instagram 
Allon Wagner - Google Scholar
Manivannan Senthil - Instagram
Lydia La Roux - Instagram
Sahil Tapiawala - Instagram
Abi Murthy - Instagram
Tammie
Bella
Dora
Leia Chang
Taylor Tabb
Mel
Oliver Wendell Braly
Roxane
Riley Walz

A huge hug to everyone who made my game possible:

Music: Gleb Ossipov - Instagram , Wolf Boxuan Chen - Instagram
Playtesters: Emmanuel, Lei, Gleb, Fridge, Nick, Jam, Owen
Site & Supply: Pebblebed, NoiseBridge
And to all the players 🫶

Special thanks to Pebblebed and Tammie, who provided the space and much of the help we needed!

Now it’s time for….👇👇👇