Unfiction is a very unique genre of storytelling
in which a fictional narrative is being told, but is passed off as if it's really happening. Unlike
traditional media, were the audience is expected to suspend their disabelief on their own, the
creators of Unfiction content help their audiences with this suspension to the fullest extent that
they can whether it's by creating a story in the first person point of view or carefully crafting
details over a period of time to make it seem like eve
nts in their story had a real-life impact.
In the current day, most of these stories that are told in this way are hosted on the
internet. In fact some of your favorite online media may fall under this category such as
Local 58, The Sun Vanished, and Marble Hornets. Due to these characteristics, this genre makes
for a powerful tool to convey compelling messages, themes, and ideas that live with us constantly.
Traditional media is often a means of escape from our daily lives. It's a space in
which we
are expected to step away from reality and focus in on what we are watching. Movies and
TV shows are heavily emotional in their own right. They can make us feel intensely
for the moment being, but once we step back into reality, we let all of that go.
We may learn lessons and critically analyze what we just experienced during our escape, but
we do so from afar. When it comes to storytelling, Unfiction is more of an integration than an
escape. Social media is apart of our daily li
ves and sometimes can feel more like
a trap than anything else at it's worst, but at it's best it's a place where
we consume information that we learn, analyze, and apply to ourselves at a rapid pace.
It's up close and personal because we don't step away from reality especially when so much of what
we see reflects the world around us better than a mirror ever could. So whatever we gained while
on social media, is now ingrained into our souls. Even the most realistic movies, while very
movin
g, aren't as successful as unfiction stories at being emotionally authentic. I'm
going to talk about two specific unfiction web series in this video: Petscop and Daisy
Brown. Both are told on YouTube and both are fantastic examples of emotional authenticity.
Petscop is a series that takes the form of a man named Paul uploading footage of his
Let's Plays of a seemingly unfinished game. As he ventures deeper and deeper into this
game, he starts to make strange discoveries of which both connec
t to him and his family's
past. Interestingly about Petscop, most of the story is inferred rather than told outright.
It's up to the audience to piece together what's happening from information given to them in the
videos themselves, annotations, and descriptions. Even with a story as inaccessible as this one,
it still manages to clearly communicate universal themes that we all have either experienced or
can at least sympathize with just by being humans that are included within this world.
Petscop sends across heavy messages about adoption, the foster care system, child @bu$e,
family secrets, children being treated as objects, and generational tr@um@- all of which
can create a vicious, never-ending cycle. As for Daisy Brown, it's much more
straightforward. It consists of a series of vlogs uploaded by a woman named Daisy whose raising a
monster named Alan- a creation of her own dad, a scientist who mysteriously disappeared. Her
vlogs document the highs and lows of raising Alan
as well as her loneliness from being isolated
all the time within the walls her own home. Just like Petscop it covers much of the
same familiar themes along with grief, loss, h0m0ph0bia, and walking away from toxic
relationships while having to form healthy ones. It's all from a deeply personal perspective
and I throughly appreciate that. These two stories are made up, but not only could
I see the protagonists of these narratives really going through all this, I also can see so
many of th
e very real people in my life going through all of this as well.
And you might be thinking right now that all of these themes I just covered
are also relayed in your favorite movies and other forms of traditional media. And
you might be asking, what sets unfiction apart then? What makes it so much emotionally
authentic? Well in my opinion? It's the silence. In Petscop, Paul never explicitly states that
at some point during the series he doesn't want to continue playing Petscop, but his famil
y
is forcing him to do so and so he continues. There are no dramatic arguments or plans
of trying to escape the expectations of his family so that he can pursue his own desires
and take control of his life or whatever. He doesn't put up a fight, instead he silently
agrees to keep playing even though he knows that by doing so, he's essentially re-living
his family's tr@um@ and continuing the cycle that none of them have been able to get out of.
In Daisy Brown, most wouldn't know the underlyi
ng motif of h0m0ph0bia if they didn't turn on the
captions for the videos of which reveal Daisy's past and snippets of the relationship she had with
her father. She never verbally says any of this or even gives the audience an inkling that she might
be struggling or has struggled with this issue. The silence that these two protagonists exhibit
are especially devastating because in real life, more often than not, we don't put up a big fight
against or even say out loud the difficulties infli
cted upon us by those closest to us. We
choose to remain silent and endure them while we try to find a quiet solution that often seeks to
strike a balance rather than remedy the situation in it's entirety because we realize that
sometimes we can't do what's right for us without compromising our personal safety or
upsetting the loved ones we're surrounded by. Unfiction projects, especially these two, are
particularly amazing at poking into the wounds we all have as humans. They present us bi
ts and
pieces of information almost like an afterthought, just like how the stories of people we
know in real life are in revealed to us in glimpses and never laid out in front of us
directly. They mimic our messy untied loose ends which reminds us that hardly anything
in our lives are ever resolved neatly. I know this was a slightly different
topic than usual, but I really hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you
want to see more videos by me then please consider subscribing. Thank yo
u
for watching and I'll see you next time.
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