The New Bruce Willis movie Surrogates has launched a promotional website that will help you get a peek at the lifestyle that a Surrogate would live. It breaks the fourth wall making the fictional company appear real online and lets you take your first steps in creating a “virtual you” that will be used as the robot version of yourself to interact with the world in your stead. I just hope they realize that calling it “viral” won’t make it so.
If you visit Virtual Self Industries you can choose different attributes for your personal surrogate. Play with the models they give you (not as kinky as it sounds) or upload your own image and tweak it – it’s your call. The site is pretty fun – but in all honesty it‘s nothing more than 21st Century dress up
The Surrogates based on a graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldelle is set in the future where human beings stay at home and live life through “surrogates” better looking (robotic) versions of themselves. However, Willis’ character decides to leave his home for the first time in years in order to solve a crime that puts “surrogate life” in the balance.
I like the idea of people using tech to pretend to be a more idealistic version of themselves. This is a phenomenon in all sorts of online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life, where people are escaping reality and becoming something else online.
This concept is kinda twisted back on itself in this movie when people are becoming something “better” on the computer but still experiencing it in the real world.
Check out Choose Your Surrogate.com. Its pretty fun.
Sounds cool. A bit like Existenz with Jude Law from the nineties though.