Malia: This is amazing! You have to watch this! youtu.be/MxyZPtLk
Dawn: I’m tired of watching every stupid video you send my way.
Malia: This one is different! Promise me you’ll watch it to the very end.
Dawn: Why should I?
Malia: Trust me, you’ll be glad you did. Please? Just promise.
Dawn: OK I promise.
Malia: Great. Watch it now, let me know when it has finished.Dawn sighed, and clicked on the link in the chat window. The YouTube app launched and began to load the video. It was uninspiringly titled “Amazing Video – Watch to the End” To add insult to injury, she had to wait five seconds to click through a luxury car advertisement.
Then the video itself began. Dawn was not impressed; it was just a turning spiral, drawing the eye inward. A gentle chord played on the speakers, droning on and on.
Dawn: This is stupid.
Malia: Keep watching. It gets better.
The spiral turned. Dawn followed it towards its center, where its detail got lost in the pixelation of her tablet screen. Suddenly something weird happened: the spiral rippled, and the chord wavered in pitch. It was very disconcerting. It only lasted a moment, and again the spiral turned steadily, and the chord droned.
The spiral rippled crazily again. The chord wavered in time. Dawn felt dizzy, disoriented. She tried once more to follow an arm of the spiral down into the middle, but the rippling came back, making it even harder to concentrate.
Now the spiral was rippling, and the chord wavering eerily, all the time. It was all that Dawn could do to keep watching the turning of the spiral. It drew her in, pulling her further and further, into the heart of the spiral. There were words in the music now, but she couldn’t pay attention to what they were singing, she had to focus on the spiral, it was important and exciting to try to follow the spiral further, no matter how much it rippled and twisted.
And then the video ended, and the screen showed another URL for a site called FinalSurrender.com. It took a moment for Dawn to come back to herself.
Dawn: Okay I watched it. That was weird.
Malia: I told you! Now, watch it again.
Dawn clicked the Replay button without thinking. Again the spiral turned and the chord droned. Again the ripples made it hard to follow. Again she got drawn in. Again the voices sang to her. Again she stared at the still screen when it was over. She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there. The chat app chirped at her, and she looked at it.
Malia: Are you still there?
Dawn: Yeah, feeling a bit spacey.
Malia: Great! Now follow the link.
Dawn clicked on the link on the final view of the video. Her browser took her to FinalSurrender.com, and a new spiral filled the screen, more compelling than the first one. Voices urged her on. She watched. She learned. She accepted. She surrendered.
(source: @cutestgirls; via katierotic)