The first time I’ve heard of Supreme Tweeter, let’s just say I was a little bit wary. The track record of the portrayal of North Korea (or anything involving them) in the media hasn’t been very good, and I have no reason to believe that this would be any different. Combined to the general SNAFU-ness that is The Interview, it was almost necessary to be worried about anything that put ‘North Korea’ with ‘comedy’ in the same sentence, because it would often fall under the red flag of making fun of the oddities of oppressors that existed throughout this day.
Fortunately, the two co-creators of Supreme Tweeter, Jayne Hong and Harry Lloyd, handled the series well. Instead of focusing on making light of North Korea, Supreme Tweeter is a smart, biting commentary about the strangeness of social media and the way attention works in our day and age. The humor is served in an almost both cringe-worthy and self-deprecating way (by the co-creator himself, who starred as the lead character of the narrative) that is directed and written well enough to not make it look like a cheap, slapstick comedy.
It’s a little unsettling to think that this is something we face on daily, happening all over the world, and how there exist people who would do anything to get such attention whatever the cost is.
Supreme Tweeter is a story about Harry Lloyd, an exaggerated version of the actor himself, who struggles in getting casted after his Game of Thrones’ character, Viserys Targaryen, died by a golden crown, due to people demanding to know whether he has enough followers on Twitter. This led him to ranting about it to George R. R. Martin himself, then cutting Martin off after receiving a call from his agent about Seth Rogen (ha!) getting the role for the said casting, and then after that led him into ranting again with Maisie Williams, again, a special cameo, who served him scathing reviews about his lack of social media presence and dragged him into making an account on Twitter.
Afterwards, we will be thrown into a stunning visualization of the internet world that we know, designed beautifully rather than having a camera take a shoot of a computer screen, complete with animation and a mini avatar of Harry Lloyd commenting in a helium-filled voice. But conflict—or rather, attention—comes fast into the picture as soon as the ‘Supreme Tweeter’ itself, a Twitter account of Kim Jong Un, started following him and even mentioning him with a nod to his character on Game of Thrones.
With its quick-fire pace, perfect for a under eight minutes web series, we are quickly pulled into a world such alike us that is a little uncomfortable, when trivial things like being followed by an infamous world leader would get you attention in a blink of eye—even when you’ve done practically nothing. It’s a little unsettling to think that this is something we face on daily, happening all over the world, and how there exist people who would do anything to get such attention whatever the cost is.
For millennials us, this might seem normalized but a little silly to think about, either for other people who doesn’t understand or maybe for us itself, that social media is something that is even more real than the life we faced off-screen. It is undeniable. The amount of information and entertainment that we could get from it are endless. Even Twitter could either be both brain-numbing and intelligent depending on how you use it.
Supreme Tweeter released all three episodes of the series at once during the April’s Fool. It was fitting to the theme and the overall comedic theme of the web series; the quick and rise of fame and the hilarity that ensues around it. This series perfect when you want something to watch that’s funny but also not brainless; after all, it’s a commentary about the world that we live in now, and a clever one at that—you could be content with the comedy or walk away laughing at the silliness of our life, it’s all fair game. It also helps that it has a really good visualization of Twitter and that Harry Lloyd has a sick comedic timing, which is a cherry on this really delicious ice cream. Overall, I still felt like there are parts the team could have done better, but I’m pretty satisfied with it in general.
You can watch Supreme Tweeter on the Supreme Tweeter channel on YouTube.
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