Dared My Best Friend was an Alternate Reality Cinema project produced by Definitely Real Productions in 2020. Learn about Definitely Real here.
This project was an immersive television series based on the classic story from Reddit, “I dared my best friend to ruin my life. He’s succeeding.” The story centered around a pair of teens who dared each other to ruin one another’s lives. One friend took the dare far too seriously and made good on his commitment to life ruining.
How was it immersive, then? Alongside the TV series was a deeper narrative layer that played out across the entire internet. Dozens of actors, writers, and other artists took to social media, message boards, bespoke websites, and even the Dark Web to further the action being outlined in the TV series and cause audience members to pause and think, “wait; is this real?” Audience members could interact with the characters in the series during release week and take part in the action unfolding onscreen.
For this project, I was a production assistant and web content writer. I was one of a handful of go-to writers who were on call to write whatever was needed based on the real-time events during release week: Youtube video scripts, fake product reviews, social media posts, short and long form web content, and more.
I also assisted with administrative work, supporting production managers as needed.