Character Building
Like all things that go viral, Dead Ringers had three things going for it - it was weird, it was irreverent and it was free.
Like all things that go viral, Alex got to it late.
Not ‘older relative using banana-hued cartoon characters to justify their racist stance on Facebook’ late, but she was still a couple of days off the pace.
She had been so busy with work and then there was Tom, her husband and, well, he always liked things at home done in a particular way so it didn’t give her much time to herself these days.
But at least she had time now.
As is usual for these things, Dead Ringers had found its way into the limelight through a few early pioneers on the usual social platforms. They then filtered word down to their followers and so on, until the world was saturated and people were talking of little else.
And that’s exactly when Alex found it. Once the celebrities and influencers had already had their fun, but it would still be considered fresh.
When she first clicked on the link, Alex’s dopamine buzz of anticipation took an almost immediate dent.
To say the website was underwhelming would be an understatement.
It was a plain white screen with the word DEAD RINGERS emblazoned across the top, all caps and in a simple, brutal typeface.
Underneath was a grey box with just one word on it: START.
Alex tapped it.
The whole page refreshed and the screen filled with a message:
Welcome To Dead Ringers (V1.21)
This is a social experiment I created as part of my dissertation and I decided to make it public after I finished my final year.
In it, you can create your own character and then you can destroy them in a variety of creative ways.
To get started, simply log all your social media details below. For the best experience, enter in as many as you can.
Have fun - and good luck!
Underneath were a series of empty boxes relating to various social platforms.
Alex filled in everything she could and eagerly pressed on the submit button underneath.
The page loaded in once more.
MAKE YOUR CHARACTER, it shouted.
Alex felt a prickle of excitement in her skin.
Even at the first step, there was a wealth of choices.
Body types, face types, hair types - every possible permutation spilled out across the screen.
There were sliders and dials, checkboxes and colour palettes. From eyebrow curvature to cheekbone angle, every little detail was controllable in some way or another. Everything was at your disposal to make the characters as realistic and as accurate as possible.
“Wow!” Alex couldn’t help but say as her eyes widened at the prospect lying ahead, and she started clicking around and testing out making her character.
Alex knew she wouldn’t have long to play around with it all. Recently, it had got to the stage where Tom was setting limits on how long she could spend on the computer. A couple of hours in the evening after the dinner things had been tidied away, but definitely before 10pm when he had to start getting everything ready for bed.
But there was so much to play with, Alex couldn’t help but get excited.
Even in the short time since the website had gone viral, people had been busily making - and posting up - the avatars they had created.
For every member of the general public, there were dozens, scores, hundreds, maybe even thousands for their celebrity counterparts.
Most, if not all, of the efforts were passable at best, but people seemed to enjoy the challenge of making their avatars and posting them up for the craic and the clout.
However, the character creation was only the first part of the Dead Ringers experience of course.
Upon completing their character, users were invited to take screenshots of them in a variety of poses - holding different props, stood at various landmarks.
The novelty of everyone creating their characters was what made the site popular.
But it was the next step, the final step, that made it go viral.
Once made, and before the initial excitement of completing your character had fully subsided, you had the option to destroy what you had created.
It was such a simple but effective conceit.
You had spent hours, days, making something - and then you could simply smash it all to pieces.
Of course, just simply erasing it wouldn’t be fun.
No, the secret was in the creativity of how you could do it.
When you clicked the ‘DESTROY’ button on the site, you were presented with a warning - and a slew of options.
The warning, for its part, was to make sure you knew exactly what was going to happen.
PLEASE NOTE: All character destructions on Dead Ringers are permanent and once they are destroyed, all likenesses cannot be reinstated. Do not undertake this next step lightly.
In contrast, the options below gleefully spelled out a smorgasbord of violent ends to the avatars: firing squad, poisoning, electrocution, suffocation, explosion, being squashed in a large hydraulic press and filled with bees to name but a few.
And of course people were only too happy to extinguish their creations.
And to record them.
And to post them online.
As quickly as the creations were posted, a wave of destructions soon followed, each as detailed as the characters they eliminated.
They were as stupid as they were graphic as they were everywhere.
What happened next though - well, that was unexpected.
Deaths.
It took a few days for them to start to take full effect, but slowly and surely, the world started to pay attention.
The initial inaccuracies of the characters that were being made fast and loose meant reports of fatalities were low initially - but as the accuracy began to improve, so did the hit rate.
Whether they were made to represent the creators themselves or others, the avatars that were most accurate - and that most closely matched any faces tagged in photos from the creators' social accounts - were not just being deleted online, their inspirations were too.
It started as an apocryphal tale, people joining the dots themselves as friends and family met their grisly ends.
But then the media had picked up on the chatter and the theories started to spread like wildfire.
As time went on, more people died and panic ensued.
No one knew for certain if they had been identified as a target by the system, if a likeness had been close enough for the algorithm to pinpoint them for termination. Even people who hadn’t used Dead Ringers were being entered in the system by those who were, then extinguished as if by some secondhand smoking gun.
A huge amount of people of course immediately stopped using the site, purged their socials, turned their digital footprint to ash - although for many more it was too late.
Meanwhile, a small number saw a loophole in the system for chaos and carnage and started to use the site to conduct hits, creating characters of those they had long wanted to eliminate, either for themselves or to order.
By now, governments of the world were scrambling to shut the service down, to restrict access wherever possible but it was altogether too slow as a process.
And this is where Alex had come in. She had heard of what was happening and had decided to try and slip in quick before it was too late.
9:58pm.
She leant back in her chair, looking between the character she had created and her wedding photos.
“Close enough”, she thought to herself.
Alex could already hear the routine noises of Tom turning off the lights downstairs and preparing to come upstairs.
She clicked CREATE CHARACTER and then, as soon as the avatar had finalised, immediately clicked on DESTROY CHARACTER.
She selected BY HYDRAULIC PRESS.
The stairs started to creak in their regular nightly rhythm.
Alex’s blood ran momentarily cold.
CHARACTER DESTROYED!
CREATE A NEW CHARACTER?
Alex closed the browser window and shutdown the computer.
“Time for bed, yeah?” Tom said brusquely.
“Absolutely, I’ll be right there,” replied Alex.
And she felt a small smile cross her lips.