Ben The Second Impact

The plot once the full story is understood is the ultimate argument against escapism the human race has locked itself into a dream where they can feel whatever they want whenever they want instant gratification forever for eternity no need to wait this gets interpreted by some as “the holy dream of humanity” but it is a problem because of what the short is really about loneliness and empathy the creator of this technology is the last one to use it simply because she doesn’t want to be alone on a silent planet hoping that she can convince people to leave heaven to embrace the world outside with its flaws and be confident and step outside “we haven’t even explored our galaxy”. This brings us to one of our main characters the dream worlds creators ai assistant who has her empathy programs removed to survive the isolation of being alone asked to protect humanity but it doesn’t save her by the present moment she is cold yes but also clearly insane as someone lacking emotion’s and empathy her idea twists from protecting humanity to protecting humanity’s holy dream so hundreds of thousands of years later when other advanced is life is discoverd she goes to wipe them out billions dead because that discovery could conceivably wake people up. The other main character is a captain in the army of the alien species who are like us if we continued to explore they found the space probe we sent with the gold disk and made a holiday out of it other sentient life they wanted to welcome humans to the stars the captain had a sense of honour and empathy and respect for those around him asking the ai why. Why attack us without communicating first, why commit this genocide, why are there no people on the ship, and the backstory is what he was told so in a last attempt to save his people he crashed his ship onto earth deploying the escape pods so his crew can land there asking them to use there understandable rage at the situation but also begging them to show empathy to wake humanity up and not strike them down that they are just like us in the end. We don’t see what the crew dose

The message of this short is not subtle they show stock footage of someone scrolling tick tock for gods sack it’s asking us in a world where everything is shown online faster and faster, where algorithms put us into little boxes to make us happy only showing us what they think we want where horrible things are done to maintain it like modern day slavery and worker exploitation used to make phones and the like in a world where you can be connected to everything and completely alone at the same time that we don’t just escape that we look at the world that we go out and try to make genuine connections that we get mad at the things wrong with the world and try to change it and hold people accountable for what they do and that we don’t see the world in terms of us versus them that we have empathy for the other that they might not be that different that in another world that’s you.