Activities. Violence. Enough. Inside the Fishtank, The Unchanged Future of Reality TV

Some trolls feel sorry for consumers, Margera says, laughing. It is reported that a Texas man recently sent an email the morning after spending $5,000 sending various messages, “Wake up, baby!” He pleaded his case: He was drinking and black. Margera was not kind. “Eat dick!” he said. “That’s what you get.”

The team welcomes me into the control room, where several other developers are quickly clicking away behind the multi-screen displays. These fish move around their displays, flying from food to food. I can hear their footsteps upstairs.

The control room evokes a crime scene, or a hideout – all screens and crumbs, guitars and white billboards, strings and empty cans and pepper spray cans. At least eight designers run around the windowless space or around their chairs. Neptune gives me this tour: One change of management shows the inside of the house, the other outside (to inform the police, which the fans call them as a joke); One desk handles sound and advertising, another for paid communications. Most of these, I’m told, were written using AI. I’m asking where the team sleeps. Neptune points to the beds and the floor under his desk.

“Luckily the carpet is nice and soft this season,” says Ottman.

“I like to sleep on the floor,” says Taylor, who wears a knit hat, loose-fitting shirt and Japanese slippers. He has a full beard and dark, tired eyes.

Neptune agrees: “It’s good and bad.”

“It’s punishment,” says Taylor. “I don’t want to sleep in bed anymore.”

Neptune said: “I don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t dirty things should,” Taylor repeats. It’s like, do it.

“Asa my stupid life,” says Neptune idiot who sleeps on on the ground.”

They all laugh, then it’s quiet. At the same time, the printer is buzzing in the corner, and new pages are coming out. With the help of ChatGPT, he wrote a love song for one of the fish named Landon to sing. Landon, in his early twenties, is a ranch manager in Wisconsin who, I know from the show, is his favorite member to torture. A few days earlier, Taylor challenged a drunken Landon to a boxing match and brutally beat him to the ground.

Last night, Landon got drunk again and spent hours asking another member, Vimp, to kiss him. These days they are faced with many complaints, and the manufacturers want to make sure that they do not leave the issue.

“Do we want this to end with Landon kissing?” Taylor asks in the bedroom.

“I want to make it worse and not kiss,” Neptune says. Everyone agrees. He decides to tell Landon, who naturally believes, that the Vimp is just playing hard to get. Music in hand, Neptune and Taylor walk up the stairs and appear after a while, a little, on the spotlights. Vimp has no camera, in the bathroom. They’re banging on the door, shouting, “WASHED!” then I find Landon, curled up on the bed, depressed and sad. All day the onlookers have been mocking him, but now a few are trying to comfort him.