Who Wants to Play Lollipop?

Jason Zada and Bill Oberst Jr. return nine years later to disrupt Halloween and our daily video calls with Take This Lollipop 2.

In 2011, Take This Lollipop frightened viewers with a customized horror experience by hijacking your personal data through Facebook, foreshadowing the grim realities of data collection and misuse.

A lot has changed since the original. The global pandemic has accelerated tech adoption and shifted how we communicate. We routinely turn on our webcams to talk to do business, go to school, or talk to family and friends.

Zada, director of The Forest, told Fast Company “we turn on our webcams every day and communicate with strangers, business colleagues, schoolmates, and family. Combine that with the ongoing threats of deepfakes, voice/text AI, identity theft, and there seemed to be a lot of scary things looming.”

To explore those threats, Take This Lollipop 2 has been reimagined as a with creepy consequences. Using footage from your webcam, the site demonstrates how easily the technology behind deepfakes can be used to emulate you.

The bespoke experience begins by asking for your name before asking for permission to use your webcam. From there you are added to four-person Zoom call, complete with a customized chat.

As the call-participants prompt you to engage you witness an unnerving set of events that eventually takes over your screen. The scariest moment may be the very end, if you stick around.

Are you brave enough to play lollipop?