Did you know that social media fosters toxic relationships among its users, who only gain clout and/or material gains by performing inanely for each other? In this fundamentally unbalanced type of community network, individuals are complicit for as long as they allow themselves to be seduced by the illusion of power-wow! That's the sort of asked and answered wisdom at the heart of "Share?," an ungenerous techno-satire about an unnamed man who wakes up in an unfurnished cell with only a computer monitor for company.
There's a little more to this sketchy sci-fi parable, all about a wary cipher, #000000014 (Melvin Gregg), who learns how to not only survive, but maybe even game his prison's live-streaming camera network, which connects imprisoned users through their respective computer monitors. But only a little. "Share?" ostensibly has a dark sense of humor, too, yet even its jokes point a lazy finger at viewers.
"Share?" is only 70+ minutes long, and it shows. We see the movie's world through the unblinking eye of #000000014's computer monitor, the one he also uses to broadcast a live video stream from inside his grey brutalist cell. Why is he there, and who's keeping him? That's an irrelevant mystery, according to co-writer/director Ira Rosensweig and co-writer Benjamin Sutor. Rather, we're supposed to focus on the patternmaking logic that leads #000000014 to figure out how to get attention from unseen viewers and earn points that he can convert into amenities, like food, clothes, or an inflatable mattress. #000000014 spends a lot of time peering into and through the camera frame since it's presented as a monitor. His computer seems pretty basic, given frequent prompts like "Share?" and "Good food?" It's almost as if social media and technology only grant its users' limited agency, maaan.
