'The more distracted by some extensive infinite multi-platform conversation I become the more unhappy I am'

Short film IT Girl aims to explore our relationship with social media. With just hours before the KickStarter crowdfunder for the film closed -and after they reached their target! -we caught up with writer Richard Gosling to find out about his relationship with the online world and where the idea for the story came from.

How many likes have you got?
Not sure to be honest. I’m not the most attentive when it comes to social status in real world or internet terms. I’m still sort of old fashioned that I can’t see the internet as real world. It’s all just a Spectrum to me.

Where did you the idea come from
For a while I had this image of members of the public being totally indifferent to the sight of a dead person out in the open, and just passing by, like ‘oh, not my problem, the council will pick it up on Wednesday’.

The story developed around that image and the idea of people reaching a state of passivity and irresponsibility for other humans in a totally banal, socially acceptable context.

The world of IT Girl and a social networking satire, was based on listening to people talk extensively with each other, reciting details fetishistically from the news and current stories, whatever got people going at the time. I realised that it was just empty conversation, indulgent, persona building saying ‘look at me, I am this’; we can revel in expressing outrage or compassion as a bonding ritual and never have our ethical, moral integrity challenged.

Immersion in the news story, the controversy, is just another means of stimulating ourselves, and being able to stimulate another person into paying attention to us.

A controversial story, a missing girl, is not really about the girl, it’s there to be devoured.

What’s your relationship with the social media world and do you think there will be a reaction to the ever increasing ‘connectedness’ social media demands?
My relationship with social media is messy. I still don’t quite get it.

As a creative I think there is a great deal of pressure, even self-inflicted, to build an online presence as a way to get work and exist; get ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ for your page, have a good website and get click throughs to the youtube channel. Tweet about it all. Snap chat about your tweet and then Instagram something. Which I don’t do.

The more distracted by some extensive infinite multi-platform conversation I become the more unhappy I am and realise I have stopped making eye contact with the people in my physical vicinity â€“ instead I am thinking of polite fully-engaged replies to several instant messages I have received about something of no interest to me from bored people.

But I don’t think there will be a backlash, as others are much more at ease with it; it doesn’t impose on their lives, it is effortless for them. For there to be a backlash it would mean people losing an interest in themselves, which is unlikely, or for all their other friends to abandon it.

You’ve both made films before, how and why did you get together for IT Girl?
Though I had made a couple films as a director, and IT Girl was going to be the next one, I wasn’t keen to put myself back ‘on-set’. Writing seemed a more comfortable place for me. Simon had a short film, The Exam, at Two Short Nights, and I was impressed by the blocking and clarity of comic timing, which is something I lacked. So I felt he could bring sharp, minimalist, absurdist comic timing to IT Girl.

What have you got planned for the future for IT Girl, and what do you have planned for yourselves?
The idea of IT Boy is compelling and I would be keen to develop that, but on a bigger scale than previous projects. Several other scripts have been percolating.

My tastes have grown to include the early low/no-budget art house underground films of John Waters and particularly George Kuchar and making films that are made in that way excites me.

A few months back I happened to film a short film called Cleaner and got the bug again for filming which inexplicably lead to beginning a no-budget feature entitled The Resurrection of Talulah about a bullied girl who comes back from the dead to wreak revenge.