hello beautiful please follow back

In many ways, the Internet of the Y2K era was a wonderful place. The desktop computer I was continuously glued to as a kid was a humming, whirring portal to an endless array of AOL chatrooms, “free” music and movies, dumb viral videos, and weirdly addictive games. I spent huge chunks of my pre-college years on internet forums where I talked to random people about everything and anything. Even if I only knew people by their usernames, I felt like the community I found online made me so much less alone. But even then, I remember there being a dark side to it all. I’d accidentally watch uncomfortable videos that weren’t what they said they were. I’d see things no kids should see. Computers would fall apart due to viruses I didn’t know I was letting in. And then there was the A/S/L of it all, you know?

All this is to say: the Internet has never been a particularly trustworthy or safe place – even in the days before widespread privacy breaches, doxxing, and the proliferation of internet scams. The latter of which is the focus of Amandine Thomas’ gorgeously retro hello beautiful please follow back. The film centers on the director’s Grandmother, who has met a new boyfriend on Instagram, and has been talking to him for months. He’s in his fifties (!), and looks like a bodybuilder (!!). Everyone in the family is worried, because it sounds like a classic online scam. Does she know what she’s doing? Does she realize how dangerous it is to share private information with someone she doesn’t know? What the film aims to answer is how much our elders know – and don’t know – about what they’re getting into on the Internet.

Has Amandine’s grandmother met the man of her dreams?

Thomas’ film may be short, but it’s packed with detail, and worth a second viewing afterwards to catch all of the small jokes that you might miss on a first watch. It’s wonderfully textured and stylistically refreshing, and when it ended, I found myself wanting another few minutes to bask in the nostalgia of it all. Speaking of nostalgia, Thomas and co-creative director Gerardo Coello Escalante do a masterful job with their motion graphics and animation work, drawing on thirty years of Internet lore to create something altogether new. Like the short film version of a burnt CD mixtape, it crosses back and forth between past and present to tell a scammer story that’s been a problem for as long as the Internet has existed. The film delves into dark and existential subject matter, but the seriousness of the situation itself is brightened up by the film’s retro desktop aesthetic and sound design, sure to put a smile on the face of anyone who grew up in the Compuserve days.

I don’t want to get into the plot of it all, because to talk about the plot would be unfair to those who haven’t seen it yet – but I will say this: it’s funny. It’s sad. It’s deeply relatable. It makes you think about twenty years ago, and twenty years from now. It also shows footage from a particularly beloved web game that I’ll love til the end of time, though I won’t tell you which one. It raises questions about Internet safety, and is a stark reminder that everyone makes online mistakes, regardless of age. Historically, it was the older generations who taught the younger ones how to be safe. But when it came to the Internet the roles reversed and we were the experts for once, guiding our parents and grandparents through its many dangers. However, there comes a point when we just have to trust those who have been alive for more decades than us.

The themes this film deals with are, in some ways, universal: the inescapable loneliness of being an older person who’s lost a partner, the anxieties of maintaining familial relationships, and the existential questions that haunt people of a certain age –  craving the excitement of young love and wondering if there’s still time to find something (or someone) to share their life. At a time where we continually share our lives via the Internet, Thomas’ short highlights that blasting thoughts and pictures into the void is not the same as having someone next to you. hello beautiful please follow back serves as a reminder of how social media can at times help us feel more connected to people, but can also make us feel more alone.