Supply
Kiwi Kent Briggs is The Social Media Virgin.
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REVIEW: After grabbing the country’s attention with his somewhat crazy investigation into the 30-year-old cold case of Who Killed Lucy the Poodle? In 2019, Kent Briggs is back with another captivating, if-more-than-a-little-cracked challenge.
In the six-part documentary series The Social Media Virgin (now streaming on TVNZ +), the Generation X Auckland “creatively” tries to take its online game from zero to internet hero status in just a matter of months. As he admits, in the opening episode, “I had a lot of stupid ideas over time”, but this is perhaps just his most ambitious – to try to attract a million followers in just 100 days. After all, it only took Jennifer Aniston a little over five hours to do the same thing, so how hard can that be?
And besides, Briggs has a plan. In addition to advice from Kiwi “experts” and those who “clearly got wild”, he is more than willing to put his body, mental health and reputation at stake.
TVNZ
The Social Media Virgin is now available to stream on TVNZ OnDemand.
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As Jeremy Wells’s appropriately authoritative and bone-chilling, wry narrative informs us, the inspiration for this madness stems from two life-changing incidents in Briggs’ past. The first involved his high school band Jemima Mudduck’s first live performance in 1993 when he inexplicably shouted “F… the system” in a moment of adrenaline-fueled defiance. The school authorities were not amused.
The other one was the death of his best friend and “ridiculous co-conspirator” Barry in a car accident, just before they would take their talents worldwide (via the traditional Kiwi OE to London).
It is in honor of both of those occasions that Briggs says he decided to take this “one last dance on the stage of big, stupid ideas.”
Supply
Nix Adams is just one of the Kiwi “experts” looking for Kent Briggs on The Social Media Virgin.
While there is a certain fascination and joy in seeing Briggs “process” and sometimes merely catastrophically create his audience and followers content, it’s more than just a Kiwi Jackass. The fly-on-the-wall, warts-and-all-style means we see his missteps and frustrations as the hours spent grinding content, writing posts and responding to every comment keep him behind schedule instead. As Briggs himself puts it, it’s a “concentrated, intense learning curve” and as much (if not, much more) a warning story about the search for internet fame, than it is a “how to be successful in your social media- game “is.
The true secret sauce of The Social Media Virgin, however, comes from Briggs’ rough-and-tumble intimate interviews with Kiwis who have managed to gain a large online audience for themselves. Nix Adams’ bad humor and brutal honesty shine through as she sets out how her online video diary began as both therapy for herself and as proof to her family that she was trying to put her somewhat checkered past well behind her.
“Look at yourself, it’s a tough game,” she advises Briggs. “Opening yourself up to judgment and criticism can be detrimental to your health, so focus on your goal, why you are doing it, and all the others will fall into place.”
Other roadside advisers include comedians Joe Daymond and Tom Sainsbury, dancer Elvis Lopeti, YouTube sensation Nela Zisser and social media stars Jamie Curry and Kris Fox.
But, despite all their smoothness and sick movements, it’s Briggs’ own dilapidated, rough-and-ready, down-to-earth, relaxed Kiwi being that makes this such an entertaining and captivating watch.
The Social Media Virgin is now available to stream on TVNZ +.