Hi, my name is Yasha Levine. I’m a journalist and filmmaker. I just finished a documentary called Pistachio Wars that was executive produced by Adam McKay.

Now I’m making another film — this time it’s about the internet…about how this technology is destroying our minds and destroying the world.

The film is called Vampire Valley.

I studied computer science in UC Berkeley and worked at an internet start up while in college. I know that world. I know how computers work. I was a programmer. I could have been Mark Zuckerberg. I could have been your billionaire tech overlord. But I dropped out before I made my app. I left Silicon Valley. I took the moral path and became a journalist. And now I’m here begging for money.

Out of all the journalistic work I’ve done to date, I genuinely feel that this is the most important. The internet has now become a purely negative force, corrupting everything it touches. It’s so vast and multifaceted, and reaches so deep into our lives and culture and politics. And yet we don’t have a cohesive narrative that helps us understand the internet’s trajectory from its utopian ideals in the 1990s to the oligarchic dystopia of today.

Vampire Valley, I hope, will fill that void.

The questions I want to answer in this film are: Why has the internet become such a destructive force? Why does it poison everything it touches? Was this inevitable, or had there been another way? And finally: Can it be saved? Or is the internet too far gone and should be destroyed?

There’s a lot to cover in this film — and I know exactly how to make it. But I need your help start.

I see Vampire Valley as a three or four episode series done in the Adam Curtis style — archive footage with narration and interviews but with on-the-ground investigations.

EP ONE: BORN IN SIN

This episode will be inspired by my book groundbreaking Surveillance Valley. It will tell the forgotten history of the internet — how it was created by the Pentagon in the 1960s and driven by American technocratic fantasies of surveillance and global control.

EP TWO: THE SPECTACLE MADE FLESH

This episode will explore what happened when a Pentagon technology created for surveillance and control was privatized and let loose into the world in the 1990s — just as the world was entering neoliberalism.

EP THREE: FANTASIES OF THEURGY

This episode will explore the next iteration of internet technology that we’re all seeing now: AI. The cult wants to build its AI god, but that’s all a smoke screen for the fact that AI technology is just the next stage of the internet’s development and the logical conclusion of the Industrial Revolution — the centralization of power.

EP FOUR: CAN IT BE SAVED?

How do we get out of this mess? How do we disentangle ourselves from a technology that’s so entrenched and so parasitic on us, our culture, and our planet? In this final ep I will attempt think through some solutions and if there are any.

So help me make this film. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever done. I feel honor bound to make it!

Why am I making this film?

We are surrounded by the internet. We’re always online. More and more of our culture and work and politics are mediated by a technology controlled by a handful of powerful corporations. To the good thing is that more and more people are becoming aware that there’s something deeply wrong with this set up — aware that the costs of this tech are now outweighing whatever benefits it might have provided. The constant propaganda and manipulation, the universal addiction to screens, the total surveillance of our lives, the alienation, the destruction of jobs and livelihoods, the massive ecological costs, and the monopolization of the economy and political power on a scale never before seen in the history of the human race…How do we get out of it? It’s an important question but the first step is to try to accurately assess the situation that we’re in — to understand the problem.

At the same time, I don’t want this film to just be entertaining or educational. I want to maximally poison people’s relationship with the internet. I want people to use their phones, laptops, and tablets with fear and disgust. I want people to become aware of the parasitic forces feeding on their lives and on our planet while they’re online. This vampiric technology is stronger than any one of us. We have to band together…to unite if we are going to escape its grasp and chart a new way forward. But we also have an individual responsibility. We need to develop a gag reflex to this technology. We need to retch every time we come into contact with it. And for that we need to understand how the sausage is made. “Death to the demoness Allegra Geller!”

Disclaimer: No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.