Loving CryptTV right now

Obviously I follow Mr Eli Roth on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram

And when he shared CryptTV I was hooked, looked for those videos in my feed to see what was next. I was not disappointed.

For the most part Facebook is filled with a long litany of fluffy animals, over copy-written marketing titles, and cleverly written things for people to share. So you have a couple of choices: do what everyone else is doing, or give it an unexpected twist & hope it works out.

Now I’m not saying having Mr Eli Roth as one of the creators doesn’t help significantly with ratings and sharing but the way the content is presented -short, sharp, and punchy- does it’s job well and gets the attention.

Discovering Eli Roth

Unlike most people I didn’t stumble across Eli Roth as a director of gruesome movies. in fact I’d probably watched a few of his movies before I even made any actual connection.

But then, one bored and curled up on the sofa feeling sorry for myself afternoon, I was browsing ondemand and discovered a documentary featuring Eli Roth. But not about Eli, it was about psychopaths and various tests that had been conducted in the name of science.

Its strange what sets a person apart in your mind from the rest of the noise. Strange what makes them stand out. But the information in that documentary was interesting and really made me think. If you ever get chance to watch it I highly recommend it.

After that I knew who Eli Roth was.

Turning on to CryptTV

What’s CryptTV about? Well CryptTV is clever. It’s a mixture of gut wrenching horror and heart string grabbing emotion (and some not so fluffy animals). And heart string grabbing emotion works -Especially if it’s right before a scary story. Real stories – the kind you think will never happen to you, from real people just like you, who’ve been through it. Cleverly taking away the thought it could never happen to you.

And that’s the last hurdle to fear right? You have to believe that stuff could happen to you to be truly frightened by something. There are only two ways that’s gonna happen: the human connection – someone just like you had your worst nightmare happen to them for real, that you can feel some emotional connection to, or, have something that everyone else thinks couldn’t happen to them happen to you.

Now lets think about that for a moment.

The human connection of showing you a story from one persons point of view is exactly what charities do when they want you to give money. They build that emotional connection with you, through one persons story (or animal) because large numbers or facts don’t create the required response in your brain. They don’t make you emotional. And they want you to make an emotional connection so you’ll hand over some of your hard earned cash. Smart right?

It’s not just clever story telling either, well it is actually, but clever in a scientifically proven way – it’s neurology – an exact formula that allows the story to sink deep into your lizard brain. It helps the story get past that surface barrier layer that prevents most things from infiltrating your mind. It helps you remember and connect to it, so when they feed you the fear later your brain remembers and is suitably scared.

But if it’s happened to you then that’s a whole other ball game. You’ve already lost the doubt and you can sympathise with how those individuals felt on a much deeper level. You’ve been there, you know how it feels, how the body behaves, how your mind reacts. And everyone reacts different and not at all how they imagine they will. Okay maybe your situation wasn’t exactly the same as theirs but you knew the fear, the intensity, the cold (and I don’t mean the ambient temperature). You know how you react when bad things happen. You sympathize with the people who had to experience that for the first time. Because the hardest part is explaining to the people you know how it felt. They sympathise but they don’t understand.

And CryptTV, whether they know it or not (and I suspect they do), are doing this well. Go check it out.

…oh and there’s some Eli Roth stuff too….

Kate Trinity

Horror and Fantasy Author – Also writing as K.T. McQueen. Love Western Horror, cowboy boots, my cactus Collin, & my Demon Cat.
Moths – I hate moths, the way they flutter at your face!