Charlie Stross checks in with a Willy Wonka-adjacent story from Glasgow that utterly failed to live up to the billing:
This is no longer in the current news cycle, but definitely needs to be filed under “stuff too insane for Charlie to make up”, or maybe “promising screwball comedy plot line to explore”, or even “perils of outsourcing creative media work to generative AI”.
So. Last weekend saw insane news-generating scenes in Glasgow around a public event aimed at children: Willy’s Chocolate Experience, a blatant attempt to cash in on Roald Dahl’s cautionary children’s tale, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Which is currently most prominently associated in the zeitgeist with a 2004 movie directed by Tim Burton, who probably needs no introduction, even to a cinematic illiterate like me. Although I gather a prequel movie (called, predictably, Wonka), came out in 2023.
(Because sooner or later the folks behind “House of Illuminati Ltd” will wise up and delete the website, here’s a handy link to how it looked on February 24th via archive.org.)
INDULGE IN A CHOCOLATE FANTASY LIKE NEVER BEFORE – CAPTURE THE ENCHANTMENT ™!
Tickets to Willys Chocolate Experience™ are on sale now!
The event was advertised with amazing, almost hallucinogenic, graphics that were clearly AI generated, and equally clearly not proofread because Stable Diffusion utterly sucks at writing English captions, as opposed to word salad offering enticements such as Catgacating • live performances • Cartchy tuns, exarserdray lollipops, a pasadise of sweet teats.* And tickets were on sale for a mere £35 per child!
Anyway, it hit the news (and not in a good way) and the event was terminated on day one after the police were called. Here’s The Guardian‘s coverage:
The event publicity promised giant mushrooms, candy canes and chocolate fountains, along with special audio and visual effects, all narrated by dancing Oompa-Loompas — the tiny, orange men who power Wonka’s chocolate factory in the Roald Dahl book which inspired the prequel film.
But instead, when eager families turned up to the address in Whiteinch, an industrial area of Glasgow, they discovered a sparsely decorated warehouse with a scattering of plastic props, a small bouncy castle and some backdrops pinned against the walls.
Anyway, since the near-riot and hasty shutdown of the event, things have … recomplicated? I think that’s the diplomatic way to phrase it.
I feel for that poor gal in the green wig who got photographed with the exasperated expression while sitting at the table full of lab equipment. She signed on for a crummy temp gig at that Wonka thing, and ended up more famous than she ever wanted to be.
JWM
Comment by jwm — March 6, 2024 @ 20:36
Agreed. Clearly none of the actual guilty parties were there to face the punters (and the punters’ kids).
Comment by Nicholas — March 6, 2024 @ 22:12