Potato Salad

There’s a German movie called Kartoffelsalat—potato salad—made by YouTubers and now free on YouTube. IMDb ranked it 25th worst film ever made, which is somehow both impressive and completely unsurprising.

The plot: a virus turns schoolkids into flesh-eating things, and a handful of YouTubers are the only ones who can stop it. These are people who built careers on unboxing videos and prank streams. Now they’re trying to be action heroes in a feature film. You can imagine how well that works.

What strikes me is that this actually got made. Actual money was raised. Studios said yes. People paid to sit in theaters for this. The cynicism is almost admirable—understand the algorithm, understand viral moments, make something, sell it. Don’t understand anything else. Just execute.

Now it’s free, which removes the final barrier. You don’t have to pay anything. The only thing stopping you is knowing that sitting through it might hurt. Whether that’s worth it depends on how much you enjoy watching complete failure in real time.