Are You Lost In The World Like Me?

Submission 17,619

Part of a series on Western Animation. [View Related Entries]

About

Are You Lost In The World Like Me? refers to the music video for Moby & The Void Pacific Choir's song "Are You Lost In The World Like Me?" (directed and animated by Steve Cutts) which was posted to YouTube in late 2016. The video is a black and white animation in the style of a retro, Max Fleischer cartoon, portraying a phone-obsessed world where everyone is on their devices, social media and not interacting with anyone around them. A boy, however, is the only person not on his phone. Meant to highlight how phones are bad, the video gained criticism years later in 2022 and 2023, when a post on X, formerly Twitter, wrongly identified it as the "Best Short" winner at the Venice Film Festival. From then on, many internet users made memes with the boy main character, humorously ridiculing him. Other discourse surfaced about animator Steve Cutts and his history of "deep" animations which also gained criticism.

Origin

On October 18th, 2016, American musician Moby uploaded a music video to YouTube^[1] which was for Moby & The Void Pacific Choir's song "Are You Lost In The World Like Me?" The video was animated by Steve Cutts, made in the style of Max Fleischer, most known for directing Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop, among other cartoons. Over the course of seven years, the video gained roughly 11.8 million views and 227,000 likes (shown below).

In late 2021 and early 2022, the video was reposted with earnest intent en masse on X.^[2]^[3]^[4] For instance, on January 18th, 2022, X^[4] user @rsalrocky1 wrongfully claimed that it was an Egyptian film called "L'ALTRA PAR" which had "won the best short film award at the Venice Film Festival," gaining roughly 10,900 likes in two years.

Seemingly, the first-known, memetic discourse about the film surfaced on December 30th, 2022, when X^[5] user @BurnedCheese quoted with a response to, "what are yalls artist icks," writing, "When people try to 'replicate' rubberhose animation and they just give a character pacman eyes or Mickey Mouse shoes," gaining roughly 68,100 likes in nine months (shown below).

Spread

In response to @BurnedCheese's post,^[5] many chimed in with critical reactions to the music video, such as X^[6] user @manodobbas on December 30th, 2022, who wrote, "i hate this cartoon so much," gaining over 900 likes in nine months (shown below, left). X^[7] user @LumenderTwitch claimed in a reply, "Never forget this 'phone bad' animation director later did NFTs," gaining over 400 likes in nine months (shown below, right).

On April 11th, 2023, X^[8] user @amazing_physics posted a different cartoon made by Steve Cutts which emphasized how destructive humans are. The post gained quotes and replies that name-dropped "Are You Lost In The World Like Me?" such as a quote from X^[9] user @RealYouTubeKids on April 12th, who attached a Letterboxd review which alleged, "My teacher showed us this in class once and got so mad when a kid called it gay he had to go outside and calm down." The post received roughly 71,700 likes in five months (shown below).

On August 13th, 2023, X^[10] user @rektmando reposted the original video, alleging (similar to X^[4] user @rsalrocky1) that the film "won best short at the Venice Film Festival." A community note corrected the post soon after its upload.

In turn, man made memes that ridiculed the video, centering on the boy protagonist. For instance, on August 14th, X^[11] user @geencream asked, "can someone draw him being shot in the head," in a post which gained roughly 14,900 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). Artists on the platform then obliged, such as X^[12] user @jacksonjsonn on August 15th, whose post gained roughly 1,500 likes in the same timeframe (shown below, right).