Investigations

Everyone Hates Jan (Episode 1 of 2)

HTML February 2026

A Black Mirror-style interactive presentation with a twist — meet Jan, a senior engineer who fixes bugs perfectly. Too perfectly.

This started as a presentation about AI-assisted bug fixing, but I wanted something that would actually hold an audience's attention. So I built it as a 100-slide interactive story branded as "A Blackberry Original" — a parody of Netflix originals.

The audience meets Jan Eriksen, a meticulous Scandinavian senior engineer. He walks through a real bug fix workflow: tracing the code, writing tests, submitting a clean PR. His slides look like a genuine corporate presentation — different visual language from the rest of the deck. The audience forgets they're watching a show.

Then the reveal hits. Jan doesn't exist. He never did. The entire workflow was generated by AI personas collaborating in a "Writer's Room" model. The presentation snaps back to a Black Mirror aesthetic with glitch effects, chromatic aberration, and a narrator who breaks the fourth wall.

The technical execution uses GSAP for kinetic typography, ElevenLabs for three distinct AI voices (Jan's confident Scandinavian tone, a documentary narrator, and the presenter's meta-commentary), and ambient sound design — tape hiss, chair creaks, coffee cup sounds — that sell the illusion of a live recording. The "too perfect" terminal outputs are an intentional uncanny valley effect.

What this project demonstrates

100-slide Black Mirror-style interactive narrative with twist ending
Three AI voices via ElevenLabs: Jan, Narrator, Presenter
GSAP kinetic typography with glitch reveal effects
Ambient sound design: tape hiss, room noise, coffee cup
Writer's Room model: 8 AI personas collaborating on script
Visual language shift between "corporate" and "cinematic" modes

Technologies

PresentationGSAPAI VoicesStorytellingBlack Mirror

© 2026 Jonathan Leahy · v0.8.1-31-g196fa14