Perhaps you've heard about the tragic suicide of 15-year-old Riley Basford who committed suicide in upstate New York, just hours after he was bombarded with online threats as part of a catfishing scam. In the wake of that tragedy, New York authorities issued a warning for parents, advising that there had been multiple other cases of teens being targeted by criminals online. 

It was somewhat surreal for our team at SPYFLIX (based in NY) to learn about Riley’s story, as we were in the thick of finalizing the festival’s selections - the 8-part thriller, detective story and family drama, #martyisdead, was in the running for top series. The experience of watching #martyisdead is both enlightening and terrifying. Factor in the all too real (and local) existence of similar cyber-bullying tragedies, and we found ourselves wanting to somehow help prevent future tragedies from happening.

While drawing inspiration from real-life cyberbullying cases, the creators of 2021 SPYFLIX Festival Best Series winner, #martyisdead, also drew on the expertise of child psychologists, Internet security experts and other professionals working to combat the problem. It all inspired them to take action - beyond the production realm.

We spoke to writer Jaroslav T. Miška about how #martyisdead came to be, what the team has done to help fight the cyber-bullying epidemic, and what’s next for them.  
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Where did the story come from, and was it based on true events to any extent?

Our Director Pavel Soukup was initially inspired when he learned about the Blue Whale Challenge, a notorious social media phenomenon that urged “players” to move from filming themselves doing innocuous tasks to inflicting serious, even fatal, acts of self-harm. In some instances, the final task for players was to kill themselves and film it.

The team started researching such hoaxes, wondering how do they arise? Who’s behind them? And what are the consequences? We then discovered many more horrible stories, some of which became the basis for #martyisdead. Much of what you see was based on a true story, but we changed details about the real-life  victims to protect them.
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Did you research internet safety heavily in creating the series, and if so, did you learn anything that surprised you? Scared you? Inspired you to take action in any way? 

Well... yes. We did a lot of research, and sadly we learned that the tragedy and horror of real-world cases that occur today are inconceivably more brutal than anything we could make up. The series was co-produced with our friends at Mall.tv, a socially responsible regional internet TV channel, as well as CZ.NIC, which has been involved with internet safety for a number of years and works closely with law enforcement. They, our co-producers at Bionaut, and our writing & directing team has a collective ambition to help change legislation so that internet predators are given significantly more severe sentences. An agreement was even reached with Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard as Mall.tv business partners, as they are quite concerned about the big picture as well, and about cultivating a safe on-line environment. We’re now collaborating on another project, a thriller called #annaismissing, a sort of sequel to #martyisdead. It will be centered on the investigation of the child abduction for the purpose of shooting and selling illegal videos.

It seems that inherently the creation of the film has put you in a position of power with potential to influence change. Was that an unexpected byproduct of the project? Were you already of the mindset that this was more than entertainment and storytelling - that a degree of responsibility would come with the release of a timely and important project such as this? 

If the project saves even one young person’s life, it was worth our every effort. We certainly did not expect to attain or wield any degree of “power,” nor the ability to influence change on a governmental level. However, we did have an aim to create awareness among teens and their parents, and to influence better, safer behaviors among young people using the internet. 

While working on #martyisdead, what was living in such a dark and tragic space like? It must have taken a toll on you.

That´s true, yes. I cancelled my Facebook account after the project was complete. I’ve nothing against Facebook per se - it was a decision driven by what I came to know about people, not social media. I had to break away from toxic things for a while.
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What do you want audiences to take away from #martyisdead, and what can people do to help prevent similar tragedies from happening?

They - especially young people - need to realize that the internet is both safe and dangerous at the same time, and that it’s not always obvious when a crime is being committed and that you are a victim of that crime. And it’s almost never known by the people around you that you’re in the midst of being victimized. It’s not like someone can call the authorities for help when they witness you being victimized on the street. You’re kind of on your own, and you need to be more careful about what information you share. You cannot possibly know who might find that information, nor how they might choose to use it in a criminal manner.