Google has determined to have a bit Severance-themed enjoyable forward of the Season 2 finale of the hit Apple TV+ present.
Sort within the phrase “Severance” in Google Search, and a tiny occasion horn icon will seem on the outcomes web page. Click on it, and your display will replenish with blue balloons — an unmistakable nod to the unsettling company festivities from the fan-favorite Apple collection.
It’s a intelligent contact for followers of Severance, which imagines a world the place staff at Lumon Industries endure a process that severs their work and private recollections. Their “innie” selves toil away within the workplace with no thought who they’re exterior of it, whereas their “outie” selves stay blissfully blind to what occurs inside. The balloons are a callback to the eerie “Music Dance Expertise,” a second of manufactured pleasure for Lumon staff who’ve little else to have a good time.
Nonetheless, let’s be sincere — if any real-world firm had been on the quick observe to making a Severance-style dystopia, I feel we are able to all agree it could in all probability be Google. Which is to say, there’s no small diploma of irony that Google, as worthy as any firm of the designation “the real-world Lumon,” is the one which’s celebrating a TV present a couple of company hellscape.
In spite of everything, they already accumulate sufficient knowledge to know your sleep habits, procuring impulses, and whether or not or not you secretly Google signs as a substitute of seeing a health care provider. The privacy-flouting tech big has a monopoly on the Web search market and is presently utilizing AI summations to unusual digital publishing and maintain as many customers as doable inside its personal ecosystem, the place they are often proven the promoting that pays Google’s payments.
And let’s not overlook: Google has its personal historical past of, let’s say, “mysterious and vital” company experiments. From the ill-fated Google Glass to Venture Dragonfly (a proposed censored search engine for China), the corporate has flirted with the sort of dystopian concepts that make Severance really feel a bit too actual.
The Severance Easter egg, after all, is innocent enjoyable. It’s a well-executed nod to a present that has gripped audiences with its slow-burning thriller and existential horror. However let’s not fake Google doesn’t have already got sufficient Lumon-style management over our digital lives. Give it time, they usually may simply add a “Perpetuity Wing” to their worker advantages bundle.
