Woman hospitalized after surrealistic Apple TV’s Pluribus ad on her fridge seemed to speak directly to her

Apple TV has been pulling all the stops to make sure their foray into the content creation space will not be in vain. They’ve reached some of the greatest producers, directors, and actors Hollywood has to offer and with Pluribus, it seems like they might have finally hit the jackpot. So they’ve decided to go on an ad campaign so aggressive that it is apparently even making some people lose their minds slightly.

Pluribus is the latest brainchild of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligain. It’s a slow burner that’s just getting to its first gear midway through the first season yet it has already secured a nomination at the Golden Globes, where apparently podcasts are nowadays considered for their cinematic achievements too. That being said, the TV show is…odd, to say the least.

Even in the trailers, you can’t quite get what you’re in for. So the executives at Apple have decided to also be vague in their marketing and just tease by creating a sense of curiosity in anyone seeing marketing materials from that particular show. For a woman in the UK, the latest commercial spot being employed was a little too eerie for her as a woman who is living with schizophrenia.

Apple decided to place an ad on smart refrigerators all around the UK that read “We’re sorry we upset you, Carol.” It just so happens that the woman reading the ad had a history of psychotic episodes, and she thought she’s hallucinating the interaction so she called a taxi to shuttle her to the hospital for further examination.

The story was first posted on Reddit and everyone was up in arms about how that exactly is the kind of ad that Pluribus is criticizing in the show in the first place. The “Carol” in question is played by Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn who is one of the last 12 people on earth who is still independent.

The first episode of the show features an alien virus that’s spread via radio waves which makes everyone on earth make decisions telepathically. There’s no individuality to be seen after it, the world is run on group think. Except for a group of 12 people scattered throughout the world. There are certainly upsides to it but Carol wants people to get their individuality back by all costs. It’s sort of a new way to approach the trope of the apocalypse on TV — because in Pluribus, the end of the world is slow.

Pluribus in Latin means plural or a group. And there are certainly some small condemnations of today’s overindulgence of internet culture. With every passing day we see small clues that the great AI revolution that was promised to only improve humanity is actually bringing more harm than good. It just strips people of individuality, critical thinking, and ensures oversurveillance. It does all this while promising to only be a tool to help us do work more easily.

So it’s quite ironic that Apple has chosen a strategy that feels quite overbearing. The same thing that show is supposedly criticizing.