Interactive Phantoptics
Part of what led to the success of "The Social Experiments" is Showfall's application of their very own revolutionary AR (Artificial Reality) technology known as "Phantoptics" (from the Greek prefix φαντα-, meaning 'to manifest', 'make visible', relating to the word 'phantasia' or 'fantasy', and οπτικÏŒς, relating to sight).
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Through Phantoptics, Showfall can simultaneously manipulate the perception of a cast member and the camera broadcasting a scene to the audience in real time. The Phantoptics chip, wired directly into the occipital lobe of every cast member, is capable of distorting what the subject under Showfall's active influence sees, hears, feels, smells, and tastes at any given moment.
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Showfall's Interactive Phantoptics Department handles the production, implementation, maintenance, and active settings of these reality-altering chips. Through collaborating with the live production team, Hetch introduced another element to these chips: audience interaction. Given enough engagement and a range of options, the audience can directly influence what a cast member perceives during a live production.
Coupled with Showfall's rewiring technology, which allows the company to duplicate, wipe, block, and unlock the memories of any cast member uploaded to their system database, Phantoptics gives the company an even greater level of control over all of their employees. By distorting reality, Showfall has no need of coercion. Once the company has profiled a subject (i.e. learned how they tend to react in any given situation), it only needs to determine which version of reality would cause a subject to respond in the desired fashion.
One need not force the subject to conform to the environment when one can make the environment conform to the subject instead. In addition, through this method, the subject is convinced that they are acting of their own free will. In some ways, they truly are; but they will never know the full extent of their actions.