Partly Cloudy, 64°
As every member of local student Jerry Blackwell’s pod settled in to stare mindlessly at their living room TV for hours to come, it became clear that the entire night’s plans had been derailed by the highly captivating screen saver scrolling across the Roku TV.
“We were thinking about playing a drinking game and then ordering some food, maybe watching a movie later,” Blackwell said, entranced by the comforting cityscape illustration filled with hidden movie references looping endlessly in front of him and his friends. “But that Roku screensaver… Look, there’s King Kong on that building in the back, and the Titanic is sinking in the middle of the water. Oh, and there’s the leg lamp from A Christmas Story in that window up front! What a classic.”
While the hypnotizing purple glow from Roku’s stock screensaver trapped the whole pod in a dead-eyed gaze, their conversation turned entirely to describing the images floating repeatedly past them for the rest of the night.
“Seriously, we were planning on doing something fun, but damn…” Blackwell droned on, his eyes glazing over and his mouth hanging agape as the Roku screensaver continued to capture the undivided attention of everyone in the room after several dozen loops. “What’s that ship supposed to be, Pirates of the Caribbean? See, the one with the tentacles wrapped around it? Oh yeah, and look, there’s the Avengers tower in the skyline. Right next to the Emerald City. Hey, is that Jaws over there?”
Blackwell and his roommates reportedly lost countless hours of their lives after discovering Roku’s treasure trove of alternate screensavers.
