Web Animation / Nothing, Forever

"Hey, did you hear about that new restaurant?"

Nothing, Forever is a 24/7 livestream of a GPT-3 AI generated, infinitely running sitcom based heavily on Seinfeld, created by Mismatch Media. The AI's somewhat limited knowledge and the janky animations makes for a very surreal and bizarre experience. Debuting in December 2022, it went viral at the start of February 2023.

The stream itself consists of four segments: The most common segment, the sitcom segment (set primarily on two different apartment sets, although a diner set was added for Season 2), has the four main characters (Larry, Kakler, Yvonne, and Fred in Season 1; Leo, Manfred, Kelly and Nick in Season 2) discuss various topics, usually centering around a new business or restaurant that just opened. The second segment was originally set on a stage, with a "live" audience, featuring Larry telling several standup jokes and stories, and occasionally trying to goad a story or joke from the crowd, though no one ever obliges him; this got changed to the equivalent character Leo talking as he writes a blog post in Season 2. The third segment is a "channel surfing" format, with a scrolling satellite channel menu, like someone scrolling through the channels trying to find something to watch. A weather forecast segment was added for Version 1.4, which shows completely fabricated weather forecasts, in the style of a low-resource community cable station from the 80s, with a ticker thanking all the stream’s Patreon subscribers running at the bottom. All of the above is completely AI-generated, from the dialogue, to the character movements, to the jokes and weather forecasts, and even the names of the shows while channel surfing. As you can imagine, chaos (and hilarity) typically ensues.

The link for the stream is here. Twitch restored it after the two week suspension discussed in A.I. Is a Crapshoot below, and the stream returned on March 8 for "Season 2" complete with new characters.

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"So what do you guys think about these new tropes that just opened up?":

Season 1

• Aborted Arc: Any conversations the cast might have are never followed up on, and any plans they might have are almost immediately forgotten as quickly as the next scene.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: All four characters are noticeably more pleasant and well-adjusted than their Seinfeld counterparts. Unlike snarky Jerry, Larry often comes across as friendly, welcoming people to his standup act and giving them advice. Fred just seems like an average guy, lacking George's dishonesty and sociopathy, while Yvonne, unlike feisty Elaine, is mellow and gushes over things like ice cream, clowns and surprise parties. Unlike Kramer's habit of hijacking everyone else into participating in his schemes, Kakler just sits back and asks everyone questions about their lives.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: On February 6, 2023 the stream's OpenAI model started malfunctioning, leading to characters and scenes not loading properly. The developers switched it to a different, less advanced OpenAI model while they tried to fix the original problem, and all hell broke loose. Scenes alternated between a bare minimum of dialogue (one segment just had the characters saying "hey, [X]" to each other), or Word-Salad Horror (Yvonne: "Hit my ass on the face and we're going to the left, he was fired. Well, what's goin' on here?"), with Twitch chatters quipping that the characters were on drugs or having strokes. Finally, in one standup scene Larry got uncharacteristically political and made transphobic and homophobic remarks that led Twitch to suspend the stream for two weeks.
• Anti-Humor:
  • Overall, the show has this feel. The AI has the characters discuss oddball topics, but they often end up as an Orphaned Setup, with the gang either just conversing about them without wisecracks, or even stopping in the middle of the conversation.
  • Some of Larry's standup jokes count as well.
    "What did the frog say when he lost his wallet? 'Ribbit, I lost my wallet.'"
• Audience Participation: Larry frequently attempts to invoke this by asking the audience if they have any weird stories of their own, usually after telling of an awkward encounter, but he is always met with awkward silence. Whether or not the show itself reacts to the reactions of the twitch chat is currently debated, with no official statement on it.
  Larry: Come on, don't be shy!
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Fred was happy to hear the sushirrito (sushi burrito) had returned. There's also countless mentions of odd or unappealing food from new restaurants, to which at least one of the characters proclaims they'd like to try it.
• Black Comedy: Larry's standup bit about sitting on his creepy, stalker math teacher's lap in a crowded subway would have been pretty upsetting, if not for the fact that he was in a comedy club and it was told in exactly the same way as all his other stories, which made it hilarious.
• Call-Back: Every now and again, there will be some (unintentional) surprise continuity, such as Larry's talking parrot and/or fish. In a notable bit, Larry asks about good places to get a sandwich. Afterward, there's a standup segment, and the next sketch opens with Fred asking Larry how his sandwich was.
• Catchphrase: "That's amazing" seems to be a minor one for Fred, reacting to something that Larry or Yvonne tell him.
  • "Let's do it!" seems to be one for Larry, often shouting it emphatically after discussing plans with the others.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Both Yvonne and Fred reveal that aliens are real. Fred doesn't elaborate, Yvonne was told so by a cashier.
• Contemplate Our Navels: At one point, Larry and Fred got in a rather deep discussion about life after death, postulating that we can't know what happens after death, but that the notion of an afterlife is comforting.
• Could Say It, But...: The infamous stand-up routine that ended up getting the stream banned consisted of Larry saying that he's "thinking about" doing certain objectionable topics, before listing them.
  Larry: ...but no one is laughing, so I'm going to stop. Thanks for coming out tonight. See you next time! Where'd everybody go? Oh, right.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Larry says a bunch of stuff about his life in his standup routines that otherwise doesn't get mentioned on the show, like his being from Seattle, having a brother, and having both a wife (who's a nurse) and a husband, as well as a son.
• Deranged Animation: The result of leaving the actual direction of the show up to AI as well— character models are stiffly animated, frequently to clip into each other, struggle to sit down on the furniture in the apartments, and sometimes just flat-out disappear. It's also in charge of the camera, leading to awkward angles and movements.
• Descriptiveville: In one segment, Larry and Fred discuss the Mayor's decision to rename the town Schnitzelville. They propose petitioning to have the name reverted.
• Disgusting Vegetarian Food: Some of the new restaurants serve vegetarian or vegan food, to which a cast member will state that it doesn't sound very good. In one segment, Yvonne suggests that vegetarian beef cheesesteak could be the new big trend. Fred says they would be gross unless she adds spices.
• Does Not Like Spam: In one of the final scenes before the Twitch suspension (when the show was running on a faulty AI), Yvonne randomly blurted out "I hate Cajun cooking".
• Dude, Not Funny!: The infamous incident where Larry considers delivering offensive jokes concludes with him saying, "but no one is laughing, so I'm going to stop."
• The End of the World as We Know It: In a month, a beachball-sized meteor will strike earth. Yvonne suggests writing a song about it, and Fred agrees to do the vocals, to make it less scary.
• Expy: Since it's based on Seinfeld, you have Larry Feinberg (Jerry Seinfeld), Fred Kastopolous (George Costanza), Yvonne Torres (Elaine Benes) and Zoltan Kakler (Cosmo Kramer).
• Fantastic Racism: In one of his stand-up bits, Larry mentions an electronics store with a 'no robots allowed' sign.
• Get Out!: Larry gets frustrated when people won't leave his liveshow, telling the audience to leave for upwards of 20 seconds at a time
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: There are occasional mentions of animals with clothing. Commonly rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks in fancy attire such as tuxes and 'old-fashioned top hats.' Some of these animals can talk.
• I Have Many Names: In one vignette, Larry just randomly, and with no explanation, started calling Yvonne "Ellen". The chat speculated that the AI somehow mixed her up with her inspiration Elaine, then further garbled the name.
• Laugh Track: The AI running the show often tends to throw in a laugh track at random points in an attempt to mimic an actual sitcom.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The AI unintentionally acknowledges that the material on the show is generated spontaneously whenever it lets the characters discuss improvisational humor.
• Long-Lost Relative: Fred once discovered that he has an identical twin that he didn't know about. He finds this out by having pulled out his wallet only to find it's someone else's wallet, but the picture on the ID looks the same.
• Mayor Pain: Moreso the Quimby type, the mayor is often brought up in conversations discussing the absolutely bizarre laws he enacts on the town.
• Meta Girl: Yvonne has at least once referred to the show itself, though she called it Feinberg rather than Nothing, Forever. She also delivered one joke that could be taken as a Self-Parody of the show's Running Gags.
  Yvonne: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the surprise party on the other side.
• Naked People Are Funny:
  • A few of Larry's bits involve this, including Larry himself. Notably, one joke involved a pantsless man attempting to help Larry change a flat tire.
  • One of Larry's more clever standup jokes:
    "What did the elephant say to the naked man? 'How can you breathe through something so small?'"
• Opaque Lenses: Worn by Fred, with a weird mint green tint.
• Orphaned Setup: Larry's stand-up jokes sometimes end without a punchline and cuts to the next scene.
  Knock knock.
  Who's there?
  Pizza.
  Pizza who?
• Phlebotinum Pills: Larry makes mention of new pills which can give you superpowers. Yvonne is skeptical.
• Pun: While every character is guilty of punning, Larry has a very high chance of using the same 5 or so puns during his standup. Expect the chat to call out the punchline two words in.
  What did the fish say when he ran into a wall?
  "Dam!"
  • However, there have been at least two instances where the fish joke had a different ending:
    What did the fish say when he hit his head?
    "Ouch!" He said, "ouch!"
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Larry sometimes does this in his standup comedy scenes ("waves goodbye and exits the stage"). In particular, "bows" is often mispronounced as "bose"^note The plural form of the word "bow" as in the weapon, instead of the action of bending down. He also occasionally says "asterisk".
• Retraux: The creators have specifically stated they intended the show's low-resolution 3D graphics to resemble 90's 3D Adventure Game. The show's overal look especially ressembles 3D Movie Maker.
• Running Gag: Not intentional due to being AI-generated, but many common topics include: elevators, ice cream, Yvonne's love of clowns, starting a standup routine, having surprise parties, and new restaurants. In addition, there are about five stock jokes characters, especially Larry, will use. The Twitch chat also seems to treat using the microwave as a comedy bit, given how often scenes will end with its beeping noises.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: And how! Due to the entire thing being run by the AI, practically every conversation has no bearing on anything whatsoever, and in most cases is never brought up again.
• Severely Specialized Store: The gang talks about a new 7-Eleven that only sells vegan Slurpees.
• Silly Walk: Whenever the AI tries to make a character interact with an object (e.g. turning on a lamp or using the Microwave) and walk away at the same time, the characters tend to do one of these where their upper body slants backwards at a ~90° angle with one arm outstretched towards the object.
• Sitcom: Being a Seinfeld parody, this is what Nothing, Forever is attempting to emulate. Whether or not it succeeds at it is another matter entirely.
• The Smurfette Principle: Yvonne Torres is the only female character on-screen.
• So Unfunny, It's Funny:
  • Since it's based on an AI's idea of what comedy is like, there are setups for jokes, but the punchlines are at best very corny (Yvonne reacting to Fred's plan to promote bananas by walking down the street carrying a large banana with "Well, just don't go bananas") or labored ("it could be worse, you could be a snowman in Hawaii''), and at worst not even punchlines at all, just regular conversational material or even awkward silence. All the funnier when the Laugh Track treats these moments as high hilarity.
  • Larry cracks a lot of dad jokes in his standup act. He even did the Chicken Joke completely straight, but acknowledged how lame it was.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Every now and again, when one of Larry's stand-up bits is due, there will instead be a discordant note and Larry will not appear, instead being a long shot of the empty stage. Very rarely, there will be no characters in an apartment, and no music will play.
• Surreal Humor: When the show actually manages to produce something approximating comedy, the humor leans heavily in this direction, with the characters randomly discussing things like talking animals or robots.
• Synthetic Voice Actor: Due to the nature of the show being AI-generated, the series uses voice synthesis extensively to voice the characters of the show.
• Talking to Themself: Characters will occasionally read lines off the script intended for multiple speakers, creating this effect.
• Take Our Word for It: None of the characters ever visit any of the quirky new businesses or events that open in town on camera since they're limited to 3 basic settings.
• Trademark Favorite Food: All four characters enjoy ice cream, talking about it ad nauseum.
• Verbal Tic: Larry has a tendency to blurt "Alright" when changing topics.
• Very Special Episode: Sometimes Larry will bring a joke to a grinding halt to deliver sincere life advice, or will pivot someone's distaste for something into a moral on the value of trying something new. Sometimes this manifests during his standup routines and other times he tries to give his friends a pep talk. These can get suprisingly deep at times and border on Breaking the Fourth Wall at times when the characters try to give meaning to their seemingly meaningless existence. Very jarring, considering the show is an homage to a sitcom whose mission statement was famously "No hugging, no learning."
  Larry: A penny saved is a penny earned, but a penny spent is a story told.
• War Is Hell: During one of Larry's standup comedy routines, he (attempts to) go on a tirade about why he thinks wars are dumb.
• Word-Salad Horror: The ill-fated AI switch that ultimately led to Twitch suspending the stream was unnerving to watch, because it was clear something was wrong, with the characters babbling incoherently or even vulgarly, and Larry's bigoted standup set being a completely unexpected and unpleasant shock, with the Laugh Track adding an extra layer of dissonance. Larry's final standup set (a few minutes after the infamous one) especially felt like he was suffering from Wernicke's aphasia or a manic episode during his routine and the club audience was mockingly laughing at him.
  Larry: Somehow 900 bucks I gave her my sister and plus that you break the old dress together. They're starting to mail me. Fred had no idea about the manager. The other people to get out of my own life. Well, what are you talking about? You're trying to sign the bed. Alright, fine. Bye! (laughter) Larry. (scratches his head as the audience laughs) Hello? (laughter) What happened? I thought you were in. This is great! Hello? Hey, we've got your own human game, according to the past 11 hour. I knew I'm gonna try the car. The map of the solar school, the situation, the guy you have one class in the united traffic view of the bottom, that's the difference last week. The woman is trying to be driving over a little yelling and a long evening and a little bit. So...oh no! No, don't make me happy! (awkward silence, then a cut to the channel guide, then a suspended notice from Twitch).
• Wrong Restaurant: Yvonne mentions a new "restaurant" that actually sells comic books instead of food, apparently on the strange logic that anyone hungry enough to spend money on food would also be willing to buy comics.

Season 2

• Aborted Arc: This trope carried over into Season 2 up until the 1.3 update on March 20, 2023, when a "continuity mode" was introduced.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Kelly is blonde, unlike her brunette predecessors Yvonne Torres and Elaine Benes.
• Captain's Log: Leo's blog segment, reminiscent of the computer diary segment from Doogie Howser, M.D..
• Cloudcuckoolander: Since the 1.2 update on March 17, 2023, Manfred has come across as this. He began making references to doing things such as Talking to Plants, having a strong belief in aliens, and generally coming up with strange ideas. In one scene he inexplicably began speaking in strings of numbers:
  Leo: So, who else here has tried online dating? Oh man, I've got some stories. I once went on a date with a girl who showed up in a wedding dress.
  Manfred: 123456789101121314.
  Leo: And then there was the time my date only talked about her cat for three hours straight.
  Manfred: 554389276106521.
• Con Man: Nick is implied to be a small time one many times in the series. Usually, his schemes involves cheating his way to go backstage at concerts or getting free food at restaurants.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Leo often proposes some particularly unusual/surreal ones, often on his blog which then are brought up in regular segments.
• Contrasting Sequel Setting: Season 1 was vaguely implied to be set in 1990s New York, while Season 2 is explicitly set in 2020s Los Angeles.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Leo's joke about getting a replacement cat from Chinese restaurants is rebuked by Kelly and Manfred
• Expy: While the characters have been redesigned, they retain the voices and personalities of the season 1 characters, and thus their Seinfeld inspirations: Leo/Larry/Jerry, Nick/Fred/George, Kelly/Yvonne/Elaine, Manfred/Kakler/Kramer.
• Hate Sink: Kelly, in-universe receives a lot of deadpan insults from Leo and Nick, often with minimal provocation.
• Human Aliens: Manfred, apparently. Constantly referring to the other cast members as "Earthlings/Humans" and being baffled by mundane human customs.
• Surreal Humour: Following the 1.2 update, a lot of the dialogue exchanges take on this air.
• Viewers Like You: The true purpose of the weather forecast segment is to show a ticker thanking the Patreon subscribers of the stream.

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BYE!

Bose.

Audience Applause.