When I first met Tyler, he was in the midst of a storm of hateful comments directed towards him for his categorically “cringy” Tik Tok content. The inspiration for our project came from the rise of brutality I’ve witnessed in various types of videos on Tik Tok. They all share a common phrase: “bullying needs to come back”.

When I first found this dark hole of the internet, it absolutely broke my heart. I can attest, both personally and observationally, to the drastic mental health toll harassment takes on people. When I visualized this project, I thought of it as something in layers, with social media and it’s systematic hype-machines as the backdrop. I worked with the incredible Liam Barberi to add another media layer - a photographic element that brought increased depth and emotion to the project.

Clear plexiglass showing some of the online vitriol Tyler has attracted.

The drawings on Tyler’s neck reflect his own personal inner turmoil and personality, and the clear plexiglass that I drew on represents the hate he recieves online. That piece reflects what individuals tend to focus on above all else- the perpetuation of hate.

Overall this project represents the turmoil that social media stature seems to create. This obsession with “hype” leads to hypercriticism of young, sensitive and impressionable kids. Kids who grow into feeding negative content for the attention and drama of it all. We see these statistics and obsess over the relevance of numbers (likes, comments, etc.), fueling the same corporate greed that perpetuates negative programing of young children.

I wanted to bring awareness to what perpetuating negativity does to us as individuals, but most importantly I wanted to create art out of a situation that personally affected Tyler; a situation that left him feeling alone in a dark place that most would struggle to escape . Throughout this process I was able to create art that can hopefully bring awareness to this topic, and I made two new friends who helped mold this idea into reality. The Death of Tyler Brash presents one question in harsh reality: in a world where comments and criticism wont stop, where else does our mind tell us to go?

Ashley Metro and Tyler Brash x Liam Barberi

The Death of Tyler Brash

CULTURE CAPITAL