If you’ve found your way here, chances are you’ve already brushed shoulders with Bruce. Maybe it was a flash of him on my feed or yours, cheeky mug or that grin on a tee that made you double take. Maybe you arrived curious, cautious, wondering where AI ends and the human touch begins in all this.
That line? The one we’re trying to separate human from machine. We’re walking it.
There’s noise in the creative scene right now. Some say AI will gut the soul of storytelling and creativity. others say it’s just revealed who was ghostwriting their own genius all along, simply waiting for the tools to catch up.
It’s my hope, these narcotic notes I publish on Miss Em, clear some of the smoke. Even if they don’t dowse the fire a little.
Because while Bruce is technically synthetic, his blueprint was anything but. This is an original character I created with unrestrained human imagination. Tech induced, historically defined, and yet still very much built by human hands. For those who know me well, can see traces of my DNA woven into his quirks. As do most of the characters birthed by their creators.
Creating Bruce wasn’t a gimmick. It wasn’t for virality. It was for vitality. To inject a hit back into the vein of storytelling. Originally set to be a brand ambassador for a tongue-in-cheek body care brand called Ducks Nuts Balls but I was inspired to create a character who could live inside this weird new medium and feel like he belonged there. As a presence, not a prompt.
Bruce is a framework. A gateway drug to the inevitable surrealist future, a reminder that joy still has a place in the algorithm.
The birth of Bruce Ryder
He arrived during one of those heavy seasons, a post-pandemic flatline with collective burnout, Things felt loud, curated and brittle. Bruce came through as the antidote. Not a coach, not a guru but a fictional exhale with a retro yellow lens. A mirrorball reminder not to take this wild ride called life so fucking seriously. Every time I prompt an image of Bruce to life, produce a video or hear his voice, it opens my lungs.
Have you noticed our feeds are full of experts, hacks, and how-to’s? Its exhausting. Which is ironic considering this was my former incarnation of Emazon and Rebelology. I found myself repelled by the overwhelm of ‘self help” and determined to birth an anti-hack. I didn’t want him to be burdened by enlightening anyone. I wanted him to remind them. Remind them of the kind of wildcard we don’t see much anymore. The anti-blueprint. He’s not optimized, He’s kicked back. Living a life untouched by ‘improvement’.
The lens beneath the yellow tinted sunnies
“life’s a wild ride, kid. grab it by the balls.”
That line was born as the tagline for his first brand deal with Ducks Nuts Balls. But it stuck because it was him. All glory yet no posture. Those yellow-tinted retro sunglasses? They’re more than a prop. They’re a symbol of his lens. A clue. Bruce sees the world a little warmer, a little weirder, and a lot more alive, always hunting for good times in all of us.
Freedom is often painted as rebellion. But to rebel, you need resistance, friction, something to push against. In Bruce’s world, written in code, unfixed in time, there’s no fight to pick, no system to dismantle. Just an open field where good times is his narcotic.
Writing Bruce within the context of choosing his own ‘meta-verse matrix’ made me ask, would he really be out here searching for the meaning of life in 1978? Or would he just declare it, preferably with a Malibu cocktail in hand and Countdown on blast? Because in this constructed timeline, he’s not bound by existential delay. So why not code him with clarity?
Why the gold coast? Why the ’70s?
Because when given the keys to any timeline, Bruce scanned our nostalgia and landed where the sun was welcomed by coconut oil and photos weren’t filtered. It’s not his paradise, it’s ours. A projection of the place we wish still existed. The collective dreamscape we keep refurbishing in our memories. His version? One where charm wins over ego, and the soundtrack is filled with bangers.
The compass, not the hero
Bruce was never written to be a hero archetype. Nor was he a mascot of a cause. I didn’t want him responsible for saving anyone. I wanted him to be a mainline into the vein.
In a world wired for tension and combative arcs, in my mind Bruce lives outside the formula. He actually doesn’t need fixing. He’s just the reminder. Maybe he’s permission to consider that neither do you?
I deliberated over the title of his short film? I called it Wild Card because that’s exactly what he is.
I wanted to form a character who isn’t here to impress, regardless of the swagger. I wanted him to reflect that part in all of us that still wants to colour outside the lines, preferably in gold.
The part that remembers: before the algorithm, before the highlight reels, there were moments uncaptured by cameras, held only by the people who lived them.
And when life gets too heavy?
Sometimes i just think—what would Bruce Ryder do?