The subtext of Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia (now on Max) may be: Is it too soon to be nostalgic about something that happened five years ago? Director Salima Koroma’s documentary chronicles the brief zeitgeisty existence of a flash-in-the-pan tech startup, namely, HQ Trivia, an app that allowed users to participate in a live-broadcast trivia game show. It launched in Oct., 2017, peaked a few months later, then fizzled out, and per this doc, is sort of a microcosmic example of the way the 21st-century tech industry functions.
The Gist: So these two guys, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll, invented Vine. Remember Vine? The app on which users could create six-second videos, many of which were “hilarious” in a Peak Internet sort of throwaway way? The one Twitter bought for $30 million before pulling the plug on it, only to watch TikTok pick up the basic idea and win the Super Bowl with it? Right. One commentator in the documentary refers to Vine’s 2013 launch as being “back in the day,” and now a whole bunch of us feel really goddamn old. Thanks a lot, documentary talking head! Anyway, after Vine’s untimely demise, these two guys had another Big Idea: HQ Trivia, which they believed would reinvent game shows, if not television itself. Dream on, dreamers!
As was true with Vine, Yusupov was the designer and Kroll was the engineer. Yusupov was outgoing, the spokesperson for their endeavors who craved the limelight. Kroll is characterized as an introvert, happiest sitting at his desk crunching code, and likely a troubled soul. They didn’t really get along, but the yin-yang tension of their partnership seemed to work pretty well. Other than through some archival footage – e.g., a clip of a news interview in which Yusupov does most of the talking while Kroll looks profoundly uncomfortable – we don’t meet either of them in this documentary, possibly because it’s not a particularly flattering portrait of them, and possibly because Kroll, sadly, is no longer alive. But we do get to spend a crapload of time with HQ Trivia’s standup-comedian host Scott Rogowsky, who is absolutely the most Scott Rogowsky-looking Scott Rogowsky who ever existed. He’s also rather candid in his insider commentary, and without him, this movie would be a bone-dry doc about yet another thing that was spectacularly successful and then spectacularly failed.
Speaking of which. HQ Trivia launched in 2017, with Rogowsky rather amusingly ad-libbing his way through a series of questions that users could answer to stack up tidy cash prizes. Users numbered in the tens of thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, creating enough of a popular phenomenon to attract some media attention and scrutiny. A public kerfuffle between Yusupov and Rogowsky over a Daily Beast profile of the host ended up being a PR boon, and the numbers shot up, peaking at 2.3 million in March, 2018. It was pretty huge – Rogowsky was making the TV-talk-show rounds, celebs like The Rock and Ice Cube were guest-hosting the game and there was even an HQ Trivia Super Bowl ad. But you know there’s a But coming: BUT there was significant tension behind the scenes. Yusupov was CEO and didn’t like ceding the spotlight to Rogowsky. Kroll had been publicly outed for “creepy” behavior towards his coworkers. There were power struggles and some troubles finding investors and nobody could agree upon how to lead the company. And as users boomed, the app couldn’t keep up with all the traffic, and became glitchy and unreliable. HQ Trivia was shitting the bed.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn and Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard are docs chronicling similarly spectacular tech-startup failures.
Performance Worth Watching: Again, without Rogowsky’s participation, this wouldn’t be much of a film.
Memorable Dialogue: NYU prof Scott Galloway sums up the tech-startup mentality: “The way technology firms approach their operations is ‘ready, fire, aim.’ And if there’s a little collateral damage, so be it.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: The internet has birthed countless pop-cultural phenomena that come and go faster than cotton candy dissolves in your mouth. (Is it too soon to be nostalgic about Sarah Cooper?) If anything, Glitch subtextually profiles the distinctively modern short-attention-span culture of the Information Superhighway – please note the ironic dated reference, please and thank you – which creates and destroys things so quickly, it makes Marcy Playground look like the Rolling Stones. HQ Trivia’s “reign” lasted about a year (it dwindled and fizzled for a while after that before going unceremoniously dark in 2022) if you’re being generous, and the story touches a variety of hot-button issues of the day, including the #MeToo movement, tech-bro toxicity and divisive politics (HQ got investment money from right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel). It also touches on some of the classics, from jealousy and greed to the quest for power.
But Koroma doesn’t dig deep into such subject matter – this is a relatively small-scale story, and the director keeps the proceedings light and drinkable like a summery session beer. It’s less an expose than a whatever-happened-to-that-thing mini-saga; it’s a 51/49 mix of sugary VH1 nostalgia piece and mediumweight journalism. Rogowsky and the usual talking heads (tech experts, journos, former HQ employees) deliver engaging soundbitey commentary, and Koroma even tracks down the woman who went viral for a social media video in which she lost her shit after winning $11.30 in an HQ Trivia game. It says something that said woman ended up on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, and that something is, good lord, internet culture can be so stunningly stupid. I mean, it spawned a flash-in-the-pan game show app that spawned an even flashier flash-in-the-pan internet “celebrity” who was instantly famous and instantly forgotten.
One thing worth noting: Until watching Glitch, I never knew HQ Trivia existed. I think that reveals how fragmented culture can be, how we hyper-curate our own pop-cultural (and political, of course) bubbles to exclude all things outside our interest. Or maybe I’m just woefully out of touch with the youngs. The message I took from the film personally? Feel free to savor the implications of all this like a Werther’s candy on your tongue, you old fart.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Glitch: The Rise and Fall of HQ Trivia feels a bit (opens Thesaurus, looks up “trivial”) inconsequential, but is nevertheless entertaining, offering a smart and frothy blend of puffery and substance.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
