Picture this: an eerie silence punctuated by labored breaths as a man bleeds out, impaled by a metal fence. Cue Isa Mazzei, multi-talented writer and filmmaker famous for hits like “Cam” and "How to Blow Up a Pipeline," flipping over to her open direct messages.

Trying to write a professional request for video rights, she stumbles over the word "victim." With a quick nudge from her production assistant Paris Peterson – her newly minted 'snuff film expert' – she changes it to "man." This grim scene is just one moment in 2023 during her preparation with collaborator Daniel Goldhaber for a new adaptation of "Faces of Death," a gritty cult classic from the late 70s.

Imagine it - a film about a content moderator who filters out the filth of the internet, the most heinous videos you can think of. Mazzei's daunting task? Find the videos that fit the bill.

Living this reality, Mazzei has become the go-to person for receiving explicit and disturbing footage, a quirky yet slightly morbid honor in her social circle. When tragedy strikes in the public sphere, like the shooting of Charlie Kirk, her phone buzzes with friends sharing the uncensored video mere hours after it occurs.

Mazzei is no stranger to digital violence, a concept that isn’t as alien to many millennials as you'd think. From witnessing people leap to their deaths on Live TV during the 9/11 attacks, to illicit beheading videos shared in hushed whispers during middle school, she grew up with the murky underbelly of the internet.

The digital landscape is a crazy one, really. Aromas of nostalgia are undercut with the dark underbelly of the internet. Filmmakers have to navigate legal minefields to include real violence in a feature film, unlike social media platforms that often air gruesome content without batting an eye. The notion hasn't escaped Mazzei and Goldhaber's probing gaze during their exploration for "Faces of Death."

The seedier side of life and death plays out on our screens daily, desensitizing many to what should normally be shocking or traumatic images. It's not uncommon to be scrolling through lighthearted social media updates littered with kitten photos, only to encounter graphic footage of accidents or violence. It's unsettling, to say the least.

In her mission to find real-life content, Mazzei navigates the grim arenas of Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and 4Chan for the snippets many would prefer to scroll past. With the help of websites like NewsFlare, she's able to legally license accident scenes that show the very real and upsetting consequences of accidents and disasters.

Through all the visual noise, Mazzei continues to question whether she is part of the problem or merely doing her job. A study she stumbled upon about Tetris helping combat veterans cope with PTSD lingers in her mind, making her wonder - if playing a game can disrupt traumatic memories, could her role in re-contextualizing real-life distressing footage have a similar effect?

Lingering inside a grocery store that was once a scene of a mass shooting, she struggled to have a profound experience. It seems the same desensitization plaguing our screens has crept into our shared spaces too, making once horrifying news seem just like any other day.

Neema Githere, in Feminist Tech, coined the term "data trauma" to encapsulate the shock and incongruity we feel experiencing violence nestled between lighthearted content during our daily online trawls. It's one thing to be hired to remake a cult classic about death and violence. It's another to live in a world where those themes bleed into our daily life to a point where they become worryingly commonplace.

From crisis to crisis, death has become a familiar presence, punctuating our routine scroll-throughs shamelessly nestled between cat vids and recipes. This isn't normal - or rather, it shouldn't be. So, when she steps back from her work and can't shake the sting of online violence, she turns back to the Tetris study. It suggested that perhaps, in playing this game, she could offer her brain a respite from witnessing the brutality of the world, at least for a moment.