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Microsoft's Bizarre 'Hey Genius' Recruitment Videos Were On To Something

A programming odyssey featuring a C++ bug, VHS vibes, and Legowelt tunes.

First off, I'm not sure what exactly Microsoft was on to or, rather, what its ad agency Digital Kitchen was on to, but it's hard not to be cheered by the optimism. Or at least cheered by the ironic optimism … hard to say. I guess it's more referencing a certain sort of '80s, proto-PC era optimism when the notion of a computer, to say little of the internet, was still a very unformed thing. Suddenly, one of these machines could fit on a desktop and what then.

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These come via FACT, which was tipped off by the musician behind the videos' soundtracks, Legowelt, a techno-for-lack-of-a-better-term producer who also makes music software for Commodore 64 computers. It's a good fit.

Brad Abrahams, the videos' creative director, had this to say:

This is what happens when you divide by zero. The second in our series of two viral videos for Microsoft Recruiting, although this one [below] was so weird they didn't know what to do with it. Two computer programmers are lured into a virtual world of their own creation by a gender-neutral artificial intelligence. Will they escape from their own genius?

Is there something bubble-ish here, almost a warning? "Trapped inside their own genius .." Or maybe it's just a simple warning against forgetting to supply an exit condition in a for-loop, which, in programming, is a rather ungenius move.