De website Shock till you Drop had een interview met Michael Gallagher over zijn horror film Smiley. Deze schijnt overigens zeer vet te zijn, alleen nog geen tijd gehad om deze te checken. Voor research heeft Gallagher zich begeven op Chatroulette en het beruchte 4Chan, en die hadden het op hem gemunt. Hou en wat is te lezen in het review.

Did you spend a lot of time on ChatRoulette-type websites for research?

I've been on those sites, and mostly it was for research. What I found is that there is definitely a high level of creepiness. Particularly the fact that it is very male-oriented, and they are looking for young girls who want to show some skin or otherwise engage. It's a prowling grounds, so when a pretty girl pops up, it's like a prize for these guys. It gave me the idea of, "What if there was malicious intent behind that?"

Did you also spend time on 4chan, which is a notorious troll breeding ground, and something that figures heavily into Smiley?

Oh yeah. I'm not an "innocent" as they would say, but I warn any of your readers if they go out to 4chan and have never been. I went on recently and found people uploading nonstop, pictures of pornography and mixing images of 9/11 with the Fonz and weird catchphrases... there is no end to the depravity.

Nobody really needs to see that, and even in the film, it's sort of the "diet version" of 4chan. There are just some awful stories... for example, there was this kid who was cyber-bullied and committed suicide. A friend of his wrote a story on her MySpace and instead of calling him "a hero" she wrote "an hero" - you know, a typo. So 4chan adopted the term "an hero" to describe someone who commits suicide.