The intro was a single, low-frequency hum. No graphics. No theme song. Just Sonya's face filling the frame, pores visible, eyes like cut glass.

"Good evening, loners," she said. "Tonight, we're going to play a game. It's called 'Who Owns Your Face?'"

Six months ago, the entertainment conglomerate VoxPop Media had dropped her. The reason, they’d said in a terse, leaked memo, was "creative differences." The truth, which Sonya knew and savored, was that she had become too real for them. She had refused to cry on a podcast about a fabricated scandal. She had laughed when a producer suggested she "accidentally" leak a sex tape. She had, in a moment of unscripted fury on a live stream, told a network executive to "eat his own algorithm."