I hadn't revisited the first season of Gelboys in 2025 in a while. Then season 2 dropped last month. I watched the first episode, and everything came rushing back. I called the friend who put me onto the show and we talked for two hours. Back then I knew it was brilliant but now I know why. I won't go deep into the plot and the backstory of the characters, and focus on the most visible aspect of the whole show: social media.

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Taking place during COVID, Gelboys, directed by Naruebet Kuno (Boss), had no choice but to lean into the fact that social media is not only a means but an omnipresent tool in the relationships and world of its characters. The Zoom call. The TikTok dance. The shared Spotify playlist. Google Maps train line. Buying fruit on the street and paying by tap. The Airdrop. The iPhone ran out of storage. Instagram posts and stories. All carry the dynamic of the story, and no other show has done this, at least to this level. Euphoria uses social media as a bullying ground. Heartstopper uses texts and emojis but stays on a surface level. Gelboys takes a bigger swing and understands that Gen Z views social media as less as a leisure activity and more as something woven into how they communicate, discover, shape identity, seek validation, and build community. (Mintel, Leisure style of Gen Z, 2026)

Looking at the cinematography and direction, the show doesn't need close-ups to convey feelings. A Close Friend story, a private account, an unseen story do the job. Inner life in Gelboys is operationalized through the platforms and technology is the lexicon. If traditional filmmaking expressed emotional information through facial expressions, now it's through digital actions. If absence used to equal empty space, now absence means *crickets* in notifications. The cinematic gesture has become the data itself. When Fou4Mod gets rejected in episode one, we don't just watch him cry. We watch him block and unfollow and delete. We saw Chian airdropping an "accidental" picture and liking the oldest post on Fou4Mod's Instagram profile as the very first flirting moves. Or Fou4Mod screenshotted the cute texts and saved them in an album on the phone as if they were a box of love letters. Chian had a burner account full of Fou4Mod pictures, a digital footprint and the first proof of his infatuation. Or a group airdrop of selfies signals the reconciliation of all four members at the start of season 2. Yet, in the midst of online chaos, the BOYS still have the GEL. They do nails together. Those 3D-printed colorful nail designs act as the analog residue and evidence of their connection. Whether they end up being together or keep each other on the hook, something tangible and beautiful takes place in the real world.

This cutting-edge yet “so real that it hurts” method of storytelling explains why “Gelboys feels French New Wave. Handheld realism. Mobile phone footage. Natural light. Guerrilla style street shooting. Catching strangers' conversations on the BTS Skytrain. Jump cuts. Diegetic music from characters' phones. The boys breaking the forth wall like Breathless. The scene where Fou4Mod spies on Chian through a TikTok live is pure 2024 vérité.” (BL Xpress review, 2025) The existential threat of young people hasn't changed. It just exists in a screen-based context now.

When social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok travel to the universe of Thai BL, they must also adapt and amplify what's already there. Specifically, the climactic moments of both seasons are centered around Siam Square, Bangkok's unofficial capital of youth culture, where students, malls, uniforms, beauty salons, cafés, influencers, and pop-ups converge. Siam Square appears as a character with its own arrangements of mood. “MBK Center's chaotic stalls mirror Fou4Mod's tangled emotions. Jim Thompson Museum's quiet courtyards echo Baabin's hidden longing. Street food vendors carry the messy, fleeting rush of teenage love. The hum of air conditioners, skateboard wheels, and Blackpink blasting from mall speakers roots us in Bangkok's sensory overload.” (BL Xpress review, 2025) We should never forget the season one’s moment where Baabin records three minutes of voice messages for Fou4Mod, nearly confessing everything, but sees Fou4Mod sitting with Chian and UNSENDS the whole thing…Ouch!

The boys are filming dance routines, doing their nails in public, recording voice messages they may or may not send. The same infrastructure that initiates closeness also enables it. Instagram or TikTok starts as a visual-based machine asking what you want to look at. Now it asks, "Do you still care about me?" What used to be "who belongs to your network" shifts to "am I still valued?" Foucault showed us we are being watched. Gen Z responded: yes, I know, but who cares? Instead of freaking out about their privacy and love life being tested and commodified, they manufactured their own version of intimacy. Reclaimed it. The boys aren't victims of the machine. They play with it and speak it like a native tongue. The line between interpersonal surveillance and platform surveillance blurs.

It’s like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room, full of kaleidoscopes. We look at a screen while the character looks at another screen. So many filters at play here. And as the plot develops, we turn into virtual detectives, double spectating. We view the object from an external societal perspective while processing through an internal lived lens, double and triple consciousness. In the middle of that investigation, we are caught off guard by the question "Would I be the one getting blocked?" The cycle goes on. Endless alternate endings on both sides, real life and series. 

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Gelboys 2 has not been hesitant to introduce Gen Alpha into the conversation, and even poke fun at Gen Z being unc. There are two more episodes left to be released, and we will be online and watching all of them grow up, like we watch ourselves.