Black Mirror’s Achilles Heel
I would like to preface this post by saying that I personally am not a huge fan of Black Mirror. My friends recommended I watch it when it started to become popular on Netflix because they knew how much I enjoy discussing and analysing our everyday social trends. So I gave it a go. And when I watched the first episode, which was the Christmas special titled “White Christmas” from season 2, I really liked it. I found that episode to have complex characters with great production and an enchanting plot. The acting was superb, and the message was important. However, when I eagerly clicked to the next episode, I quickly found that Black Mirror lost its magic for me. “Nosedive”, the season 3 premiere, was that episode and I will tell you why it (and the subsequent episodes I watched after it before stopping) just didn’t do anything for me.
“Nosedive” is about a girl named Lacie who lives in a world where everything you do, from buying a coffee to working to travelling on an airplane, depends on what your social score is based on the reactions from people around you. The higher the score, the better the job, the more people know who you are and your life becomes “perfect”. The lower the score and you struggle to make ends meet or are banned from certain places or even get put in jail. The whole society is based on others’ perceptions of you from a single interaction or look at your profile.
I truly do believe that we are somewhat living in this society today. The social network that immediately comes to mind when I watch this episode is Instagram, with Instagram influencers becoming rich and famous just from a simple like or comment, but this could really be Facebook or Twitter or even everyday credit scores when you think about it. We definitely value knowing and making a good impression on as many people or corporations in the world as possible as a valid form of success, one that opens up doors and can even get you that dream job if you talk to the right person.
However, in Lacie’s world, people are always “nice” or try to be accommodating so that their score will stay high or get higher, and in our world, people are mean. Both on the internet, in business, and in everyday life, people are mean to one another with no repercussions; it’s why people get doxed or trolls exist or accounts get hacked or kids are bullied in schools. Not everyone is polite all the time, and it doesn’t affect their life for the most part when they’re not.
Lacie’s world is our world x1000. Maybe in the far future I can see a merit social system like hers being put into place, but I also don’t think that social media has that much power internationally. Many places in the world don’t have access to the internet and only 47% of the world’s population uses it. Granted, this stat doesn’t consider that most of the world’s richest and most powerful people or companies are in that 47%, but I digress. In Western society, yes I do think that this episode has the potential to become reality but the world just isn’t there when you look at humanity as a whole.
That’s the issue I have with Black Mirror; it is just so one-sided. Not only do I find the episodes long and drawn out for no reason, but I find the characters to be genuinely unlikeable or unrealistic. And I understand that they’re not meant to be liked since the show is commenting on society and society can be ugly, but the creators just paint an image of the ultimate tragedy and never try to fix or look at any of the positives. Their entire view is that the world is ending because technology is killing it, and it doesn’t leave any room for doubt. By giving the viewer only one side of it, they’re influencing audiences to be passive consumers of their own show which is exactly what they are trying to warn people from becoming in their content. It’s very frustrating for me to watch because I study this by reading actual academic journals and discuss it in classrooms with professionals, and Black Mirror is teaching a population of people that their view is the only view that matters.
I think that to address the problems with social media, we really need to start by addressing the problems with ourselves. By using mental health initiatives, decreasing tuition fees for higher education, addressing poverty and trying to regulate big business, I think that these real solutions would have a very big impact on how social media is used or run. I also think that individually, we must evaluate the time that we spend online and the content that we take in, and put social media on pause sometimes to be active users of it rather than passive consumers.
With the dawn of television, people believed it would have similar consequences that they now believe social media has, and I like to think that we’re doing okay. The world must change, it must evolve and get better or get worse, and I really believe that we’re going to be okay either way. It might not look the same as it did in the past and the rules might have changed for the worse but rules can be broken and people can fight, and as long as we have the sense to question our present, past and future, then I really believe that we will all be okay.
