Black Mirror’s Fifteen Million Merits: One Big Satire

This episode was set in a dystopian future where their currency is defined as a merit. In order to earn more merits, people were required to cycle on exercise bikes. To help them cope, they were offered services such as games to play during cycling. Those who were considered obese were verbally abused and were forced to work as cleaners. Everyone had their own cell and were constantly being bombarded with advertisements, which they couldn’t skip without a financial penalty.

Most people worked towards earning 15 million merits to audition for the talent show called “Hot Shot”. Those who audition are required to drink a “compliance”, which influenced Abi to reluctantly accept an offer of joining the pornography industry although her original intentions were to become a singer.

Enraged from the results and the system, Bing threatens to harm himself on this show, however, believing he was putting on an act, the judges offered him his own segment. Giving into his own greed, he willingly accepts this offer as he didn’t drink the compliance. In the end, he is moved into a larger cell that is projected as the “real world”.

Although we may not experience this dystopian reality to a tee, we certainly do share some similarities. For example, our society publicly shames those who are overweight by exploiting them in weight-loss advertisements. Unfortunately, this leads to the mistreatment of those who aren’t seen as the “ideal weight”.

However, with the help of social media, we have the ability to constantly promote the idea that every body type is beautiful. Those with more influence are able to appeal to their following and further reinforce this ideology. The group DNCE has successfully promoted this in their music video “Toothbrush” by casting a plus size model Ashley Graham as the love interest. By portraying her in a positive light, this shows that there has been progress in openly showing appreciation for plus size women and men (yay!).

In addition, our consumerist culture has made it impossible for people to walk around without being surrounded by advertisements. They are everywhere, from commercial areas such as Yonge-Dundas Square to mundane areas such as public transportation. This has also been made true in the virtual world, as advertisements are polluting our social media platforms.

In the Black Mirror episode, they promoted the talent show heavily to show how successful one of the contestants became and motivate others to work towards the same goal. In contrast to their everyday lives, Hot Star became their escape and became heavily idealized.

This mindset of portraying your best self is practiced in our society as well, as people are selective about the information they put online. Most users envy online influencer’s fabrications of their lives by displaying their best self. Marketers often use this to their advantage by partnering with said online personality in order for the consumer to have a closer tie to their aspirations.

The dark side of this results in damaging one’s self-confidence by taking advantage of their insecurities. In order to stop this from getting out of hand, people should resist falling into the trap of negative consumerism and rejecting any products or services that claim to make them a better version of him/herself.

There are many overlapping qualities between this dystopian world and our reality which can be further exacerbated by social media. This episode pointed out the flaws of our entertainment industry and touched upon subjects such as our need for distractions and individual greed. However, it’s not too late to rebel against these unjust ideologies.