How Fictional is Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” episode?
How likely are we to experience this dystopian reality? Is it already happening?
I’ve now watched a number of episodes from Black Mirror, but none were as shocking to me as the episode “Nosedive” from season three. Set in a dystopian universe, people are glued to their phones and obsessed with ranking one another to achieve top online social status. The higher your rating the further you can go in life with better treatment and more available opportunities. However, people with lower scores are lucky to get the most basic level of courtesy — forced to be social outcasts.
In real life we’re not yet at this level of social media validation but we aren’t far off. The sad truth is that this dystopian reality could easily become a possibility for future generations.
Over the last 2 years I’ve become increasingly aware that people (including myself) are dependent on the vanity metrics social media can provide. When I first got Instagram in 2011 I solely posted photos of random household objects with either the X-Pro II or Valencia filter. As you can imagine they were absolutely terrible and I was probably lucky to get at least one “like.” It didn’t bother me because within my circle of friend’s no one cared about the number of likes they received or about the other photos everyone else shared. But all of a sudden this trend died down and the content I had posted almost a year earlier was no longer good enough in my eyes. Like many friends I deleted all these outdated pictures from my account and slowly began a new Instagram persona — one based on the number of likes I received per post.
There was a specific moment I found myself relating to Lacie, the main character of “Nosedive.” Right around 4 minutes into the episode she takes the weirdest and possibly the smallest bite out of an already tiny cookie. But the second she put the cookie back on her plate I knew what she was about to do because I’ve done the exact same thing. As predicted she then proceeds to take a picture, write a caption and post it to her Instagram-like social media account. Lacie’s overjoyed reaction when people like her photo is one I know many have shared.
I want to compare the two images below — the one on the left is taken from “Nosedive” and the one on the right from my Instagram account”
You can’t tell from the picture but I spent a good 5–10 minutes arranging the food on my plate while everyone else I was with began eating. And exactly like all the other times I’ve posted on Instagram, I sat patiently by my phone waiting to see how many people would like my photo.
Trying to keep up with social media is exhausting. In a twisted kind of way I can see why Lacie suffered a breakdown after all the hard work she put into her online persona disappeared right before her eyes. I may not strive for constant validation from people online but to say I’m nothing like Lacie would be a lie. When I do post something on social media I can become addictingly obsessed with watching notifications pop up on my phone as more and more people like my photo — even contemplating if I should delete a picture based on how many likes I get.
I honestly don’t know what will happen to society in the next few years or even next few decades. We could easily be headed straight towards this dystopian future that gauges a persons worth based on their social media status — I mean we already live in a world where you can buy followers to make you seem more popular?
It would be unrealistic to say the solution to this problem is simply deleting social media as I think it’s safe to say we’re all heavily invested in the online world. However, trends come and go, so we really can’t say for sure that social media will stick around forever. Overall there is a pretty good chance that something better will come along and certain parts to social media will be obsolete. I truly hope so, because I absolutely don’t have the energy or time to be addicted to social media more than I already am.
