Black Mirror
Nosedive is the first episode of the third season of the black mirror series. The main aspect of this episode was to talk abut the impact of social media in our lives. It is set in a society where the citizens get ranked from 0 until 5, and depending on their ranking, they can get houses, jobs and so on. Lacie is a 4.2, she has a good job at an office. Unfortunately, that is not enough for her and she aims to hit a 4.5 in order to be belong to the upper class society. She builds up a plan that gets her invited to one of her popular old friend’s upper class wedding, which she sees as her ticket to the life she dreams of. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, she starts losing rankings and points, which end up with her crashing her friend’s wedding and ending up in jail.
This episode is nothing but a satire towards society. Social media has driven the world mad in the last couple of decades. With the emergence of Instagram and Facebook, the users have gone mad obsessing about the amount of likes they’re getting. The more likes the better. The more followers also the better. Moreover, it is not only about the amount of likes they’re getting, it’s also about the fake lifestyles most of them are living. Some people have made a fortune posting about their outings, the places they eat and so on, while in fact they’re mostly lies.
In the episode, the higher the ratings, the better lives they have. In reality, the more likes and comments people have, the better they feel about themselves. This is mirrored in the black mirror episode in which Lacie can get a huge discount on her dream house if she reaches a 4.5. Different lanes in the car rental shop exist for the people that have higher ratings, as well as airport seats that are only available for the higher class. A silly example would be of a celebrity getting a reservation in a full restaurant just because of his or her status.
The satire does not end there, Lacie, the main actress, spends most of her day practicing happy faces in the mirror, creating sweet photos for her timeline, and displaying goodwill at people in the service industry, rating them five stars and then visibly crumpling in relief when they rate her back. The only one who seems to see clearly is her brother who hates how fake she has gotten. For instance, she goes to a coffee shop and eats a cookie which she spits out, just so she could get a picture and get ratings. She wants to live in this fancy compound only because to her it seems like a step forward to a higher rating, while her brother sees it as ‘fake happiness’.
This show is very close to reality. In more ways than one can count, from the thirst for likes and comments, to the fake lifestyle and desire to be like somebody else. It may be sad to think that this may have happened. In an article in the Atlantic, the author talks about an app called “Peeple”, Billed as “Yelp for people,” Peeple gave users the capacity to rank any person around them on a star system. “Where once you may have viewed a date or a teacher conference as a private encounter, Peeple transforms it into a radically public performance,” The Washington Post wrote. “Everything you do can be judged, publicized, recorded.” The judgment from people on Peeple was swift and excoriating, with many commentators being quick to see the dystopian possibilities of an app that grades you as a person without your consent.
It is not so surprising to me that this almost happened, at the rate in which we are heading, there may be even worse applications that may surface. There is one application that does rate people, we are all familiar with it, its called UBER. Hopefully, it will only go to this extent and not pass on as something else. Social media has taken the world by storm, and the fact that people live for the likes or the fame is just sad. People have forgotten what it’s like to live and are so caught up with their fakes lives that they don’t see what is really going on with the world. The only time Lacie feels free and alive is when she goes to jail and starts yelling slurs at another prisoner. Let’s just hope that this is not what it takes for other people to wake up from this non-ending loop.
