The Social Media Society

Black-mirror is a dystopian tv series that aims to awaken the society to the problems happening or that might happen in the near future because of modern technology. Nosedive is an episode that tells the story of Lacie, a girl that lives in a society where social media ratings define your privileges in the real world.

Are we living in this world already and is it really something bad?

Everything for the likes

The main character buys a cookie and bites it just to take a beautiful picture of it next to her coffee. Does she eat it? No she doesn’t. She only did it for the picture. I sometimes also do the same. This part of the story isn’t really exaggerated but perfectly reflecting a truth.

Many people would argue on how this cookie is being used for nothing. What is she getting from these likes? If she ate, she would have at least satisfied her hunger.

However the real question today is, do we all eat to satisfy our hunger? Don’t we sometimes get a cookie instead of an apple just to satisfy our desire. The only difference here is that it’s fulfilling another very different desire: posting a nice picture and getting likes…

Like for Like

The main character is always smiling at people and acting nice to them simply to get a like in return. It’s true that at the end of the day she’ll only get a number of likes. But by seeing this number, people also assume the reasons behind it: she’s nice to others, she likes other posts as well, she’s very sociable.

If we really think about it, all of these steps to get likes get also applied in the real life. To get a job, you can’t only rely on your skills and education but also on many other factors:

• You help other in their projects so they’ll help you in return and tell others about you
• You’re very sociable and know how to deal with people

Therefore, people are just projecting what they usually do in their lives on social media and not creating a whole new system. If some people consider this process wrong, then they should treat the source not the virtual copy.

On a personal level, I help people a lot in their work and I expect them to help me in return. Similarly, I like people’s pictures and expect likes in return.

Quality of followers

Lacie was told that the quality of her followers can raise her rating quickly. As she was checking her feed, she sees a photo of an old friend at school who happens to be highly rated. Even though she used to hate her, she decides to talk to her by bringing back old memories. They talk and Lacie accepts to be her maid of honor.

In every university in the world, you’re asked to send a recommendation letter from one of your teachers. The letter does not describe your grades but your competences and ways of communicating and studying. In other words, this letter proves that you impressed a trustworthy person, who’s a professor. Therefore, if today Lacie is appreciated for having impressed a highly-rated person, I don’t see much difference. The more people with good ranks express their trust in you, the more you become trustworthy yourself and that isn’t wrong. Nowadays you can’t trust everything written in the skills section on a CV and you don’t have time to test every individual, so if one of them has a recommendation from a trustworthy person who tested him, he’ll get the job.

The problem here is that this world of connections and fake smiles to maintain a professional agreement isn’t limited to the workplace but also to the social life. On a personal level, I didn’t see it shocking for I live this every day because my private and professional life are linked: my friends are usually people from my same industry so I have to endure the rudeness of some actors because I know that I’ll need them one day. However, Lucie doesn’t have to pass by my struggles and still had to fake her friendship just for the rating.

We can easily “Rate” people in our industry based on their rank, education, title but can we really rate people in our personal life? Also, we can’t really agree on standards for rating a friend because everyone is looking for something different in a friend.

The social system

In the world of Nosedive, people with high ranking get better offers and exclusive services in airports, car renting places and shops. China today wants to apply a similar system as of 2020 (Insider, 2018). It’s true that this will encourage people to build their connections and get closer to others with higher ranking but on a long term it will cause many problems.

• People with bad communication skills or introverts won’t keep up with the system and will fail
• Dishonesty will become the major issue in every relationship: you can’t fight or argue for you might get a low rating so you have to remain silent

However it could be replaced by another system:

• People who know how to build a good connection within their professional sector and have good academics will eventually get a good job that will allow them to afford the airports offers they could get from the social system.
• People who do good actions to their country and do community work should receive awards and recognition certificates. In other words, these actions should be done out of choice not as a must.

Conclusion

Nosedive puts us in a parallel universe that is, according to recent sources, only 2 years from now. The problem for me in the nosedive world is that everyone has to abide by the social system rules and apply them in his/her private life. I am personally applying these rules every day simply because I took that choice but also because that’s a requirement for my professional life.

I personally think that if nosedive was only directed to the professional network, it wouldn’t be as negative as we see it. If people had ratings on LinkedIn, we wouldn’t be really able to say that it’s unfair. Also that way, people would be able to take breaks and live freely during their private time.

References:

Insider, A. M. (2018, April 13). China ranks citizens with a social credit system — here’s what you can do wrong and how you can be punished. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/china-social-credit-system-punishments-rewards-explained-a8297486.html

Nosedive (2015, December 25). Retrieved May 03, 2018, from https://www.netflix.com/title/70264888