Black Mirror

Just this morning, I read a post.

Not Earth-shattering, by any means.  I read a good number of other bloggers out here on the ‘net – sometimes for the laughs, sometimes for the inspiration, sometimes because I genuinely click with the other writer, sometimes because I WANT to know more of the other blogger’s viewpoint.

And sometimes, to be perfectly honest here, it’s for the reciprocal views.  Kind of an unspoken yet understood ‘pact’ between bloggers.  I read yours, you read mine.

It’s all about the numbers.

This particular blogger had mentioned that people who post holiday pictures every five minutes aren’t on a very good vacation…and it got me to thinking of the episode titled:  Nosedive from Netflix’s series ‘The Black Mirror.’

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, it’s a British, Twilight Zone-esque series.  Each episode is a stand-alone, centered around modern society and the unanticipated effects modern technology has wrought/will wreak upon society.

From the show’s Wiki page:

“each episode has a different cast, a different setting, even a different reality. But they’re all about the way we live now – and the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.”

Believe me when I say the writers, directors and cast haven’t pulled any punches on how things could go if we stay on our current path.

The episode that sticks in my head, if only because I can see society GALLOPING headstrong and arrogantly down the path which leads to the portrayed future, is Nosedive.

Imagine…if you will…

A world in which every action and interaction you partake in is tabulated in a single, master social-internet platform which society has initiated compulsory attendance.  Anyone not high on the popularity scale is deemed fair play for discriminatory practices by the popular ones.

Imagine your entire life centered around your rating.  Those with low ratings have predatory rental rates, refused services, employment difficulties.

It’s as if the A list from high school (yaknow…the ‘popular’ kids) was put in charge of everything in society, and now wields enough power to actively suborn those they look down upon from their pillars on high.

The episode continues to draw me in – it’s one I’ve watched easily a dozen times already.  Each time I view (or listen, with my nose buried in a chainmaille piece) I seem to catch some new nuance or bit of buried irony I’d missed before.

 

In this bleakly-painted yet oddly happy-pastel colored dystopian future – I know where I’d rate…right there in the same driver’s seat as the old lady in the truck.

If you’ve access to Netflix – I suggest you look up this single episode.  It’s Episode #1, Season 3.