When I first watched Black Mirror, I found myself intrigued, but also slightly intimidated. The way Black Mirror portrays certain aspects of life, albeit by exaggerating, is interesting because of the ways the feel that the world could end up as eventually. The first episode was a good indicator of what was to come throughout the season. A woman walking around in life, happy, but wanting to grow. She seems nice and everyone around her does as well. We soon see her rating people, as well as people rating her for their experiences with one another. We also find out that the higher your rating, the higher your worth. The idea being that technology dictates how we should act. If a person had a good rating, you'd feel safe, but if they didn't you'd be afraid. The problem with that was, at the end of the episode, the woman had already lost it all. She was going across great lengths to find her "friend" and get a good rating. She wasn't being the sweet woman from the start, but she was begin who she felt she truly was.
Black Mirror might be an exaggeration of the future, but the underlying message is clear. You shouldn't falsify yourself for a good rating. You should be happy and find that happiness, regardless of if it means going out into the world and going against the norm. While it isn't something you should use to teach children, using it to teach teenagers and up is a good idea. Teenagers now have much more access to social media than the generations before them. A lot of them grow up with phones and different forms of social media. A lot of the time, they'll falsify themselves to be something their not, in the hopes that they'll be recognized and stand off, and yet, they aren't happy with where they end up, or even the path that it took them. That's why, using Black Mirror to show people how bad it is to use social media to define people isn't good. You shouldn't rate anyone when it comes to being human. People have good days and people have bad days. People shouldn't have to rely on a rating to be happy. The worse problem was that if you were low, you weren't interacted with at all. You were ignored and uncared for, regardless of what you did. All it took was one day.
Overall, I think that Black Mirror is a good way to portray the dangers of social media in an interesting way. It isn't fact that that will happen, in fact, probably never, but people already judge one another on the basis of social media, so why not teach them the negatives that come with it. It isn't supposed to cause them fear, just explain to them that being a great person on social media doesn't make you a great person all around. You have to actually be good, not base it off social media.
I am a huge fan of Black Mirror. The whole series is so weird, but intriguing. It is just a season of episodes, not related to each other at all. Everything that the show entails in so different from your regular TV show, and unorthodox. In the particular episode you are talking about, I completely agree with you that these ratings shouldn't matter. But that is what their society runs off of, and if you really think about it, so is our society. Social media says a lot about a person, without even meeting that person. I think in a way, the producer of this specific episode showed what our society looks like in a more futuristic way. Which is crazy to even think something like this could happen, but it isn't that far off from how people act now. Your response to this episode was spot on. Especially when you said "Black Mirror might be an exaggeration of the future, but the underlying message is clear. You shouldn't falsify yourself for a good rating. You should be happy and find that happiness, regardless of if it means going out into the world and going against the norm." This is exactly right, and when people figure this concept out, the world instantly becomes a better place.
ReplyDeleteI like your thought process while watching this show. I did not even think about how this would affect the younger audience. I agree that it makes it seem like lower rated people are not as important as the higher rated people. I really like how this episode ended. I love when she hitches a ride from a truck driver who explains her story of having a low rating because she just does not care what other people think. I think this truck driver was a breaking point for the main character. She realized that it was just too hard to keep pushing to get high ratings. I like how you add that she had finally become herself and was done trying to be someone that everyone liked. Every episode of this show really makes you think. This one is a little more scary because it is more realistic, like it could occur in the future. I think people often forget that having popular social media pages that are aesthetically pleasing is not the most important thing in life.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the way technology dictates the way we act. That is kind of the norm for our society, technology is so engrossed into our everyday life. But when I look at the rating system I can't help but feel that this is just the way society looks at a person for their past actions. Take a prisoner. Would you neglect him/her just because they is/was a prisoner? Most, I think, would just give them a bad rating without knowing their motives or beliefs. Many would give doctors or lawyers a good rating though. They spent many years studying and staying out of trouble the best they could. But who is to say that the doctor is any better than the prisoner as a person.
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