Black Mirror (2011-)Season 3, Episode 1: "Nosedive"
Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Alice Eve, Nambitha Ben-WaziCreated By: Charlie BookerNetwork: NetflixRating: A+
Summary: In a world where your ranking on social media based on your interactions with others determines your place in society, a young woman goes to drastic measures to up her score
My Thoughts: In just the course of it's two riveting seasons made up of a total of seven cautionary tales of the world's obsession with technology, the best thing about Black Mirror is it's ability to build a fictional world that seems nothing like our own on the outside. However, digging deeper, you'll find that behind its seemingly shiny, fun, futuristic tone is a dark, bleak message about our own world and the way we interact with technology. And what's different about this world and ours, is mainly, if not completely, the technology. The people, their existence and how they view themselves and each other is simply the same as it is in our world. Like a documentary, Black Mirror explores not only these new technologies, but actual people. Even though the situations are exaggerated and this is not reality for what it is, people are still people and the people in this reality are real, or seem to be in a way; a creative treatment of the actualities in our own world, but in this society, people are ranked via their interactions with people. The nicer you are, the more "up-votes" you get and the higher your ranking. However, if you were to say, cut someone off in traffic, the person would probably down-vote you and your ranking would go down and this is all done from one's phone. Aside from that obvious difference, this world has been doused in bright pastel colors and the super phones these people have aren't really used like normal phones. They're use to scan those around them and view their "feeds", which are just bunches of pictures and statues, like a typical social media site. However, what's different about the social media in this world is that their ranking on this site ranks their standing in society. Those with high numbers like 4.8 and up are wealthy, offered better job positions and are given better opportunities than those who with numbers like 4.2 and below like our protagonist, Lacie, (Bryce Dallas Howard). However, we as a society, rate people on our own social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter based on what they post. Whether we're liking, up-voting, re-tweeting, or favoriting something, we're putting our stamp of approval on their profile that whatever they're posted is something we like, that we like the person who has posted this, even though we may not know them. or genuinely like them. It seems like just a kind gesture to make someone's day, but social media is more than that. It's a popularity game. We may not want to have the most likes, but we want enough to feel satisfied. Have you ever posted a picture only to receive 11 likes when your friend posts the same kind of thing and gets 45? What do you do, because there are only a couple of options? You take the photo down and try again or you go liking other people's posts like crazy in order to get them to like your photo in return, but for what purpose because at the end of the day, it's just a photo, isn't it? But as in Lacie's world, it's more than just a photo or a status, it's your entire existence. That photo or status is us and we all want people to like us, right? Whether they be strangers or our loved ones, we want some sort of physical validation that we matter even through something as simple a like on a picture of a rag doll.
And all of those anxieties and worries about not being liked is manifested into Lacie. She grins widely at strangers, laughs loudly at their jokes, (a laugh she's practiced time and time again in her mirror), and even through all her mishaps, that grin is still plastered right on her face all for a mere positive rating. She's currently at a respectable 4.2, but she longs to be like her longtime friend Naomi (Alice Eve) who is at a sterling 4.8, so a majority of the episode is her trying to get a higher rating, which gets tad repetitive, but it's interesting to see her continue to fight for it, but all for what purpose? Lacie is given the chance to live in the apartment of her dreams, but the thing is: it's too expensive. In order for a discount on the property, she'll have to get to at least a 4.5, so with her wide smile, she sets off to find a way to get herself there. So, after her trying to make it up there with decent up-votes from strangers doesn't work, she's presented with the opportunity of a lifetime: to be a bridesmaid in Naomi's wedding. There will be tons and tons of people with a 4.5 rating and above at the wedding, so if Lacie nails the speech she's planning on giving, then getting to a 4.5 will be a piece of cake and that's where the story takes off as Lacie begins to work even harder to get to Naomi's wedding for those likes. And through car troubles, a hitch hiking misadventure, we slowly see the prim, pretty, robotic Lacie we once knew transform into an actual human being. Dressed from head to toe in beautiful pastel colors, we meet a person who isn't an actual person. She moves like a person, and operates like a person, but she is far from an actual person. Her smiles are wide, but broken and practiced. There's no indication of any sort of Lacie's personality besides what she posts on her feed, which she strategically picks out in order to receive the most likes. But soon, after, those aforementioned car troubles and whatnot, Lacie breaks. She's screaming and cursing at people, she's docked points by the police who put her on "double damage" duty to get her to act politely, but it's to no avail as she's going to do anything to get those likes, even if they cost her the rating she's worked so hard to get up to in the first place, but even so, it's real. She arrives to a human state of mind because we can't please everyone and we can't stay sweet, kind and complacent at all times because that's not human. As things go from bad to worse and her flight gets cancelled and her car runs out of gas, Lacie begins swearing and running and screaming and it's in this that Lacie becomes human because through all our faults and mishaps, it's the faults in us that make us human. It's not, however, the person she's tried so hard to keep wrapped up in order to score all those likes. But why would she do that? For an existence that's more meaningful on a screen and to someone else than yourself in person? While Lacie's world is extreme because a person's ranking literally marks what they can and cannot do in the real world, its not far from ours and we can see that in Lacie because like her, we all want the same thing and that is to matter. We all want to matter whether it be to strangers on the internet or to our own friends and family. And it's on our social media profiles that we can show to the world that we believe we matter. However the people around us have to apply stamp of approval on the pieces of ourselves we put out in the world or it's as if we don't even exist at all.