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>I know it sounds Black Mirror-ish, but if it would penalize rude guys, it would be a win for everyone You know the message of the Nosedive episode of Black Mi

>I know it sounds Black Mirror-ish, but if it would penalize rude guys, it would be a win for everyone You know the message of the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror was that such systems would be a dystopia rather than a “win for everyone,” right? The episode’s point included the idea well-intentioned social system engineering can backfire, which is a well accepted trueism in the social sciences. And your refutation is basically as long as women don’t have to see anything they don’t like, it’s worth it.

vinceguidry 8y ago
I found a much subtler message hidden in that episode, very similar to all the other similarly subtle messages sprinkled throughout the show. Everybody there was acting perfectly predictably, and rationally, and the consequences for the behavior displayed were eerily similar to what they would have been without all the technological pomp. The technology winds up simply making the normal progression of the events of life happen just a bit faster. Hard working, social people that you would expect to be successful still become successful, and entitled people like the protagonist of the episode has that entitlement drawn out far more quickly than we would ordinarily see. There's no dystopia, just unfamiliarity with the setting that the show exploits to dramatic effect to make you think it's dystopia. But if the world of Black Mirror is dystopic, then you can level the same charge at today's technological milieu, and yesterday's, all the way back to sharpened sticks and stones. Technology doesn't destroy our humanity, it amplifies it. Real dystopic fiction, like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, is dystopic because it magnifies the human selfish instinct such that it turns into the villain of the story. But Black Mirror contains no grand villain, just plain old ordinary drama. The characters fight each other, not an immense system that's hellbent on destroying human dignity.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  There definitely is dystopia in that episode. Today I don't need to "be social" in order to be succesful, in that episode I would be a homeless outcast.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    You may have spent all your time watching the high rollers and not enough on the other scenes depicting how the rest of everyone lives. At the beginning of the episode, how normal people exist in that society is shown. They're fairly contemptuous of it, safe in the understanding that they can simply ignore it and so long as they don't have a utter meltdown, they'll be fine. You don't see ordinary people having meltdowns, and even today the meltdown that landed Lacie in jail can ruin anyone's life. Lacie truly brought it all on herself.

vinceguidry 8y ago

I found a much subtler message hidden in that episode, very similar to all the other similarly subtle messages sprinkled throughout the show. Everybody there was acting perfectly predictably, and rationally, and the consequences for the behavior displayed were eerily similar to what they would have been without all the technological pomp. The technology winds up simply making the normal progression of the events of life happen just a bit faster. Hard working, social people that you would expect to be successful still become successful, and entitled people like the protagonist of the episode has that entitlement drawn out far more quickly than we would ordinarily see. There's no dystopia, just unfamiliarity with the setting that the show exploits to dramatic effect to make you think it's dystopia. But if the world of Black Mirror is dystopic, then you can level the same charge at today's technological milieu, and yesterday's, all the way back to sharpened sticks and stones. Technology doesn't destroy our humanity, it amplifies it. Real dystopic fiction, like 1984 or A Clockwork Orange, is dystopic because it magnifies the human selfish instinct such that it turns into the villain of the story. But Black Mirror contains no grand villain, just plain old ordinary drama. The characters fight each other, not an immense system that's hellbent on destroying human dignity.

TomMarius 8y ago
There definitely is dystopia in that episode. Today I don't need to "be social" in order to be succesful, in that episode I would be a homeless outcast.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  You may have spent all your time watching the high rollers and not enough on the other scenes depicting how the rest of everyone lives. At the beginning of the episode, how normal people exist in that society is shown. They're fairly contemptuous of it, safe in the understanding that they can simply ignore it and so long as they don't have a utter meltdown, they'll be fine. You don't see ordinary people having meltdowns, and even today the meltdown that landed Lacie in jail can ruin anyone's life. Lacie truly brought it all on herself.