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Does anyone remember the Hacker News thread last week about Black Mirror? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43

Does anyone remember the Hacker News thread last week about Black Mirror? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890 Many in the comments were criticizing Black Mirror for being unrealistic. Especially in Black Mirror’s assumption that negative technologies would be introduced into society and ruin people without folks realizing. Well…Snapchat is basically a Black Mirror story. It was introduced and became widespread without much debate. The negative effects are happening. We know of them. Nothing happens. So the Black Mirror criticizers were wrong. “You best start believing in Black Mirror stories Mrs Turner. You’re in one!” And so are the rest of us. Look around you and tell me the world isn’t a Black Mirror episode.

sanarothe 1y ago
I take the opposite viewpoint as the criticisers -- they're too real, too foreseeable, that I would almost ask the Black Mirror writers not to give "them" any more ideas.
- LeifCarrotson 1y ago
  It's the same problem as Charles Stross wrote about in "Don't Create the Torment Nexus": https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-cr... Discussed on HN in 2023, with 392 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38218580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38218580 The question is whether you want Black Mirror producers or SciFi authors to continue generating art and entertainment. Those have value to people with literary comprehension, but they might also be misinterpreted by people who believe them to be a roadmap. My fear is that by shifting the medium from novel to TV show, you're removing the slight filter that keeps out those with insufficient literacy to sit down with an interesting 400-page paperback and opening it to those who can press "Play".
abletonlive 1y ago
How is Snapchat a black mirror episode? Do you think even 10% of Snapchat users are harmed in the ways discussed in this article? This is like saying we are living in Dune because we have some people in space. So just because some people are harmed in society suddenly black mirror is not too on-the-nose or unrealistically pessimistic?
- light_hue_1 1y ago
  Yes. A large fraction of Snapchat's users are significantly harmed. First hand, I see it all the time in students. There's an extreme unhealthy obsession with social media that leads to serious inferiority complexes and depression. All of this wrapped in algorithms that compel people to participate in various ways, from streaks to points, etc. Quantitatively, everything from anxiety to depression to suicide has more than doubled in teens. Oh heck, forget about teens. I see it in plenty of adult groups, like mothers. There's a major pressure from others to keep up, serious self-doubt for normal setbacks, unrealistic expectations around even mundane things. Social media is black mirror, and we're doing it to ourselves.
  - abletonlive 1y ago
    > Social media is black mirror, and we're doing it to ourselves. You mean black mirror is a pessimistic exaggeration on the state of society and technology. It’s not the other way around. What you’re observing is not profound, it’s literally how the writers approach their process for the show. In fact, you’re doing this weird thing where you make it seem like black mirror was prophetic and it came before all the observations about tech and society, when it was clearly the other way around. The criticism from the thread you’re referencing is that their approach is too on the nose and the villains are cartoonish. There’s no subtlety or even anything interesting anymore in the latest seasons. A critique on software subscriptions? We’ve been doing that since it was invented. Those are fair criticisms. What’s missing from black mirror, this article, and your perspective is how much social media has benefited everybody. How many jobs has it created? How many brand new careers and small businesses exist only because of social media? It’s an entire economy at this point. The good and bad effects of democratization of information dissemination. There’s hardly an interesting analysis or critique of the actual current state of tech & society because you’re out here looking for the bad and ignoring the good. Much like black mirror is doing. Its main goal is to be as shocking as possible. That’s why in the thronglets episode, which I did enjoy, there was so much pointless gore. Yes, the point was that the throng had to see what humans are capable of, but there’s no reason to show all the gore associated with drilling through your head or dismembering a dead body. All of that is bottom of the barrel shock value stuff, which is ultimately what black mirror has devolved into.
mystified5016 1y ago
That doesn't really track. Most technologies in Black Mirror are fully implemented as-is, usually with clear and prescient knowledge of the downsides known and suppressed by the owner of the technology. Snapchat is not that. It started out as an innocent messaging app and slowly mutated into the monster it is after it was already widely adopted. The criticism of Black Mirror is that it's presented as immediate widespread adoption of the new Torment Nexus 5000, which was always intended to be a force of evil and suffering. Everyone knows exactly what the torment nexus is and willingly accepts it. Snapchat only became a torment nexus after it was established and adopted, and was done this way maliciously.

sanarothe 1y ago

I take the opposite viewpoint as the criticisers -- they're too real, too foreseeable, that I would almost ask the Black Mirror writers not to give "them" any more ideas.

LeifCarrotson 1y ago
It's the same problem as Charles Stross wrote about in "Don't Create the Torment Nexus": https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-cr... Discussed on HN in 2023, with 392 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38218580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38218580 The question is whether you want Black Mirror producers or SciFi authors to continue generating art and entertainment. Those have value to people with literary comprehension, but they might also be misinterpreted by people who believe them to be a roadmap. My fear is that by shifting the medium from novel to TV show, you're removing the slight filter that keeps out those with insufficient literacy to sit down with an interesting 400-page paperback and opening it to those who can press "Play".

abletonlive 1y ago

How is Snapchat a black mirror episode? Do you think even 10% of Snapchat users are harmed in the ways discussed in this article? This is like saying we are living in Dune because we have some people in space. So just because some people are harmed in society suddenly black mirror is not too on-the-nose or unrealistically pessimistic?

light_hue_1 1y ago
Yes. A large fraction of Snapchat's users are significantly harmed. First hand, I see it all the time in students. There's an extreme unhealthy obsession with social media that leads to serious inferiority complexes and depression. All of this wrapped in algorithms that compel people to participate in various ways, from streaks to points, etc. Quantitatively, everything from anxiety to depression to suicide has more than doubled in teens. Oh heck, forget about teens. I see it in plenty of adult groups, like mothers. There's a major pressure from others to keep up, serious self-doubt for normal setbacks, unrealistic expectations around even mundane things. Social media is black mirror, and we're doing it to ourselves.
- abletonlive 1y ago
  > Social media is black mirror, and we're doing it to ourselves. You mean black mirror is a pessimistic exaggeration on the state of society and technology. It’s not the other way around. What you’re observing is not profound, it’s literally how the writers approach their process for the show. In fact, you’re doing this weird thing where you make it seem like black mirror was prophetic and it came before all the observations about tech and society, when it was clearly the other way around. The criticism from the thread you’re referencing is that their approach is too on the nose and the villains are cartoonish. There’s no subtlety or even anything interesting anymore in the latest seasons. A critique on software subscriptions? We’ve been doing that since it was invented. Those are fair criticisms. What’s missing from black mirror, this article, and your perspective is how much social media has benefited everybody. How many jobs has it created? How many brand new careers and small businesses exist only because of social media? It’s an entire economy at this point. The good and bad effects of democratization of information dissemination. There’s hardly an interesting analysis or critique of the actual current state of tech & society because you’re out here looking for the bad and ignoring the good. Much like black mirror is doing. Its main goal is to be as shocking as possible. That’s why in the thronglets episode, which I did enjoy, there was so much pointless gore. Yes, the point was that the throng had to see what humans are capable of, but there’s no reason to show all the gore associated with drilling through your head or dismembering a dead body. All of that is bottom of the barrel shock value stuff, which is ultimately what black mirror has devolved into.

mystified5016 1y ago

That doesn't really track. Most technologies in Black Mirror are fully implemented as-is, usually with clear and prescient knowledge of the downsides known and suppressed by the owner of the technology. Snapchat is not that. It started out as an innocent messaging app and slowly mutated into the monster it is after it was already widely adopted. The criticism of Black Mirror is that it's presented as immediate widespread adoption of the new Torment Nexus 5000, which was always intended to be a force of evil and suffering. Everyone knows exactly what the torment nexus is and willingly accepts it. Snapchat only became a torment nexus after it was established and adopted, and was done this way maliciously.