Nosedive (Black Mirror Espisode) and why it is awesome
If you don't watch Black Mirror or even worse if you don't know what it is, obviously this isn't going to mean much to you.
However, I feel as though there are 3 or 4 episodes out of the entire series that are haunting, gripping, and make you think about WTF is going on today vs. the fantasy they are describing and it make you say, "wait a second, we are very close to what they are describing already."
Nosedive (season 3 episode 1) is one of those episodes and well, even if you are not a fan of the series, you need to see this.
Now I am not the type of person to take a bunch of selfies. I almost never do so actually. It is my understanding that a great many people throughout the world spend an exorbitant amount of time doing precisely that though. I mean, it is almost as though their entire lives are dedicated to how many likes or hearts they can get on a photo.... and they spend their entire morning, afternoon, and night trying to determine what is going to get them the most of that sort of online rating.
Now I want you to imagine that the result of those "likes" or ratings didn't just dictate the size of your own ego, but actually affected your ability to access certain parts of life. Imagine that you were not required to post pics, but if you didn't certain lanes of traffic would be available to you, certain restaurants would be impossible for you to attend, certain parts of town would be inaccessible to you.
This is what "Nosedive" addresses.
I know we have not come anywhere near that as far as social media is concerned but I think every.....single.... one.... of....you... knows at least one person who seems to live or die by their Instagram account. I know MANY. I was recently hanging out with someone at a wedding (not her wedding) but it was impossible for her to focus on the "here and now" because she was so concerned about how her last 2 Instagram posts didn't get as many likes as she has hoped.
She was completely consumed by this the entire night as she sought to find just the right picture or just the right scenario with just the right people in order to create the perfect hashtags to maximize the amounts of likes she would get. She didn't seem to be very concerned about actually celebrating the person's wedding we were at.
That seems a bit insane, right?
Ok, now imagine that every single interaction that you have with every other person, everywhere, all the time, is rate-able from 1-5 stars and that all future people you meet have a star rating kind of the way that TripAdvisor rates restaurants.
No one is genuine anymore - everyone is fishing for 5 star ratings.... except for the people who aren't (maybe you get to meet those people in this episode... I'm not sure)
Anyway, this episode is incredible and the star of it went on to be in Jurassic Park or something. You should watch it.
In a world where everyone does everything for the sake of social media status, this episode is one of the most concurrent and scarily 'close to home' to date. Bryce Dallas Howard plays Lacie exceptionally and although some may say it seemed dragged out, I thought it was very suitable for the episode. The pastel visuals were great, and the subtle technological advancements encapsulated the Black Mirror feel. The bigger budget is evident in a lot of scenes which can sometimes take away from things but mostly aids the story. If you're an avid social media user, this episode will definitely make you question why you make certain social connections, and whose acceptance are you trying to gain. Hope you found this helpful
The scary thing is that social credit is already becoming a reality and this could really be coming in our not so distant future
The best Black Mirror episodes tend to feel like an inevitability rather than something in a far flung future. This one felt a bit obvious to me at first, but as I've thought on it over the past year or so I feel it actually had a lot of nuance to it that makes it stand out pretty well. Some stray observations:
This episode is very similar in content to an episode of Community called "App Development and Condiments" (which is worth watching to follow this up) but played quite serious.
The use of pastels in this episode is fantastic and a real sign of the power that social stigma can have as a form of control. Rather than valuing uniqueness, it seems this can be a world where people rather wear something neutral as being found to be to desperate to move up is off-putting and can have the inverse effect of getting you moved down. This guides people to a level of conservative dressing and styles that really paints the world they are in.
One of the most sinister things about the episode is that it seems to be a environmental construct that isn't forced on the characters, but something that was slowly adopted over time and I think that is the part that hits closest to home here. I think of this episode in conjunction with a recent movie called Ingrid Goes West (which is worth a watch as well) and you get a sense of how some aspects of this already exist and how we have already bought into this concept. The way we carefully curate content on here to project the most ideal version of our lives or how we can ruin someone's life in an instant over a Tweet or video. The spiral that exists in this episode is just an exaggerated version of what already exists and I think in that it is the most effective.
Pretty impressive story. NOSEDIVE IS really haunting coz you've to live without social media. That's okay with me coz just like ya I'm not that sort of person posting everything and hoping for likes and comments. Still I would love to watch it. It sounds pretty weird bit seriously @gooddream, I wasn't aware of this before.
Hahahahaha, I don't know about black mirror before, but with this explanation, I think I do now, and it's one of those movie one would love to see.
I know some people that behave exactly like the lady you met at the wedding, everything for instagram, that's what I call them... Smile
It would be funny to see people going out with those rating. Lol
Looks interesting this series, many people live only to feign in social networks because it has become part of life.
The plot seems interesting, and from what I see there are not many seasons what this series has. I could hook up for a while on Netflix. It is also true that what is spoken, now people are so focused on social networks that the environment goes completely unnoticed (as if it were in the background).
I'm not saying it's wrong, because social networks are a great help to inform us and to be in touch, although when it happens to be addiction or something else, I think we're wrong. I'm sure it's worth seeing this series.
Never heard of it but your description intrigues me enough to go and have a look. They sound like they are all nuts and consumed by social media.
the best thing about Black Mirror is that none of the episodes are tied together. IE episode 2 of season 3 doesn't have any of the people that were in episode 1 (or any of the other episodes.) All episodes are their own self-contained mini movie of sorts.
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Black Mirror looks very good this movie and makes a good story so much that I would like to see it.