Recently, I binge watched the entire third season of Black Mirror. I've been a fan since season one, and recommend it to everyone I know, whether they asked for my recommendation or not. I think the writing is unparalleled, and the way that they handle modern themes of technology is one that hasn't been seen since the likes of shows such as The Twilight Zone, or films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and AI. After finishing the season and going through the emotional whirlwind that was those six new installments, I kept thinking back to the first episode. Upon watching it, I'd thought that the portrayal of social media was a bit too on the nose, and not as exciting as the rest of the season. But as I continued to think about the season through the coming weeks, I kept coming back to that first episode. It shows a world in which people rate one another, and those with the highest percentage are the ones who are entitled to a life of luxury. Then, as a woman gets lower and lower ratings, she eventually ends up with nothing, in an oddly inspiring ending. I feel like there was a lot of truth to this. We do live in a society that values social media heavily. We are expected to log our experiences through some social media platform, and creating a voice for ourselves has become an especially important part of Western culture. While our values as human beings don't go down due to bad ratings, we do seem to intrinsically place a great deal of value upon a good social media image, and all that that entails.
Social media has made it easier than ever to share our thoughts and feelings with the world. We can profess our every emotion almost instantly, with nothing more than a wifi connection and something to type with. Worldwide, there are 2.34 billion social media users, from nearly every corner of the world. It has become easier than ever to have a platform that allows us to feel important. We are encouraged to share as much as we can due to positive reinforcement in the form of likes, shares, comments, and much more. The things that we post that are received well, will be rewarded by the positive commentary of friends, family, and strangers. When we post things that are less pleasing, we will receive no encouragement, and will be less likely to repeat this behavior.
As a species, human beings thrive off of this type of enforcement. We are incredibly social creatures, who are heavily influenced by the judgements and opinions of other members of our species, whether we would like to admit that or not. As such, we will continue to post things that people like. Whatever it is that was rewarded previously, will be repeated in order to provide the best possible outcome. Whether it be a food blog, a think piece, or just a really good selfie, we are encouraged to post what will be received well, and provide us with the gratification that we so badly crave. This leads us to post things that we have seen being received well previously, regardless of whether it matters to us or not. This climate of social reinforcement has created a world in which we are presenting ourselves on social media. We derive our value from the likes we receive, and the comments praising our accomplishments. We also take into account the amount of likes, comments, shares, etc. that other people on these platforms are receiving, and we begin to develop a lessened self worth based on a system of likes and dislikes. We begin to shape our self and world view around what we can view on our screens.
It begs the question, what if we stopped censoring ourselves on our public social accounts? Or we deleted social media altogether? No more bombardments of grabs for attention, nor would there be any form of liking or disliking a person publicly without some form of real confrontation, unless we were to take out a billboard ad. What made this episode of Black Mirror so good for me, were the final few seconds, where she is completely free from the biases and judgements of others, free from the instantaneous forms of sharing and rating. It really hit home, that while our likes on social media are not a form of physical currency, they have become a sort of emotional currency. We post and post hoping for some kind of validation, when validation can be found in other parts of our life. It's more important to be truly happy, than to simply look that way on a screen. Maybe the solution to feeling inferior, is logging off every so often, and feeling free to be a human being again.
