Black Mirror can be described as a show all tell all about the life of America’s social media addicts. Director, Joe Wright, puts a thrilling twist on how media is truly effecting society, under the surface. Although the details are exaggerated, this show points out the true colors of societies social norms and how disgusting they can be. The whole show is a mind bending array of episodes. However, I want to focus in on just one. Episode 1 from season 3. The episode is called: NoseDive. It stars actress, Bryce Dallas Howard. You might recognize her from a few HollyWood Movies: The Help (2011) and Jurassic World (2015). She plays a women named Lacie. To summarize, Lacie lives in a world where people use their cellphones to rate each other from 1 to 5 stars. These people could be friends, family, or random strangers. Lacie’s own rating starts at an 4.2 average. The highest a person’s score can go is 5.0. I’m talking like Kim Kardashion Kayne West type.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it? I’m thinking social media and more specifically, Instagram. While Instagram is a place to express yourself, it causes a lot of conflict. Teenagers deal with the struggle of how social media affects them. Millennial ages 14-25 are finding themselves thrown into the gauntlent of fire. When it comes to being known and heard from, it is the norm. Nowadays, you can find your best-friend’s husband’s brother on Facebook. Well, it did not use to be like that. Where your social circle was bigger than those you could name off of your head. Now, you have to impress and continue to impress people who do not know you. Or even interact with you.
This type of behavior is what this episode is referencing. The way Lacie is always waiting for the rating she receives after she herself grants someone five stars. She is obsessed with her own popularity, she is blind to how much life she is truly missing. By trying to impress everyone, Lacie loses herself. At the end of the episode her average drops from 3.1 to 0.0. She made being liked her life, and it becomes her downfall. The social media in this day and age is so focused on how many followers you have. And how many likes you have on a photo. Oh! But, of those likes how many of them are from your followers. Did you know there are statistics on Instagram Twitter and Facebook for that kind of thing? You can view your statistical popularity on each of these media platforms. This is just as Lacie does in this Black Mirror Episode.
Are we really coming to this? This must be why so many young women and teenagers are miserable. They are statistically competing with one another for popularity, where the only pool, is the circle around them. And that in turn, is when things go dark for so many. You look at the numbers, and finally like Lacie’s realized, they reach 0.
Black Mirror’s Episode points out the ugliness in our dependence on social media. I truly think we are too stubborn to realize it ourselfs. It is a trendy, easy, active, inexpensive, and dangerous way to live our lives. That’s why BlackMirrors is an Emmy Award Winning Thriller, it’s real.
