22 October 2016

Review of "Nosedive" Episode of "Black Mirror" - Netflix



Last night I watched Black Mirror on Netflix. I watched an episode called Nosedive, which I thought was brilliant. Basically it is about a woman living in a social media obsessive world where everyone is given a rank. Everyone wears smart contact lenses that have facial recognition software, so when you see someone, you instantly know what their social media rank is. Social media rank is used to discriminate against people. For example, hardly anyone talks to those with low rankings. What is horrifying about this episode of Black Mirror is that this is not too different to how the world works today. We have social media ranking us all the time, although it is not as sophisticated as it is in this movie. It might be easy to think that you can simply delete social media apps from your phone and be done with it, but it’s not as simple as that, in my opinion. Social media is not the problem, I think. The problem is that, in order to be financially successful, you must be a conformist. People have been conforming and showing off and putting down others ever since the dawn of humanity, but social media merely allows us to do it with greater efficiency.

Most people just accept it. “It’s how the world works,” they would say, or they’d say, “You have to play the game.” This is true, but only in the early stages. In my opinion, you need to conform initially in order to save up enough money to buy enough ETFs to live off dividends, but once you are living off dividends, you are a free man, and you can do what you want.

You must be a slave in order to escape from slavery.

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