Black Mirror season 3(open spoilers)

[vedicgyan]

I think the logical flaw with that would be that once the person is dead in reality, the device that is recording their consciousness does not record anything anymore. So when that ‘recording’ is started a year later, it would not have any memory of the year that was spent dead. Does that make sense?

[Personal]

Good point. There would be no recognition of the passage of time.

[DSeid]

@Memnon

I saw the first one just now. I liked it a lot. Like all the best Black Mirror episodes, the premise was simultaneously ridiculous and oddly plausible. It’s basically about a world where people can (and do) ‘rate’ every social interaction on a 5 star scale. The barista gave you a little cookie with your cappuccino? Aww, how nice. Give him 5 stars. That douchebag in Accounts Payable didn’t hold the door open for you? Fuck him. Give him a 1. That kind of thing.

Anyway, the more positive ratings you get, the higher your average rating. The higher your average rating, the more ‘influential’ you are considered to be. The more influential you are, the more cool stuff you can afford to have as you leverage your high average rating for discounts on cars, houses, computers, kitchen-ware appliances, and pretty much everything else you can think of, until your entire life is basically just one giant product placement smorgasbord. Clothes become fashionable because “That’s what all the 4.8s are wearing” etc…

Anyway, the episode is about Lacey, a 4.2, who wants an apartment she can’t afford. However, 4.5s get a 20% discount so she sets about increasing her rating. Luckily, Naomi, one of her old High school friends is a 4.9. She’s getting married, and she wants Lacey to be her maid of honour. Lacey’s popularity advisor (basically a PR guy with ratings tips) thinks this is great, because if she gives a good speech at a wedding filled with 4.9s, her average will easily beat 4.5 and she’ll be able to afford the apartment.

Predictably, things don’t go according to plan. In the space of a day, Lacey experiences a string of total catastrophes (none of which are her fault, and including the cancellation of her flight) that sees her rating drop from 4.2 to 2.8. At this point, after spending the whole night doing battle with her shitty rent-a-car (you need a 3.5 or above to get the decent models), hitch-hiking with a cynical trucker with a 1.4 (which is basically one step above serial killer in this universe) and then bullshitting her way into an RV filled with sci-fi obsessives road-tripping to an anime convention, Naomi calls up to rudely disinvite her from the wedding. Turns out that Naomi only wanted Lacey there because her popularity advisor said a maid of honour speech from a 4.2 would make her seem more genuine (as in “OMG! She got a 4.2 to be her maid of honour? Wow, Naomi isn’t all about the numbers. Friendship matters. We could learn a lot from her” - that kind of thing) and thus boost her popularity.

At this point, Lacey goes nuts and decides she’s going to give that fucking speech if it kills her. She turns up at the wedding dinner utterly disheveled and gives her speech. Her rating plummets to zero and she is arrested and thrown in a jail cell (though whether she’s arrested for disturbing the peace or merely for having a zero rating isn’t make clear). There, she meets another prisoner and the episode finishes with them joyously throwing ever more crude and hilariously baroque insults at one another (“Which cartoon character did your mom have to fuck to squeeze you out?” that kind of thing) until, laughing hysterically, Lacey is genuinely happy for the first time in the entire episode and, we suspect, for a great many years.

It’s a fucking terrific episode. The message is heavy-handed, but it works for two reasons. Firstly, the acting is brilliant. Everyone involved really commits to the premise and they sell it beautifully, especially Bryce Dallas Howard and Alice Eve as Lacey and Naomi respectively. They really make you believe that this is something that can happen if we’re not careful.

The second reason it works is that the premise (far-fetched as it may be) adheres mercilessly to its own internal logic. You soon viscerally understand how crucial it is that Lacey’s every interaction goes as smoothly as possible. In one scene, she meets a distant acquaintance by chance in an elevator and I actually found myself thinking “Come on, Lacey. Say something funny. You need at least a 4 star from this random to keep your average up!” In another scene, she realises just slightly too late that one of her co-workers has been ostracised by the rest of the team after a bad break-up and, because she’s accidentally ben nice to him, their interaction receives several anonymous down votes - that’s another thing, btw. You can vote on interactions you’re not even involved in - and I realised it’s just like Twitter. How many times has someone tweeted something perfectly innocuous only to be assailed by anonymous troll-eggs just because they didn’t like the tweet?

Every aspect of this madness is reflected in Lacey’s extraordinary wedding speech. She hates the system, she hates the fakery of it, but she needs it too. Your rating is currency, and dropping too low is, in effect, exactly like dropping below the poverty line. She hates Naomi, who was often a pretty shitty friend, and, it transpires, hasn’t spared her a second’s thought since high school. But she loves Naomi at the same time, because she’s spent her whole life aspiring to be Naomi and the ratings culture they’re trapped in has only amplified that need.

But the most striking thing about the episode is how relatable it is. Before I realised it was a piece of shit, and the worst communications medium ever devised, I used to use twitter. One time, I was retweeted by an author I particularly like and I got a genuine thrill out of it. An old workmate once got retweeted by Ricky Gervais. He was genuinely proud. He took a screenshot to show us all! Approval is like a drug, and with so many social media platforms using approval as a kind of unofficial currency, it’s easy to empathise with Lacey. And in the end, you’re forced to admit that if you were picked up and dumped in this world and left to fend for yourself, you’d probably play the game too, and the chances are you’d probably enjoy it.

Not gonna read the whole thread yet as I have only gotten through the second ep (will return when I get through them all in due time, or give up on this season, but don’t want to risk too many spoilers) but dang this first ep’s concept has been done to death already.

When Cory Doctorow placed Whuffie, currency based on your social reputation, in his 2003 “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” (link to the book as a free and legal pdf … and it is a decent read) it was a creative riff on where a variety of trends were pointing, including how technology was explicitly monetizing social capital. Now?

Well enough executed but, really, come up with some new ideas.

The second … also meh and unoriginal. Also seems to be a variation of “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”'s themes. The first season was clever and had new ideas with concepts to think about. I’m hoping the rest of this gets back up to the level of the what they’ve done before.

[Mr_Shine]

I actually had a little more sympathy for Kenny after it was clear he’d been watching child porn, (with the caveat that since neither we or “them” actually know any more than that he’d jerked off whilst looking at pictures we have no reason to believe he paid for it, is involved in more being created, or actually harmed any children himself.) The jerk who robs a bank purely to avoid a masturbation video going viral gets less sympathy than the guy with a truly damaging secret.

Also, I must have missed it but don’t want to watch again; in the first one Cherry Jones (1.6 trucker) says she’d packed something for Lacie, (called it a “life saver” or similar term) but I don’t recall it coming up, what was that?

[Driver8]

@Mr_Shine

Also, I must have missed it but don’t want to watch again; in the first one Cherry Jones (1.6 trucker) says she’d packed something for Lacie, (called it a “life saver” or similar term) but I don’t recall it coming up, what was that?

I thought that referred to the container of alcohol. Which I’m pretty sure was consumed given the wedding speech although I don’t recall explicitly seeing that.

[Mahaloth]

I may be in the minority, but I thought the final episode was the best of the season. I was completely pulled into the mystery of what was happening and I was very surprised how it played out. I had predicted that:

The blonde lady who was shadowing our lead was actually from the government and was not trying to catch the bad guys, but trying to learn how to assassinate with these bees so the government could take out foreign leaders, etc.

I was so surprised and very much happy to see such an optimistic ending. Well, optimistic for Black Mirror. Sure, everyone who tweeted #DeathTo died, but at least we see that the bad guy will be caught/killed in the end.

Loved it. Great episode and better than most Hollywood feature films.

[DigitalC]

@Mahaloth

I may be in the minority, but I thought the final episode was the best of the season. I was completely pulled into the mystery of what was happening and I was very surprised how it played out. I had predicted that:

The blonde lady who was shadowing our lead was actually from the government and was not trying to catch the bad guys, but trying to learn how to assassinate with these bees so the government could take out foreign leaders, etc.

I was so surprised and very much happy to see such an optimistic ending. Well, optimistic for Black Mirror. Sure, everyone who tweeted #DeathTo died, but at least we see that the bad guy will be caught/killed in the end.

Loved it. Great episode and better than most Hollywood feature films.

Then you realize the bees worked through facial recognition and putting a paper bag over your head would have solved the whole problem.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

The only Black Mirror I’ve ever seen was the first episode of this season, and I only barely managed to sit through it. Are all the episodes as heavy-handed moralizing tales as this one was?

[Mr_Shine]

I personally wouldn’t call it heavy handed, but the plot of virtually all of them is lets see what happens if this aspect of technology use that people are already doing is taken to an extreme.

[Mahaloth]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The only Black Mirror I’ve ever seen was the first episode of this season, and I only barely managed to sit through it. Are all the episodes as heavy-handed moralizing tales as this one was?

Not as heavy-handed as that, which was a massive point against it. I would try the following ones:

White Christmas
The National Anthem
Be Right Back

I liked those the most, although I also really liked Hated in the Nation.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@River_Hippie

I was watching episode 4, the one that’s set in the eighties. At one point there’s a sort of montage of the blonde listening to cassettes and trying on outfits and hairstyles. I thought “How would that mousey girl have all these dresses around and have the expertise to do her hair and makeup like that?” It really kind of took me out of the story a bit.

Later on I was like…“Oh, I see now…”

That episode (San Junipero) is probably my favorite TV episode of any show of all time. I love how the opening dumped us into a 1980’s dance club, seemingly far out of scope of the Black Mirror premise. But we know it’s Black Mirror, so there must be a futuristic twist, and they trickled it in so artfully. I don’t even have the words to critique what happened after that, but it was pitch-perfect and it jerked a tear from my crusty old heart.

Thank Christ for that, because I needed that catharsis after the previous episode ‘Shut Up And Dance’, which made me want to eat a bullet. But even that episode was the most perfectly horrific thing I’ve ever seen. Trollface will henceforth forever scare the fuck out of me.

[Memnon]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The only Black Mirror I’ve ever seen was the first episode of this season, and I only barely managed to sit through it. Are all the episodes as heavy-handed moralizing tales as this one was?

Try ‘White Bear’ from season 2. Easily the most disturbing 45 minutes of TV I’ve ever seen.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Memnon

Try ‘White Bear’ from season 2. Easily the most disturbing 45 minutes of TV I’ve ever seen.

Agreed. Extremely disturbing.

[DigitalC]

I thought White Christmas was the most disturbing.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@DigitalC

I thought White Christmas was the most disturbing.

It was a good episode. Personally I wasn’t so disturbed by it, but it was very good.

[Quimby]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The only Black Mirror I’ve ever seen was the first episode of this season, and I only barely managed to sit through it. Are all the episodes as heavy-handed moralizing tales as this one was?

Nosedive was an episode that could have used about 10 minutes edited out of it. I would suggest trying White Bear as someone else suggested. Also if you enjoy Science Fiction I would suggest 15 Million Merits. It’s my favorite but I can understand why others might not like it as much.

[davidm]

@HMS_Irruncible

…
Thank Christ for that, because I needed that catharsis after the previous episode ‘Shut Up And Dance’, which made me want to eat a bullet. But even that episode was the most perfectly horrific thing I’ve ever seen. Trollface will henceforth forever scare the fuck out of me.

For me, that was definitely the most disturbing episode of the three seasons. It leaves me wondering if Brooker will try to outdo it next season.

[Kamino_Neko]

@davidm

I agree about White Christmas. What was done to that virtual woman was horror. It was slavery to the nth degree, and the slave’s owner didn’t even realize that she had a slave; that she had in a way enslaved herself.

I’ve just been skimming this thread, because I’ve only seen the first episode so far, but I caught this comment.

Gods, yes…that whole thing was just horrifying. White Christmas was by far the most horrifying episode of the first two series. (Fifteen Million Merits came close, but that’s just because the living space tripped my claustrophobia. I thought White Bear was weak in every respect, including that one.)

Commentary on what I’ve seen so far of the new season - again, not having given the thread a thorough reading, so forgive me if someone has already said this…

I was half expecting her speech to go viral and boost her to a 5 at the end…although it wouldn’t fit as well with the satire they were going for (it would fit a different satire with the same premise, though).

The whole PeopleYelp is a flawed system, even without the moral and ethical implications. It doesn’t work without the ability to rate anonymously (who’s going to downvote an asshole when they can be downvoted in return?), but it doesn’t work with it, either (see what was done to Lacey). Which is…scarily believable, actually.

[Snarky_Kong]

On the Horrifying level I think White Bear and White Christmas are tops. White Christmas ahead by a decent amount, I think. That might be predicated upon my belief that we’re all just flesh based computers so the fast forwarding is morally equivalent to the worst torture imaginable.

[Lightray]

Yikes, I’m not sure that I’d recomment either White Bear or White Christmas as a first-time intro to Black Mirror. They’re both really intense, emotional wringers. I usually suggest something like The Entire History of You, which is well-done and thought provoking, without bringing out emotional sledgehammer so much.

Fifteen Million Merits I just can’t take seriously because of the workout-bikes-power-society premise; it’s too silly, and keeps yanking me out of the story by my disbelief suspenders.