“Black Mirror” Give Us a Good Reminder

Black Mirror is a television series that imagines a future with advanced technology according to social trends, and evaluates the possible consequences and aftermath of said technology. Each episode discusses separate narratives that address different horrifying end results of the technology we have now, advancing and becoming stronger.

The very first episode of season three is called “Nosedive”. It’s about a world where people constantly rate each other from one to five stars. The rating that you have impacts most everything in your life; from jobs you can have, to places you can live, and even what kind of people you interact with, i.e. who is acceptable to befriend and who you should steer clear of.

The episode centers around Lacie Pound, who is a hardy 4.2. She, like everyone else, is obsessed with getting her rating as high as possible. At the beginning, Lacie is interested in buying a new apartment. It’s super expensive but she’s told that if her rating is above a 4.5, there would be financial aid. The only way to quickly achieve this was to get rated highly but others in high social status. An opportunity for Lacie to do this soon arises when her childhood friend Naomi invites Lacie to her wedding to be the maid of honor, and give a speech. Since Naomi has such a high rating, the guest list for the wedding is all people in high line up and of high social status. If people liked her and her speech, they would give her a high rating, and her 4.2 would surely jump up. A perfect plan, absolutely nothing could go wrong, right? Unfortunately that’s not the case for poor Lacie.

The day that Lacie is off to the airport, she gets into an argument with her brother, who doesn’t care about the rating system. He tells her that she cares too much about the ratings and questions why she would even want to move into an apartment complex, when all that is, is a “fake smile jail filled with people who only pretend to be happy.” At the end of their disagreement, when Lacie storms out of their house, her brother Ryan gives her a one star rating, knocking her down to a 4.1.

When Lacie arrives at the airport her flight has been cancelled, and she can only get onto another flight if she’s a 4.2 or higher. Obviously, this irritates and furriates Lacie, as she was a 4.2, just in a few hours previous. Lacie ends up causing a scene at the airport, and her rating is knocked down temporarily to a 3.1 when security has to intervene. This causes her to have to get a rental car, and unfortunately, because of her low rating the car is old and eventually stops working.

Lacie begins to walk along the road in hope of someone offering to give her a ride. All the cars that pass by see her low rating and decide against stopping to help.

Finally, a women with a 1.4 rating, driving a truck, stops and offers to give Lacie a ride. Cautious at first, she finally agree. Throughout the ride, the woman explains to Lacie why her rating is so low. She tells her that years ago her husband passed away because he had cancer, and he was one upped for vital treatment by a man who was a tenth above his rating. She tells Lacie that after he died, she stopped caring what other people thought of her, and lived life the way she wanted to live. This woman turns out to be the only genuinely happy person she’s encountered in a very long time.

This still wasn't enough to change Lacie’s mind. She was determined to get her rating back up. The next day, when she was less than an hour away from the destination, Naomi calls her and tells her that she no longer wants her at her wedding because of the intense recession of her rating. She admits that she only wanted Lacie to speak because it would increase her own rating. Still, this did not alter Lacie’s decision. She was going to give that speech if it was the last thing that she ever did. She managed to get to the wedding, grabbed the microphone, and started her speech. Throughout the speech, Lacie becomes angrier and angrier, eventually screaming and running away from people that were trying to stop her. Lacie's ratings dropped below one star, causing the technology supporting the rating system to be removed from her eyes, and she was placed in a cell. Here, it’s implied that she finally understands how broken the system is, but it is too late. Lacie finds herself broken and literally screaming, but despite everything, relieved.

This can be readily applied to today’s world. We are so caught up in the way we present ourselves and our lives online and how superficial it all can be, and how it is all surface level. Everything is perfectly fabricated, and other people only see what we want them to see. When you encounter someone in real life, you are often easily inclined to dismiss their physical appearance, and forgive them for being somewhat flawed. But when on social media, there is so much more pressure; no one has an excuse not to be perfect.

God did not create us all to be exactly the same, which, especially with social media today, can leave many people not feeling confident or happy with how they look. They look up to the celebrities and people of high social status, forgetting that what they see could be edited, photoshopped, and formatted according to exactly what that person wants to world to see. This unfortunately leaves people feeling inferior and sad, thinking that they’re ugly and unlikeable. If this was said once it has been said a million times - God does not make garbage.

Today’s society tells us that we must judge the worth of others based upon the number of likes that we get, or what people think of us online. It fills our minds with the idea and notion of what we “should” look like.

Lakeshore Weekly News reported that the most tragic consequence of submitting to social conformity is that not only do we lose our authentic selves, we lose our ability to relate to others; we lose our capacity for empathy. The best way to relate to another person is through the recognition of one’s flaws and the sharing of one’s feelings. If everyone presents a fictitious version of themselves, then any chance of developing a deep connection or an understanding with another person has been wiped clean.

It’s genuinely so hard to comprehend the fact that people are getting put down simply because there photo does not receive acceptable approval. This episode of Black Mirror was a good reminder that there is so much more to life than what other people think of us, and especially the way that we want to be viewed online. Mankind was born into sin, and we need to bear in mind that no one is perfect, God created us all equally and no one is better than another.

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