'Black Mirror' Is Back, Reflecting Our Technological Fears | Hacker News Reader

'Black Mirror' Is Back, Reflecting Our Technological Fears

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Black Mirror is really, really, really good. The writing, the cast, it is just incredible.

But it is also incredibly depressing. Maybe depressing is the wrong word. Emotionally exhausting, you might say. Well worth watching once, but I recently could not bring myself to re-watch it because it so dark. And not even dark humor, which I like, just dark. Maybe in the spring, I'll come around...

I was talking to my SO about this, it's an incredible show but unlike so many other shows that you can binge watch, it just isn't one of those. You need to take time off from it to process it because it's so heavy and dark.

You also can't binge watch a quality show like this because it really wrecks the experience.

Totally agree, aside from the sheer depressive feeling you get from watching an episode they're so high quality that I feel like you're not going to get as good of an experience binge watching it. But I'm far from a binge watcher, my brother is one and my SO to some extent but I can't watch a 45min-1hr long episode and then want to immediately start another.

I'd be curious to know how you found Stranger Things, if you've seen it. As a rule I don't binge-watch either, but after watching the first episode of that show, I found myself quite strongly compelled to keep watching until it was done. Having previously had such experiences only with novels, and quite few even of those, I found it very odd that a TV show could manage to produce the same effect.

Found the first episode really awesome, still haven't watched the second and it's been more than a month. I'm admittedly behind on the times but I've been watching The Sopranos (maybe 1-2 episodes a week) and have made my way to the 4th season now. Stranger Things is on my list of shows to watch though because there's a number of things I really liked about that first episode!

That's a bingeable show because it hooks you with cliffhangers. I don't consider it a great show by any stretch like I do Black Mirror so binging is fine. I watched 3 or 4 episodes and put it down. I'll finish it at some point.

True. I've also been a huge fan of pre-van Stephen King, and the show is so completely pitch-perfect in that regard as to make it uniquely bingeable for me.

I really appreciate shows that don't encourage binge watching. Now, I enjoy binge watching as much as the next binge watcher, but since Black Mirror has a definitive ending after each episode, it's that much easier for me to turn off my laptop and go do something else - which usually is talking about the episode I just watched...

What makes it so good is the fact that it is so believable. I wished I could come up with a 'white mirror' alternative where all our tech is used for good but it wouldn't be nearly as believable. Human nature being what it is you'd hope the future isn't even darker than what black mirror shows, it easily could be.

And the tech is also very believable. Not overdone, nothing gimmicky, feels very real.

Star Trek TNG is as close to 'white mirror' as we'll ever get. A universe where human nature advances alongside technology. It's obviously way more far fetched and the show hasn't aged well though.

I don't find Star Trek believable at all, starting with the 'Warp Drive'. As soon as you add a device like that to a plot it becomes impossible to see it as a possible future.

I mean... NASA has a team that works on how to warp spacetime in order to provide apparent propulsion.

I don't think it was supposed to be believable. It's a utopian society, reflecting the time in which it was conceived. The idea that society would be become more liberal, more socialistic, more tolerant by having greater access to information and not wanting for material goods is the more interesting one. We will be able to see if that's true over the next hundred years.

The Warp Drive is just a plot device, so that the humans can interact species from other, distant worlds.

> I don't think it was supposed to be believable.

Roddenberry surely intended it to be. It was the show he'd wanted to make all along, or a great deal closer to it than the original, in any case; since his death and especially since the show wrapped, many early screenwriters have described, in various fora, the extent to which he'd try to enforce the logical consequences of his political philosophy, such as the disappearance of workplace interpersonal conflict, a libertine attitude toward sexual activity, and such enduring peace both internal and external as to render unnecessary the maintenance of a military organization. After Roddenberry's ill health made it impossible for him to exert creative control, and especially after his death in 1991, TNG-era Trek evolved toward a more plausible portayal of its characters and societies.

http://www.universetoday.com/130649/nasas-em-drive-passes-pe...

Not terribly far fetched, just need more pylons.

You can reimagine most episodes without it. They're not visiting different planets in a spaceship, just different cities connected by a monorail. Er, hyperloop.

More accurately, making flying air-carrier visits to different parts of Earth.

Or use wormhole technology to connect planets via a hyperloop like in "Pandoras Star". Interesting read how humanity would conquer other systems if space travel was irrelevant.

This is basically the plot of Stargate SG-1.

Less ancient aliens, more political backstabbing.

And SG1 had that horrible starship spinoff

That's assuming we're headed towards being The Federation and not The Borg.

Given that humanity's track seems to be toward ever greater diversity, it's hard to imagine we'd become a one-dimensional archetype species.

In what was is human diversity increasing? Broadcast television has been causing the decline of regional accents and increasing cultural homogenization for decades. Many obscure languages are dying out in favor of consolidation at the regional or national level.

In the past, humans were naturally diverse simply because there were so many distinct communities that hardly ever interacted with each other. Nowadays you might be exposed to many times more diversity than the average medieval peasant ever was but there's nothing contradictory about that happening as the total amount of diversity in the world continues to decrease.

You'll have a hard time convincing me that a world with several orders of magnitude more humans is somehow less diverse than the times with fewer humans unless you somehow remove the ability to process arithmetic from my brain.

Wait, how does more humans = more diversity? I would think any abstract measure of diversity would be based on average differences, or standard deviations away from the mean. Obviously, the absolute extremes are greater with more people, but it seems entirely logical to say diversity has decreased as the number of people increase.

Easy. The more populated world is the one that has a global telecommunications network, whose homogenizing influence far outweighs higher-order effects like population.

Hardly. Increasing connection is shifting us closer to a single world-culture every day, which has advantages and disadvantages. All the world's most powerful people wear Western-style suits and speak English.

This was my initial thought as well. But on further thought, it doesn't seem to be true. I think, with technology and inter-connectivity, we are getting exposed to diverse points of view more than ever before. It might eventually lead to one culture, but then that would be because we all learned from all the options and settled on the best combination.

Oh, each human being is definitely exposed to more diversity, but that doesn't mean the world is getting more diverse. Now, I can be English and interact with people who are French, German, American, Chinese and so on; previously, I could have spent my whole life only interacting with Anglo-Saxons, but not know about the Bretons, Picts, Gaels, Geats, Swedes, Goths, Navajo, Hopi, Anasazi and so on nearby and around the world.

Perhaps we'll settle on one culture as we choose the best one. I more imagine we'll end up with one culture in an endless echo chamber, forever unable to sense our own biases.

> It might eventually lead to one culture, but then that would be because we all learned from all the options and settled on the best combination.

Isn't that the whole point of the Borg?

>towards being The Federation and not The Borg.

what is wrong with the Borg? I mean emotionally we all dislike it, yes. Yet speaking objectively, the Borg is the naturally highest state of developed life we can conceive off. Atoms makes molecules like proteins, lipids, etc., the molecules make cells, cells make organisms, organisms make society... The same cycles of assembly/integration and specialization, basically the same 2nd law driving life at different scales. Looking at the level of integration and specialization our society has so far reached i'd say it is just the level of primitive multi-cell organisms. The Borg is the natural state of society when the level of integration and specialization increases, and increasing of that level is just the 2nd law gradient in application to the live systems. Resisting it is just like insisting on staying "free" single cells instead of combining into organisms. The organisms would see the stars, the cells - no.

What's interesting is that throughout the different startreks. They touch on disconnected borg greatly depressed and missing the collective. There is less fear and more collaboration in the borg. And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups. Though some accept and desire more individuality. And yet here we are today with so much interconnectedness and how lonely and disjoint so many people are. I definitely have things I'm embarrassed about but if there was an optional to join/leave collective I think it'd be neat/great.

We all only get to experience our single life. But to have opportunity to have memories and experience many more just sounds enticing to me. Borg isn't mindless. It is a collective where ones arguments don't need to be debated because you can reach better consensus because you can fully experience and understand the counterpoint and why views differ. We are all blind to our own anecdotal experiences.

> And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups.

Exactly. General symmetry breakup process guarantees that uniformity in highly interconnected environment wouldn't be a stable state, ie. it means the necessary emergence of non-uniformity, basically individuality, at different scales - personal, group/team, cube, ... It is just that such individuality would look different as it will be driven by emerging non-uniformity instead of just physical barriers of our skulls.

We're heading toward the same thing every species before us has; death and extinction. We're just accelerating the process, and have the unique ability to anticipate it. Nothing has shown an ability to avert the inevitable however.

I love the show, but I find it unbelievable in the same way I find 1984 unbelievable. Both serve as brilliant reminders of what humanity could become if we succumbed to our darkest nature. But just by existing, they serve as warning signs of what we must not let happen.

I don't want to give away any spoilers since the twist is so brilliant, but I find "White Bear" particularly unbelievable. That episode rocked me to my core, but I also don't think it would actually happen.

The movie 'Her' comes to mind.

> I wished I could come up with a 'white mirror' alternative where all our tech is used for good but it wouldn't be nearly as believable.

Why? Imagine:

Everyone on Earth, if they have a problem, can be connected to a handful of people who already had that problem and offer friendly advice free of charge. Where that advice is tied to purchases or revenues, the network of people facilitating this experience will take a cut.

If you want to do something, say, plant some tomatoes, you can ask an AI how to do it in a way that has a high probability of success. If you are willing to follow a set of specified terms (specific production standards, etc), the AI will offer you financing and a guaranteed buyer for the product. Extend this to every form of production. Pre-financed contractors are available to take over processes you'd rather not do, or to mentor you in processes you want to learn.

Imagine every neighborhood, every culture, every regional cuisine, every micro-ecology, every species and family all has a hive of autonomous micro-corporations surrounding it, helping keep those cultures alive, keeping participants solvent and supporting its economy. Imagine people who are sick of the vanilla-ifying and globalization of culture have an alternative supported by a federation of tiny businesses powered by decentralized software... businesses that never could have existed in the "Minimum 10 Head Count Million Dollar Market Cap" business development physics of today, but are trivially financed by autonomous HR AIs with micropayment accounts.

Right now the systems we have to do these two things are imperfect, but I believe this is the future the internet/open source/open culture/non-profit/DIY/decentralization/blockchain crowd is driving toward. I welcome anyone who thinks these three goals are impossible. But imagine that we can get there. What would we do with such technologies? I think the ramifications are fascinating.

What if there are 400 million forest rangers roving the planet relocating endangered species to nearby biomes where they can survive for a few more decades?

What if the stories of the poor and the out-of-touch-with-production-culture can be told and shared, instead of being locked out of the media financing landscape?

What if the people whose home cooking you love to eat could just cook all day and live off the money?

What if you could get paid to take care of any sick person you wanted, because they're worth more to the economy healthy?

To me, there are so many beautiful uses of technology that I am certain we will get to. Black Mirror is spot-on in its worries. But I'm chock full of equivalent hopes.

It's so, so easy to destroy the dream though. Consider the "what if AI" questions you raised, and read this very short story:

http://squid314.livejournal.com/332946.html

I described a couple of AIs that do a couple of very specific things well. They probably won't even be able to understand each other. An AI that "is never wrong" is complete science fiction.

General AI is a fascinating thing to imagine, and great fodder for fiction, but it has no basis in science.

I think that just means you should get out more. Human nature and horror literature have little resemblance to each-other.

The word that seems most appropriate to me is cynical. The worldview of the show is essentially the exact counter to the tech/entrepreneurship community's unique strain of optimism.

> The worldview of the show is essentially the exact counter to the tech/entrepreneurship community's unique strain of optimism

I think it's the inevitable outcome of tech/entrepreneurship's naivety. Facebook and Google both came from this "unique strain of optimism" and they've come to represent much of what Black Mirror discusses.

Yes! It's definitely one of those shows that I don't just casually flip on. I really have to be in the right mood to sit down and watch an episode.

It postulates threats without hints of solutions, e.g. few happy endings, valiant resistance movements, defections by oppressors, deus ex machina resolutions. TV Tropes probably has a name for this genre of storytelling.

It's very similar to Outer Limits, perhaps a bit more the 90s incarnation than the original.

I've described it as "Clockwork Orange meets the Twilight Zone, with a technological spin."

It sure does! http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld

Thank you!

S3E1 has the happiest ending so far... And it's not all that happy. :)

I wasn't too affected by the previous seasons and haven't watched Season 3 yet (except episode 00 pre-netflix with Mr Mad Men), but if you're up for it and really want to feel emotionally exhausted after a motion picture, I can recommend Denis Villeneuve's Incendies (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1255953/). If Lost in Translation leaves you disillusioned, then Incendies will be a punch to the stomach you feel for another day. It's one of those rare movies you appreciate and regret watching at the same time. A longer running movie with similar themes (I mean mini series) is the UK production The Honourable Woman, but it doesn't leave you as emotionally affected, so I wouldn't recommend it as a must watch.

Thanks for the suggestion! I have put Incendies on my to-watch list, with a caveat. I'll probably watch it in the spring or summer, when I bounce back from hard emotional experiences more easily.

Agreed -- so troubling. I actually felt sick to my stomach just from watching the new trailer. It's a really well done show, but so, so dark.

I had exactly same experience watching 'Mr. Robot'. Can't even say it's dark humor.. It's just dark. Too dark for me.

I'm a depressive type and can't bring myself to watch it, for basically the same reason I don't look when I drive past a car crash. Sometimes people give me guff for it too-- "but it's so good!!" I think I'll live if I don't see one tv show. Even a good one. I'm negative enough about the state of the world and its future as is.

I've never really enjoyed Black Mirror, I've always found it too sneering and pessimistic (and I speak as someone who has enjoyed Charlie Brooker's sneering all the way back to his prank call days).

So I sat down to watch this series, and in some ways the first episode confirmed all my biases, hitting all the usual notes about technology we use and like actually being a terrible slippery slope and you should all feel bad about yourselves.

But then I got to the San Junipero episode, which is so magnificent in every way that I immediately forgave everything. Character driven, subtle, sentimental but optimistic. And probably, over Stranger Things, the piece of sci-fi 80s nostalgia that I'll remember most from this year.

I had the same experience with "Be Right Back", the first episode of season 2. I thought the show was cynical, cutting, ruthlessly executed and a bit too polemical. And then there was this episode, which leaned on a common sci-fi plot device but took it just far enough, and stayed focused on humanity as opposed to technology. The writing displayed obviously genuine respect and empathy for human love, grief, and powerlessness - no cheap cynicism to be found. Astounding what this episode did with all of 44 minutes.

This is truly a beautifully produced/written/acted series.

They are all eminently watchable. My personal favorite episode?

White Bear!

Please don't google it. Just do yourself a favor and watch it.

So good. The series has lots of future tech stuff to noodle over. It's one of those that sticks with you long after you finish.

Warning: the series can be very brutal at times. No holds barred.

My favorite, too. The way it unfolds is just so compelling - they're all good, but that one really hits an even higher level.

That one and the Christmas Special were the two episodes that kept me up at night.

Fifteen Million Merits is the one that does it for me. Crystallizing the futility of modern existence in one small narrowly drawn set piece.

Fifteen Million Merits (S01E02) is one of the best things I've ever watched, period!

Not just the futility, it also subtly depicts the lack of power in a person who has been immersed in an environment that has

* denied them any significant agency

* ambition can only be expressed in a narrow set of avenues

* questioning the way of things is futile

There isn't any person behind the screen orchestrating things, simply each individual doing the "best" they can, and boy, that is a chilling world. Not scary in the sense of horror, just chilling because of the dread it fills me with. I won't say any more lest I give away the ending. The acting left an impression on me, even though I don't remember a single word that was said. Definitely recommended!

>There isn't any person behind the screen orchestrating things

Yeah, I love that! Even the judges on the reality show have this air of fear and desperation about them.

It's what makes the episode, IMO, and it's something that a lot of people don't seem to notice. We never see police or enforcers. The closest thing are the stage hands at the show, and they're not that close. We don't see someone carted off to become one of the janitors, for example, which a lesser show or concept would have depicted explicitly. Then at the end we see that the outside world looks fine[1], if neglected (by humans) and wild. People are where they are due to lack of will and imagination to make something different for themselves.

[1] There's some debate over whether those are real windows or viewscreens, but since one of those options acts a punch-line to this theme and the other serves basically no purpose, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to take them to be real.

Plus the advertisements you cannot skip are like an entirely plausible nightmare scenario.

Truly. I'd truly hope there is a mass rebellion before we ever get anywhere close to that. Luckily we still have adblockers and mute buttons. And lastly enough redundancy that many people can go elsewhere if you can't use adblockers or mute.

Cannot skip, or even shut your eyes! That was the part that punched me in the gut.

I have to say I enjoy "Shut up and Dance" the most out of any Black Mirror episodes. It is utterly breathless in pace and the twist was a kicker.

It fascinates me - White Bear seems to be the most divisive Black Mirror episode out there. For me it's one of the weakest episodes of the series, but I know others who love it.

Personally, the Entire History of You is the pinnacle of Black Mirror.

I'm in complete agreement. I've had long, deep discussions about the implications in Entire History of You. To me, it reaches depths far beyond the other episodes.

Entire History of You is my favourite too, then the Xmas special and Be Right Back. White Bear was an interesting idea though, but not so believable.

I thought White Bear was going to be a mediocre episode until the end. Just watch it if you haven't seen it. It's unfortunate you can only watch it for the first time once.

But every episode is nearly perfect. 15 million merits is probably my favorite, but White Christmas is incredible too.

I'm really surprised by all the people here that like this show. I tried to watch it and found it to be absolutely unbearable. It seemed so trite and utterly lacking in any real insight to me. They just took the most obvious, silly things everyone predicts about the future and rendered them in the most simplistic, stylized ways.

Can anyone explain to me what they like about this show?

Have you seen White Bear? It's one of the most terrifying and thought provoking things I've ever seen. Sure you could probably find elements of that episode in other shows/films, but that's probably true of everything.

Honest question: what are you watching that makes Black Mirror trite and obvious by comparison?

2nd this request, what are the names of 2 or 3 shows that aren't "trite"?

Go read some classic scifi, PKD did the capitalist dystopia pretty well (and amusing) for example.

Well, I suppose the difference between this show and say Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad or something (two shows that I have enjoyed) is that they don't think they're teaching me something philosophical. At least, not overtly. Black Mirror is extremely overt and heavy handed in its moralizing.

I guess it feels sort of condescending, but from a place of ignorance. It's ok to repeat trite cliches and tropes culled from the latest medium articles on futurism, but if you're going to do that, weave it into a compelling narrative, don't try to appropriate those simple ideas and claim them as your own. And that's sort of the vibe I get from Black Mirror - that its writers think really highly of their insight into the interplay of technology and culture, but I find that insight to be pretty shallow. And i'd be tolerant of that shallowness of it was a more background element of a more compelling story (say, The Matrix), but Black Mirror feels to me like it takes it self undeservedly seriously, if that makes sense.

I realize the foregoing was sort of rambling, but it's a little hard to articulate exactly why it rubs me the wrong way. I certainly enjoy plenty of things that could be said to be trite, shallow, or even stupid. But I feel like those things know their place and Black Mirror doesn't.

For me it is a nice counterweight to the idyllic future Silicon Valley paints, its nice and understated, compared to the bombast of TechCrunch articles hawking the next greatest start-up that is going to "Change the world". It's nice to have balance in my life.

Whenever I hear an entrepreneur (and the tech media) breathlessly excited about how so-and-so technology will "change the world", I try to figure out whether they mean "Star Trek" change or "Black Mirror" change.

Most often - neither. Because they're not so evil that they'd like to bring in a "Black Mirror change", but on the other hand if they understood Star Trek, they wouldn't be doing what they're doing (or, at least, "calling it changing the world"). Indeed, most often "changing the world" means "changing the contents of my wallet".

Speaking of trite...

The first ever episode of Black Mirror is actually kind of weak. It gets a lot better from episode two onwards. From just one initial thought, I found Entire History of You to be an utterly fascinating exploration of the implications of immediate recall of any event in your life - how it affects our jobs, relationships and even sex. That Be Right Back explored both mourning, and also the personas we present on social media vs our real selves.

But to each their own, I guess. If you consider it trite then you consider it trite - I'd consider it to be your loss!

They just took the most obvious, silly things everyone predicts about the future and rendered them in the most simplistic, stylized ways.

Was unsuccessfully trying to articulate my gripe with this show but you hit the nail on the head. I think it also explains why I liked the first one best, while the talent show/advertising episode was just annoyingly silly.

I am too. I hear people describing it where it sounds like something I'm supposed to like. But I watched all the previous episodes, and they were all stupid. I saw no depth. It was like a shallow version of that genre, which did have some depth in other shows I've seen in the past.

Maybe I'm too out of touch with the culture to realize the meaning. But I think it's probably just shallow, and superficially appeals to people who don't usually think very deeply about related topics. Like Star Trek. A lot of people love that show, but from what I recall, it looked like a shallow soap opera for nerds. I think some people probably like Black Mirror more as a fashion accessory, because the idea of it fits their style better than some others.

But I will watch the new season, and maybe there's new writers and I'll find something interesting.

Interesting.

  You:
  Black Mirror = "stupid"
  Star Trek = "shallow soap opera for nerds"
  
  Me:
  Black Mirror = genius
  Star Trek = (TNG-era) brilliant, formed much of my values and views of the world

I really, honestly would like to study the way you (and people who share your opinion) think vs. the way I (and people who share my opinion) do. The way you argue against Black Mirror / Star Trek suggests some fundamental difference in understanding the world - things that for you are obviously stupid are for me obviously brilliant.

I would be grateful if you could elaborate on what you think was shallow in Black Mirror vs. other shows you saw, and what made you dislike Star Trek. I'm very curious where does that difference in perceiving those shows come from.

Maybe de gustibus non est disputandum?

That's just cop-out. I'm not criticizing the views of 'mei0Iesh, just trying to understand them, in order to reflect on my own.

Based on all the talk I've read about this show, I feel like I should love it, but watching the first episode "The National Anthem" so turned me off that I put it down and never gathered up the will to give it another shot.

From what I've read, there's somewhat of a split opinion on that specific episode, but to me it was just too unbelievable and silly, all while taking itself so seriously. And because I couldn't suspend my disbelief, it made the whole concept of the episode seem even more pointlessly lewd and uncomfortable. I don't consider myself a squeamish person, and I get that the uncomfortableness is kind of the point, but it just didn't leave me with the desire to watch any more.

I dunno, maybe I should give it another try.

I watched the first episode when it aired. Then the second episode after a year or so. I watched the third episode just a couple of weeks ago.

I like it, but that's about how often I can stomach it. It's a tough watch.

I am curious if the same things are uncomfortable for everyone. Some of the episodes I disliked the most didn't even have the most gruesome things but seemed to be just a couple of logical leaps from real events.

I'm sure it differs, but for me it's mostly the dystopian outlooks that does it, even if the first episode mainly did it on a primal level.

I wholly agree on your second point. I watched 10 O'clock Tonight, Weekly Wipe as well as read his columns, and while he's really cynical, I think Charlie Brooker is brilliant and does have a real eye for seeing the world today and imagining what kind of horrors can spring from that.

I binge-watched the season3 as soon as it came out on Netflix.

Definitely do. There are only a couple that are just wholly unbelievable but when you look around you can kind of see how certain people do act the way the show presents. Each episode being a stand alone story is also very nice since if you don't like one the next isn't the same thing (for the most part).

Episodes definitely take a theme and take it an exaggerated extreme, but that extreme, while unrealistic, I do think shows a 'black mirror' on certain very real dark undercurrents in today's world. So I don't think you are wrong there.

That said, as a 'thematic' show where the episodes are not related, you may end up loving some and hating others. I'd recommend the Christmas special episode (with John Hamm), if you want to give it another shot.

I always start people with "The Entire History of You." "The National Anthem" is nothing like the other episodes.

Definitely do give it another try. The good thing about this show is each episode is entirely stand-alone. Some episodes are definitely better than others. So if you don't like one, it doesn't necessarily mean you won't like others.

Incidentally, The National Anthem was my least favorite episode too.

I liked all of Black Mirror, including The National Anthem, but that episode is uncharacteristic in that it has almost no traces of the "sci-fi"/"dystopian near future" flavor that characterizes almost all of the rest. It's completely a political satire without sci-fi elements.

Every other episode has a stronger component of bleak sci-fi dystopia.

"The National Anthem" has "sci", but the "fi" of it is less apparent because the tech is already here just not "evenly distributed" yet. And maybe I'm just baseline cynical enough that what you perceived as "political satire" just played to me as the simple mechanics of how things happen.

To put it mildly, I'm a believer in anonymity and decentralization. That episode really takes these (hopefully) advancing qualities and really forces you to confront what tearing down of our society's institutions can actually look like.

This episode makes me actually dislike anonymity and decentralization, but I agree with you on this one - I feel this was a pretty accurate portrayal of how things happen, how incentives of all involved parties interact.

Yeah, my point was that the episode did a very good job of showing the negative aspects of those things, challenging my views.

A large part of what made Black Mirror so compelling to me is that the stories were so well written I wasn't just reflexively thinking of reasons to write them off. I still don't have a straightforward answer to that episode. Perhaps those types of events are something society will just eventually move past - the shock value will be lost, an individual being forced to do something like that will cease becoming an event, and won't reflect poorly on the institution? I dunno.

I felt the same. I didn't even finish S01E01 because I just didn't want to see it.

But I eventually started back in S01E02 and absolutely loved the rest of the series. That first episode is the worst, I think perhaps its tone about consent is very wrong. But I had no major hangups about the rest of the series. Some other episodes were still deeply, deeply disturbing, but I felt they got the tone more right, so I didn't feel the need to walk away as I had with the first episode.

Tough to watch though, especially the Christmas Special.

The first episode was absolutely abysmal. Completely unbelievable, and horribly written.

I stuck around to watch the second episode, which was at least tolerable, but I got bored and stopped after that.

> Completely unbelievable, and horribly written

I disagree; I think this was 100% accurate portrayal of how society works, how humans interact, and how such an event would play out.

Seeing so polarized opinions in this subthread, I wonder what this teaches us about the ways we view the world.

> to me it was just too unbelievable and silly

Uuh... Have you seen our reality?

http://qz.com/506490/the-black-mirror-episode-that-imagined-...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3242550/Cameron-pig-...

>but watching the first episode "The National Anthem" so turned me off that I put it down and never gathered up the will to give it another shot.

>From what I've read, there's somewhat of a split opinion on that specific episode, but to me it was just too unbelievable and silly

ahem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate

I personally found "National Anthem" to be the most realistic and plausible episode so far - I mean, it's totally doable today, and I think the show gives an accurate portrayal of how such situation would develop with the modern Internet, and also of how helplessness even a most powerful person can feel when the whole system turns its back on them.

But each episode of Black Mirror is different anyways, so I'd give the rest a try anyway.

This show is definitely the modern day Twilight Zone. All the episodes have great twists that obviously come from well informed writers.

The vast majority of them are written by one guy, the shows creator, Charlie Brooker[1]. He's a UK comedian who has written a number of great shows such as "Screenwipe"[3] (a comedy documentary about the TV industry), "A Touch of Cloth"[4] (crime drama satire) and "Nathan Barley"[5] (which pokes fun at the London hipster scene and was co-written by Chris Morris[2] who is another UK TV legend)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brooker

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Morris_(satirist)

[3] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780206/ (Screenwipe)

[4] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2240991/ (A Touch Of Cloth)

[5] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0426654/ (Nathan Barley)

"A Touch Of Clot" is brilliant. It takes off where "The Naked Gun" left and adds more wordplay. It completely saturates every scene with comedy. There is nowhere to go from there.

I have never before felt exhausted by the fast pace of puns in my life.

> It takes off where "The Naked Gun" left and adds more wordplay.

If you weren't already aware that The Naked Gun started as a TV show called Police Squad! and that it's exactly as great as you'd hope, congratulations because today is the day you get to learn about that.

This sounds like the absolute perfect thing for me, and I'd never even heard of it!

Just a quick check, you've seen Police Squad, right? The precursor series to The Naked Gun. It's only 6 episodes, which always amazes me when I think of how many moments I love in it.

To add on.. Chris Morris also created the satire show The Day Today with Armando Iannucci (Alan Partridge, The Thick of it, Veep)

Don't forget 'Brass Eye' too!

Brooker's brilliant,misanthropic project 'Unnovations' seems to me like the closest spiritual ancestor to Black Mirror- even bleaker, if anything. It's disappeared from the web but still exists in the archive, https://web.archive.org/web/20011006114750/http://www.zeppot... for an example.

The other fantastic & fantastically relevant contemporary show is Westworld. Setting up to be a masterpiece.

Between Black Mirror, Westworld, Utopia, Mr. Robot we're really hitting a good run of SF.

These are probably my top shows of all time. I love the past few years just for this. Unfortunately with all these revolutionary shows coming out constantly people think you're just recommending everything you see :P

Don't forget The Expanse, which is coming back in January.

I've really enjoyed Westworld so far - GoT lost me after the red wedding (too much... television stress) and 3 episodes of this restored my faith in sunday night episode treats. So much reddit theories to read :)

Unfortunately Person of Interest (made by the same guy who's doing Westworld now) is no longer with us, but if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend it. Personally, I consider it one of the best shows of the decade, definitely the most sensible portrayal of AI in movie history ever, and also pretty uncanny in a way it hits close to home with most of the surveillance things.

If you enjoyed Black Mirror you have to watch Utopia by Channel 4 in the UK. It's remarkable. Don't search for a synopsis online. It's a sci-fi conspiracy thriller like none you'll have ever seen before.

This is an imdb review that echoed my sentiments:

"First of, I made an account at IMDb solely so that I could submit this review.

Utopia is exceptional. It is a masterpiece. It gets 10\10 from me.

I won't explain what Utopia is about because I don't want to give any possible hint of what is to come, so I'll describe it by comparing it to other things.

Buy the DVD or download the show and your life will get.... stranger. Its rather unsettling how Utopia gets under your skin.

There are a few television shows that share some similarity to Utopia.

For example, if you enjoyed Fringe, the X-Files, then you'll be quite at home with Utopia's paranoid wanderings.

So then you cross the weirdness of Fringe and the paranoia of the X-Files with the violence of Kill Bill and the action\suspense of the Jason Bourne series.

Now cross that already bizarre hybrid with a series of scientific TED Talks given by Joesph Mengale, yes, the Nazi who chopped countless pairs of twins to pieces for the greater good.

I'm not sure which is more bizarre. That description or that incredibly, it works.

However Utopia is much, much darker than any of those. It is the darkest TV series I have ever seen. It also as others have said, feels very real.

A note of warning. When I said Utopia was dark, I was not joking. If you suffer from excessive anxiety or you're squeamish, then do not watch Utopia. Because this TV show is nothing like you've ever seen before, it will affect you. You will be thinking about the themes in it long after you've watched it.

The violence in Utopia isn't actually that strong at all, most of it occurs off the screen. But the intense atmosphere of paranoia which accompanies it makes it brutally real.

On the other hand since the governments of the world have apparently taken a leaf out of Utopia's manuscript lately with regard to surveillance, Utopia could well seem prophetic in a few years time. This really is a TV series for 21st century of flying killer robots and universal surveillance.

The Sopranos changed the way I thought about television. I thought television was for lightweights until I watched The Sopranos. It was like thinking books were mostly about erotica and then coming across Shakespeare and entering a world full of subtle complexities on a bunch of levels.

Utopia is nothing like The Sopranos. But the way it'll change how you view television is very similar.

Just one last thing. There is an American show called "Person of Interest" or something like that which has similar themes. Watch this instead.

In a word: this is intense. "

It also has one of the strangest soundtracks you'll ever hear. Listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2f6MfEzhvo

Warning: Do not watch if you are especially prone to paranoia, depression or anxiety.

I wished that they had expanded further on the past as in Utopia S02E01 but they unfortunately didn't. The conclusion was satisfying, though.

For me Season 1 was perfection, Season 2 was close to perfection but a little rushed towards the end, and then I wished that they have developed a Season 3 (with a red/blue schema)

Don't you wish you found out what happened with W.W?

The characters were terrific, especially J.H.

The storyline was the very best. There was so much world left to explore and and I wish we'd seen a Utopia derivative/side story from David Fincher's version of it. I think it would have been a perfect fit for the director of Fight Club and still a tall ask for him to live up to.

Like the author of that imdb review I felt it was very real for some reason despite the decor.

There's enough unexplored for a season 3 story-wise.

I heard they will make a US version. If it's like Shameless US, I'm all for it, but usually US remakes tend to make a bad copy that also stretches out for no reason. I really like the British and Australian format of a few dense episodes rather than 12 or 22 US episodes where it's 60% filler material. However, if it isn't story driven, then making 22 episodes is ok.

After the bad US copy of Rake tanked, the Australian original got a 3rd season, and it's likely to get a 4th one, so sometimes studio heads make sound decisions.

> . I really like the British and Australian format of a few dense episodes rather than 12 or 22 US episodes where it's 60% filler material.

Agreed. I bought both seasons on DVD and the original soundtrack for both seasons, then sent all my friends a copy of the DVD/Bluray for Christmas. I wish there was a better way to support projects you like though. In particular microtransactions on the Net are total fucking shit, it needs to be built-in to OS or Browser as a universal standard and simple.

> I heard they will make a US version.

I'm afraid not. That was David Fincher/HBO and it's not going ahead.

> I'm afraid not. That was David Fincher/HBO and it's not going ahead.

I'm glad they won't, because the risk of ruining it is too high as proven time and again.

really didn't like Utopia

Not everybody's cup of tea to be sure.

Gah. As an ex-pat I hate missing out on good British TV. I'll check this out - thanks!

Utopia is absolutelly great! "Where is Jessica Hyde"

Just watched tonights episode with the wife who was on FB liking and commenting on photos of our friends kids doing ordinary stuff. I called this episodes rhetoric after 3 minutes and she was not pleased to find I was right.

We're going to the zoo tomorrow. I might like a tiger if its not sitting around in the California sun and doing nothing.

Watched the first episode while impulsively grabbing the phone to play 2048 game (I do that a lot recently, to pad up the "brain use" to 100%). The episode made me immediately notice and think about what I was doing and why...

I'm going home, see you in a few hours.

I heard the third season was coming out so I checked it out...wow, great show! The first couple of seasons have few episodes so it's easy to catch up. Great writing, but I shouldn't be surprised as it comes from the mind of Charlie Brooker.

I remember this, it was an app! People! Made by some douchebags :/

I remember the drama. Delicious.

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