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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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"?

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.

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

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...

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.

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.

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!

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