I’m confused too. It reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back.” A woman’s husband passed away, and she uses a service that aggregates his social media to make a profile of him, so she can talk to him again in a convincing way.
Such an incredibly strong, poignant piece of art; and so shocking after the goofy PM pigfucker episode
The most horrifying thing to me from that episode was that the judges and audience understood and agreed with the MC's denouncement of optimizing for user engagement (something that never happens today /s).
It made them feel horrified, ashamed, and aware. Feelings they weren't used to feeling. Feelings they needed to feel. And they loved it.
So they packaged it up and let people cash in their merits to hear him speak again. Like what the hell? Even awareness of the system can be sold as a commodity by the system.
It makes me think of subreddits critical of proprietary software and social media, or privacy-focused Telegram users. It makes me think of TV shows I love that happen to be owned by media conglomerates: shows like Mr. Robot. Selling criticism of yourself...that's a powerful way to control dissent.
The worst part is that the people profiting from this probably don't even realize what a genius move they're making. Most of this is likely unintentional. The most powerful actors don't even know how manipulative they're being; everything runs on autopilot at an organizational and individual level. That's what happens when you optimize for a singular metric.
I mean, you call it "worst", but I'd call it a blessing, and one we ought to enjoy while it lasts. The moment the powers that be realize that they can capitalize on self-criticism and entirely preempt dissent is the moment escaping said powers will be effectively impossible.
We're entering an age of ubiquitous corporate social engineering, particularly when those same corporate interests own the very means of discussing those corporate interests. A singularity is approaching, one of a different sort of artificial intelligence than what most people imagine: corporations are artificially intelligent actors - paperclip-maximizing automatons, but s/aperclip/rofit/ - and it's only a matter of time before they become fully self-aware and figure out how to squeeze every last drop of profit out of the universe in which they exist. The humans ostensibly "running" these corporations are a means to an end, and nothing more.
And here we are, talking about it on a website owned by a corporation, via devices controlled by corporations, over networks controlled by corporations.
William Burroughs talked about this quite a bit even before the internet.The fact that corporations are not sentient the way humans are does not make them less dangerous. It means less handles for control.
This is already the norm. That’s coming from Brooker’s own experience. The much-less-good episode The Waldo Moment plays with some of the same stuff, and the divisive first episode borrows someone’s quote re: the 9/11 attacks, that the event in that episode was “the first real art of the 21st century” (or something to that effect) because the only thing that’s meaningful as criticism (i.e. not born basically already captive to the system) is so outsider that it’s likely illegal and horrifying... and yet some art-provacateur is trying to bring even that inside the system.