Earlier this week, my partner and I watched this episode of one of my new favorite shows, called Black Mirror (available now on Netflix), that I felt would be perfect to share with you all. Basically, this episode was set in a futuristic dystopian society, involving all the members of the community to have a device they used to see the lives of others and rate them from 1-5 stars…except these ratings were seen by everyone who came across their path and determined their standing in society.
It followed the main character, who was rated a 4.2 at the beginning of the show, and became obsessed with getting her rating up- supposedly the required 4.5 to move a posh neighborhood, but more so for the satisfaction from being highly rated by others. Throughout the show, anytime she acted without accordance to society, or “too human”, she received bad ratings until she dropped down to below a 1- completely unacceptable in this society. The main plot actually involved a story line about her trying to make it to her childhood friends wedding and her challenges along the way, but I won’t go into that since it’s pretty off-topic and just in case you want to watch it.
Anyways, reflecting on the show, I realized how scary it is that the world is almost like that in real life today. People give so much importance to what others think of them that they almost bring to define themselves by it; when they get enough likes they get a high from the affirmations and want more, and when they don’t get enough likes it actually has a negative effect on their self-worth.
Something that I constantly strive for is to be conscious of my social-media use. I still enjoy Facebook and Instagram for their originally intended purposes of staying connected and up-to-date on what’s going on with my communities and around the world. I also definitely still love my blog because it serves as a creative outlet for me to share my life with you all, and YouTube because I get a lot of inspiration to better my life; but it’s not the first or last thing I check in the day, it’s not something I use as a time-filler to mindlessly distract myself throughout the day, it’s not a tool of procrastination that is so focused on the lives of others that I can’t accomplish what I want to get done for myself.
[…] if you’re looking for more psychological thrillers like this, you may also enjoy Black Mirror (although it initially premiered a few years ago in 2016 but still has plenty of new episodes you […]