
“I can't stop comparing everything to Black Mirror” - fearfulsymmetry
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/31/7471901/i-cant-stop-comparing-everything-to-black-mirror
======
jacquesm
Black Mirror is a very good series, it is absolutely brutal but brilliant in
the merciless way in which it exposes the potential downsides of the
technology we take for granted.

Highly recommended but be prepared to be shocked in unpleasant ways. The
entire history of you is imo the best one so far, with 15 million merit points
a close second.

~~~
Fede_V
I thought 15 million points was by far the best. TV shows like Big Brother,
X-factor, etc, all pray on the vulnerability that certain people have for
wanting to seek out fame and notoriety.

Incidentally, Sony had a recent patent for interactive advertisement, that
only disappears after user interaction: [http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-
patent-is-hilarious-terri...](http://fortune.com/2013/04/30/sony-patent-is-
hilarious-terrifying/)

------
robl97
Black Mirror is awesome. My favorite episode is "15 Million Merits", which
reminds me of the John Maynard Keynes discussion about digging holes in the
desert and putting jars filled with banknotes for people to dig up, or Paul
Krugman's suggestion about makework preparing for an alien invasion
([http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/coalmines-and-
al...](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/coalmines-and-aliens-
again/)). In the future, is any work (even if not that productive, like riding
a bike and accumulating points) better than no work and potential social
costs?

~~~
vxNsr
I thought the bike riding was generating electricity and the points were
really just dollars.

~~~
bkeroack
The deeper point being, I think, that money in a sense is no more "real" than
points on a screen.

~~~
zenogais
Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human
beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-world
efficacy.

I thought the deeper point was, perhaps, that everyone has their price. That
nothing, not even the very things people think are "radical" or
"revolutionary", escapes the logic of money. That everything can be
commodified and turned to serve the very system they try to escape.

~~~
tripzilch
> Money is a social construct, and therefore not materially real. If all human
> beings disappeared tomorrow dollars/merits/etc. would cease to have real-
> world efficacy.

But so would couches. Without humans they're just ... things, without any
implied use of being sat on.

~~~
Evolved
I think he means not necessarily that it's a social construct but that it is
intrinsically valueless and serves no purpose without human existance whereas
a couch could be used for at least some other purpose than sitting on.

------
rikkus
If you like this, you might like...

Charlie Brooker has a regular column in The Guardian, which is, I believe,
available to non-British people via something called The Internet:
[http://www.theguardian.com/profile/charliebrooker](http://www.theguardian.com/profile/charliebrooker)

~~~
proveanegative
Fans of Black Mirror desperate for more would be better served watching Dead
Set, a gory satire of reality television, and perhaps Nathan Barley, the
series that "The Waldo Moment" was originally written for, before they head
for Charlie Brooker's column in The Guardian. I found the content of the
column too mired in British partisan politics for me to enjoy.

~~~
RobertKerans
_Brass Eye_ is very much worth a watch as well, if you're mentioning [the
excellent] Nathan Barley. And _Four Lions_.

~~~
chriswarbo
Black Mirror reminds me a lot of Jam, also by Chris Morris.

~~~
RobertKerans
Jam is IMO fantastic, I always hesitate to recommend it due to how brutally
black the comedy is, though. The radio original, _Blue Jam_ , is great as
well.

------
kalleboo
While we're recommending Charlie Brooker stuff, be sure to watch "2014 Wipe"
as well. My favorite part was a thought-provoking bit by Adam Curtis about how
we're being bombarded with conflicting messages, which he explains is why a
lot of feel so confused these days.

~~~
patzerhacker
I also heartily recommend "How TV Ruined Your Life" which serves as sort of a
capstone volume to the entire run of "Screenwipe".

------
alecco
If you like Black Mirror, you might also like Charlie Brooker's Wipe, now a
yearly summary of news. A bit UK centric but very good. This year's is just
out:

UK [http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-
brooke...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-
brookers-2014-wipe)

World
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EoNsGHZD0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EoNsGHZD0)

------
mavdi
I live in London. My wife being Spanish I get to travel to Spain a lot, at
times I stay in Spain for a few weeks.

I'd always notice a certain level of relief whenever I'd set foot in Spain.
Like a great weight was being lifted off my shoulders. And then one day I
realised what it was... I don't want to sound too doomy but it was the fact
that one is constantly under watch in a place like the UK.

On average, you're caught 300 times on camera every day. All my messages and
emails go through GCHQ proxies, if anything is left unwatched NSA will make
sure it's all on record. HMRC knows every little details of financial
information. All my Amazon purchases, my online grocery orders, the games I
play on my console, damn I'm not sure Kinect is not somehow recording all the
conversations in my house in some server.

The point is, for me the dystopian future I'd always worry about is here. It's
creeping into every aspect of my life and already taking away any calm in life
I'm left with.

------
ZeroGravitas
There's also Dead Set, a one-off from the same team (or at least writer) which
is the contestants on a Big Brother reality show unaware that a zombie
apocalypse has started while they are sealed in the house. Available on 4oD I
think.

------
corford
Slightly OT but if you have access to iplayer and missed it yesterday, Charlie
Brooker's "2014 Wipe" was brilliant (including the sneak preview half way
through of Adam Curtis' latest documentary due out next month which looks
fantastic).

~~~
Freaky
Missed that, thanks. Direct link:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-
brooke...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04w7ytd/charlie-
brookers-2014-wipe)

------
waterlesscloud
Black Mirror is about the way our current and near-future technologies expose
and amplify our psychologies, and it's absolutely brilliant about it.

Brilliant and brutal.

~~~
dbcooper
If you want more reading along this line, I cannot recommend JG Ballard highly
enough.

~~~
alx
which of his books would you recommend ?

~~~
DanBC
"High Rise" is accessible. It was written in 1975 so might be a bit dated.

[http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/underappreciated-
masterpieces...](http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/underappreciated-masterpieces-
jg-ballards-high-rise-1975)

~~~
dbcooper
Ben Wheatley's film adaptation is in post-production now, and is getting a lot
of hype from people I know in the UK film/TV industry.

Really looking forward to seeing Jeremy Irons in it!

~~~
RobertKerans
Ah wow, that's fantastic news; I didn't know that was coming. Ben Wheatley's
great as well.

------
skazka16
Black Mirror is brilliant! I can also recommend Utopia.

~~~
M2Ys4U
_Utopia_ is a brilliant show. It's a shame that Channel 4 axed it, though, and
I'm anxious that the US remake will butcher its legacy.

------
godDLL
I feel this way about mobile phones. Everyone's supposed to carry one of those
random disruption devices.

------
_almosnow
Since this discussion turned pretty much into a poll of which's your favorite
episode, I'll go. Fifteen million merits was by far the best for me, not only
that, it is one of the best short stories I've ever seen on TV. The fact that
the series was produced and distributed by Endemol it's even more appealing.

------
michaelochurch
Spoilers ahead.

"Fifteen Million Merits": This one probably hit the hardest, because that _is_
Corporate America. People are doing work that is fundamentally useless (the
energy they'll produce, on these bikes, is less than they'll consume in food)
to be kept busy for no clear purpose, and the ultimate conclusion is that
those in control just enjoy the exercise of power. (See: the humiliation of
Abi Khan.) This is most terrifying and poignant because the in-app-purchase
existence is actually a plausible future of corporatized consumer capitalism.

"White Bear" and "White Christmas", two episodes both invoking the concept of
human-created hell, are brilliant because they show an overblown sense of mob
justice. In White Bear, the woman _doesn 't remember_ the crime and has been
tortured and memory-wiped beyond recognition, so she's essentially not the
same person who committed it and effectively innocent. In White Christmas, the
most disturbing and bizarre thing about the end is that it's not the criminal,
but _a copied consciousness that did nothing wrong_ because it didn't exist
when the crime occurred, the one created for the interrogation, who suffers in
the "1000 years per minute" auto-hell. The actual criminal just spends
Christmas in jail.

"National Anthem" is brilliant but hard to evaluate for plausibility because
the U.S. doesn't have the same class system. We have severe inequality, but no
one would fault a U.S. President for choosing not to fuck a pig at the risk of
Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Still brilliant, and an interesting take on
the Streisand Effect (if he chooses to fight the publicity, he increases it,
and the image of him fucking a pig can't really be erased). I also like the
dig at "modern art" because most of it _is_ trolling. [0]

[0] Actually, there's a _lot_ of great art being made, even now. The problem
with "modern art" is that there's a weird inversion where the gold remains
obscure, and absolute junk sells for millions to rich people, because "making
a statement" has taken more value than craftsmanship and aesthetic value in
that joke of a scene.

"Entire History of You" kinda defeated its own point, if you ask me. His wife
actually _was_ unfaithful and he figured it out. Sure, it was emotionally
unpleasant for him-- no news there-- but would he have been better off not
knowing and raising that douchebag's kids? The main plot one wasn't really
about the perils of technology. The moral was, "Don't marry a cheating
harlot", but that one's over 9000 years old.

"Be Right Back" I found to be a luke-warm exploitation of the uncanny valley.
I can see why that episode would appeal to people, and I won't say that it
wasn't well done because all of these have been excellent; it just didn't hit
me.

"The Waldo Moment" I found hilarious because I enjoy crass and obnoxious humor
as much as anyone. That said, the ending wasn't plausible. People develop an
immunity to that shit over time. It could unseat one political candidate,
sure, but Waldo would lose its punch and its extortive capabilities. Mockery
has power, for sure, but eventually people learn to tune it out. Not plausible
to its full extent, but still poignant, and a bit funny for the sheer
obnoxiousness ("breaching experiments") and stupidity of the Waldo character.

~~~
bkeroack
> "Entire History of You" kinda defeated its own point, if you ask me. His
> wife actually was unfaithful and he figured it out...The moral was, "Don't
> marry a cheating harlot", but that one's over 9000 years old.

I hear this point of view often from those who don't realize that people (even
women!) are human and make mistakes. Sometimes everybody is better off when we
can forget momentary transgressions, or perhaps even if the one partner never
learns about the past mistakes of the other. The theme of the episode being
that this can never happen due to this new technology.

~~~
no_wave
The technology allowed him to confirm all of his already-existing suspicions.
He'd already noticed that his wife was fawning all over the man that she was
apparently really sorry about having slept with - a man who also had dumped
her hard in the past and didn't really give much of a shit about her, going so
far as to make a joke about their affair in front of her husband. I agree with
Michael that following the logic of the episode the technology just sped up
what was probably going to happen anyways. (There's also the fact that the
main character probably gets obsessed for reasons involving his murky career
failure.)

Not sure what you're implying with the "even women!" comment.

