# Black Mirror makes me want to scroll that Facebook feed into oblivion

- Link: https://www.andreidraganescu.info/2016/12/04/black-mirror-makes-me-want-to-scroll-that-facebook-feed-into-oblivion/
- Published: 2016-12-04T20:51:39+03:00
- Author: Andrei Draganescu

![](https://draganescu.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/43d03-1ki6zcsn0mf7o-ul_ammodq.
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#### Is Black Mirror trying to scare or to scar?

So I have finally gone through the entire available third season of Black Mirror.
It’s been a sad journey. No, strike that, the damn thing got me downright depressed.

I mean it. _Sad_. _Not bad_. High quality show, nothing to say here. It’s just that,
damn, after the never ending list of happy endings we get the never ending abyss
of depressing wrap-ups.

I get it. They mean to prevent, or to instil, a certain circumspect attitude towards
the all too touted miracles of technology. But instead they make the audience feel
as if the “mere” human is completely helpless.

In Black Mirror there is never any real choice for the characters of the show, and
that cancels any kind of moral message they might attempt on the audience.

The soldier, lied to. The game tester, lied to. The pics kid, lied to. The twitter
horde, lied to. The social addict, lied to. Probably San Junipero is the most fair
episode towards the audience, but even in that one, the character is being lied 
to by itself, as all lovers end up being.

Indeed, the show makes a point of the lying by being very forward about it. Laconic
documents signed, ignorant decisions, rushed life changes, you name it, it is all
about pointing to an obvious deceit, yes, as if technology is a lubricant for our
impossible wishes.

And boy, is that a good intent, a worthy aspiration, to tame the haste of letting
bits and wires invade our pores. **Yet, to whom is the show speaking?**

Don’t **we** know? We, the ones who like and praise the show so much, we already
know. We know all that. The entertainment that ensues from the confirmation of our
expectation only gapes our defences for the long and terrible list of depressing
endings. And this is where the show is weird and tiresome.

We’ve all got fed up with happy endings, I get it. But, folks, the antidote to happy
endings are realistic conclusions, not depressive wrap-ups. Will we learn by being
scarred? Does anyone? Won’t this whole initial idea of warning on the dangers of
technology, be just lost on the audience being to busy finding some dopamine generator
for their cortisol and serotonin flooded brains?

I mean, I want to scroll that Facebook feed into oblivion after a Black Mirror shot.
Who is Black Mirror trying to scare? The mind out of us? Do script writers that 
take on the cape of social workers ever think it is actually possible to simply 
swap one manipulation with another?

In season three there is no single episode without a wrap-up. A wrap-up is not an
epilogue, nor a conclusion, or a satisfactory falling into meaning of the plot. 
No, as the name says, it is simply wrapping up the show with the gloom and doom 
of helplessness and fatalism. It is the final acetylcholine forced sip to completely
counter any trace of adrenaline that would make anyone even glimmer at the idea 
that there is actually a way out.

People zone out because life itself has become utterly boring. The population with
internet access would do just about anything to build a separate escape world where
their escapism can take them, and they have good reason to do it: the world makes
very little sense these days. We sink into our fantasy alternate universes to shed
some of the information overload, some of the constant sexual arousal, some of this
insane montagne russe of expectations fed into our personalities by boundless media
and connectivity.

How does a depressing, categorical and ivory tower shielded show ever gonna help
us? I personally fear that most of the people at risk of being technologically disenfranchised,
like the soldier with the implant, will neither watch, nor grasp the show.

I am also a bit mad.

It’s like, really they have all the answers, don’t they? Ah, these commoners, how
gullible and foolish they are, tweeting bad hashtags, accepting stuff pinned into
their cortex, wishing social acceptance so fiercely. But wait! That commoner is 
me!

My titanium clipping left behind by my long removed sick gallbladder is your sinister
device of tomorrow infesting my existence. Do you think the technological doom of
humanity will come through bee replacements and army visors? I believe it will insidiously
appear one transistor at a time, one RFID antenna at a time, at all times luring
our most humane intimacy: the doom of our incoming very personal and individual 
death.

And to that threat, the soul decomposing depression and the helplessness it brings,
is a poor punch. We won’t even see the end of round one.