Thursday, January 04, 2018

[fcnevext] Black Mirror Nosedive

I am unsatisfied with the premise of the episode: if society has converged on a rating system that is actually useful for choosing romantic partners, hiring employees, filtering customers, friends, etc., then the rating will probably be measuring the thing we are calling self-qi, the thing that people in our real world are implicitly already trying to gauge when choosing romantic partners, employees, etc.  (On the other hand, if the rating system is not useful -- it is a bad predictor of whether someone will be a good romantic partner or good employee, then people would have quit using it, or at least, not paid it much heed: they will use something else more useful as a predictor on these important decisions: maybe gut feeling which is what people use now.)

So that said, when Lacie finally makes it into the wedding whose guests had been selected for high self-qi, things should have gone well.  Such people are the people who have the most surplus love to share when they encounter someone less fortunate, who will tolerate even enjoy events not going as originally planned.  Lacie should have ended happy, finally surrounded by people able and willing to support her after her ordeals, willing to help her heal.

Such a happy ending could be made dark as is the theme of the show: social commentary on our real world full of social structures and mechanisms that try to create groups or events exclusive to people with high self-qi as well as the efforts that those excluded will do to try to illegitimately get access into such groups.  Or perhaps although the other wedding guests have the ability and even desire to be supportive, they choose not to because of game theory: the health of the community depends on keeping the wrong people out: they themselves (in their behavior) are part of the barbed wire wall.

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