I like the added level of hilarity in the meme of specifically using Peppa Pig while talking about watching the first episode of Black Mirror. 😂
I always found black mirror to be like… very kid’s first sci-fi. Like, “what if you were FORCED to watch ads?” “Bro, like… What if Facebook likes mattered! Like a lot!”
The ideas aren’t impossible but… from the dystopian episodes I saw, there always seemed to be significant obstacles in getting there from where we are that are never explored or explained away.
To me that’s always been the point of the show.
Take some real world thing and push it to the point of being dystopian.
In the “Facebook likes” one, you can make a connection to social credit systems IRL.
The explanation is applying a “slippery slope” fallacy for pretty much every single concept.
The explanation of “how we got there” is all around you. Every day.
I think it was writer Daniel M. Lavery who described Black Mirror as, “What if cell phone… but too much!”
That’s kind of an accurate way to describe a lot of society these days though, from doomscrolling to phone addiction to social media disinformation to surveillance and tracking and advertising.
True, but these ideas were not quite in vogue in 2011 when Black Mirror first aired. The internet still felt like a wonder full of endless possibility. There was an app for everything. Personal data was not mined on planetary scales.
Yeah. It would be sweet to live in a world that doesn’t keep proving the cynics and doomsayers correct.
accurate!
They are but since we don’t get a lot of true scifi media ( I would describe most as space fantasy ) I’ll take what I can get
If we’re talking about sci-fi and disappointment, I can’t help but state again how disappointed I am that after nearly a decade of rumours and promises and whatnot, we are not getting a Gateway TV show after all…
and what a fantastic first dystopian scifi those first seasons were (for me)
I’ve only seen one episode, the San Junipero one. I can’t wait to watch the rest. I do love some cozy, optimistic sci-fi.
How do none of the replies notice your obvious joke?
Oh honey.
That’s only that episode. That episode is an outlier
The rest of the show is pessimistic dystopia at best.
There are a few that are not.
spoiler
- Hang the DJ
- Striking Vipers
Hang the DJ just makes me wonder how much was spent on data centres compared to swiping left/right
Oh I hadn’t seen those, good to know!
But you are right, those are definitely outliers. If an episode seems like it is a feel good romp, there is usually some dark existential twist just around the corner.
I do love some cozy, optimistic sci-fi.
Well, as others have said, Black Mirror is definitely not cozy/optimistic. In my opinion, it’s easy to miss the final point of San Junipero. You have to have watched the episode White Christmas. If you’ve seen that episode, you know what cookies are and you know that there is an implication in the last seconds of San Junipero that, in my opinion, is pretty dark.
Still the best fucking episode though.
What is so dark? I feel like I must be missing something. Their consciousnesses are being maintained by a server farm. But what is dark about that? It just seems optimistic and such how they get to pretend to live in their 20s forever. Nothing like living in a torturous snow globe or whatever.
I gave a detailed reply that has some spoilers below.
forever
What server farm is forever?
The series Upload is like taking the idea and giving it its own universe. It’s good, but I’ll ruin the black mirror episode.
From their perspective, it’s forever.
Right, but to me, that’s why it’s a romance with a horror ending. It’s not forever. Nothing is real other than their love, and even their experience is questionable in tens of is the silicon version of them really them?
I’ve watched both White Christmas and St Junipero and I do not see what the implication should be. Care to elaborate?
In White Christmas, the cookie is extracted from the host’s brain and is depicted as a little round silver object that is then placed in the… smart-speaker-style container, and we see that it is an exact copy of the host and even (briefly) thinks it is the host.
It is swiftly (in the real world lol) disabused of that notion with such a horrific kick in the ass that it gladly, willingly, lovingly accepts a life of slavery over the alternative which was only barely demonstrated to it.
The other cookie in the episode, the murderer they are trying to elicit a confession from, experiences much more horrific circumstances than the first cookie (with the infinite unbreakable radio) and the humans in the real world who casually inflict this on them are depicted as being completely cavalier about it.
San Junipero did not need that last shot. It could have ended with them dancing. We all knew it was virtual reality. We all knew what was happening. If they just wanted a happy ending, then pointing us directly at the hardware that looks suspiciously like a cookie sitting in a warehouse full of cookies is to me a pretty direct statement (a nice touch is “ooh heaven is a place on Earth…” playing in the background), given that cookies are basically given truly hellish experiences in the only other episode they are referenced.
Edit: I should say, this is just my opinion. There is no direct line from cookies in White Christmas to the silver button server farm in San Junipero other than a visual resemblance and the fact that we’re dealing with copies of people in a digital realm.
I do not think there is any implication in showing the buttons, at the end of St Junipero. I really believe the authors wanted to make a truly wholesome episode but, as you say, this is just my opinion.
cookies are basically given hellish experiences in the only other episode they are referenced
Cookies are featured in several episodes. Not only is the technology slightly different most of the time, it is not always used for torture. In addition to San Junipero, Hang the DJ, Eulogy, and Ashley Too (arguable) are not hellish.
Hey it’s just an opinion, man.
That’s one of the best episodes by far. Honestly, stop while you’re ahead.
Honestly don’t get why that one was so popular. Cookies find a relationship after death, yay? Not anywhere near as philosophically interesting as lots of other episodes.
I think it’s because it has a happy ending, relatively speaking.
Personally, I saw it as far more dystopian, people killing themselves so that an AI version of then runs cycles to fulfill patterns established while alive? Ugh. Sounds like hell in a bottle to me.
Cozy and optimistic is an interesting way to describe that show…
(Edit: I looked up which episode that was, and now your comment makes more sense. Its been a while since I watched black mirror and I kind of forgot any of them had happy endings.)
IMO the best first episode of any series ever.
Honestly, the second episode “Fifteen Million Merits” was the most soul crushing thing I had ever watched, the first episode paled in comparison. Then again, I’m not a pig so clearly Peppa would be a little more traumatized.
I smoked my first blunt before turning on Fifteen Million Merits, my first episode of Black Mirror. Everyone online told me to watch it before Ep. 1.
My emotion was heightened by 10 fold from THC.
I hate this show so much I have watched every episode multiple times.
True joy does not exist to me anymore.
I can totally see that. The episode “White Bear” from the second season was one I should not have watched in such a state. I was quite shaken afterwards, that one might be worse than “Fifteen Million Merits”.
I did “shut up and dance” and it scared the shit out of me. Like that could be happening right this minute. Im actually kind of surprised such a scenario hasn’t turned up in the news.
Most episodes involve some fictional futuristic technology being abused, but that was one of the few episodes that involved only technology that definitely exists today.
- National Anthem
- Waldo Moment (arguable, as it would definitely take some tinkering to set up that kind of Vtuber system, not just using an off-the-shelf system)
- Hang the DJ (arguable, assuming what we are seeing is just a fictionalization of a bunch of software simulations)
- Metalhead (arguable, as robot dogs do not seem quite that advanced yet, but definitely soon)
- Bandersnatch (arguable that the multiple timelines and everything are just the character hallucinating or whatever)
- Smithereens
- Loch Henry
- Mazey Day (though the technology is absolutely contemporary, it does feature a mythological creature or whatever)
- Demon 79 (while it takes place in the past with just old technology, it features supernatural shenanigans again)
EDIT: Fifteen Million Merits is also barely futuristic technology.
Blackmailing people with content like that is happening every day. Just its normally to get you to send crypto to scammers.
I always recommend to skip this particular episode. It just is really disgusting and does not convey any meaning whatsoever. It absolutely fails to be an example for the rest of the series. If you haven’t seen it, just skip it. If you did see it and stopped watching the show because of it, please watch another episode. They are all good in their own way, except for this first one. I have no idea how anyone could have thought, it would be a good idea to open the show with this particular episode …
It’s called “The National Anthem”, btw. Just skip it, seriously.
The author said in an interview that it was a filter to get the public he wants for the series. No idea if that’s post-facto rationalization, though.
Anyway, Netflix changed their entire system so that they could order that one show differently. It’s the last episode there.
You mean, he was actually trying to hook a certain kind of audience with this episode, so they would be open for the other episodes, they would not have been interested in otherwise? What kind of audience would that be?
Yes, netflix plays the seasons of the show in reverse chronological order, because it’s an anthology and the episodes don’t directly build on one another. I am actually really glad they did that. If I had started with the first episode of season one, I would probably not have continued watching.
The first episode hooked me because it chose not to back out of the premise it set up so apparently I am the audience.
In the sense that “if you can’t stand this, you probably won’t like the rest of the show”.
What is clearly false, but that he intended it to be that way.
that really does not make any sense to, but it’s intresting background info
Literally watched it when it first aired. Never watched another episode after even though it’s the kind of thing that should be my cup of tea and I hear so much good about it. Whenever I hear people talk about it I think I should try it again, then forget about it.
My wife and I were like you… if that episode was representative of what the series was like it wasn’t something we wanted to watch. We stopped after the 1st. Our adult kids kept telling us though the rest weren’t like that one and to watch the rest and we eventually gave it another shot.
Honestly while quite different than the 1st, we both thought the 2nd episode was weak and weren’t too enthused about continuing, but they honestly get soo good that it’s worth it. A couple episodes still stand as some of my favorite moments of any series ever. Very thought-provoking and moving. You should definitely consider giving it another chance.
I always recommend Bees as the first episode. If that doesn’t hook you, the the series isn’t for you.
Doesn’t convey any meaning whatsoever??
what did you watch it?
It’s clearly “what could happen when someone abuses technology”, just like the rest of the series.
I have a suspicion that Netflix is messing with the episode order for some folks.
My partner and I were on the phone with their mom when she mentioned that she just started watching Black Mirror. I had a silent freakout moment and half-apologized for the early episodes being “pretty gnarly” but she mentioned the first one she saw was a USS Callister or something else.
Had it happen with love death and robots too. I think if there’s a new season out it starts you on the 1st ep of the newest “complete” season, which is really annoying.
Oh, I remember the controversy about that show! For Love, Death, and Robots season 1, Netflix randomly put people in one of four buckets (probably a hash of your account ID mod 4 or something), and your bucket determined your episode order.
Apparently, they thought it would be a neat way to present an anthology series (since order doesn’t matter). Conspiracy theories arose that Netflix had sussed out peoples’ sexual orientation and were using that to determine the episode order.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Love,_Death_%26_Robots_episodes
Its probably because she was episode 1 of a different season not season 1
edit: actually you may be right others are saying similar stuff
David Cameron enters the chat
And not just the chat.
OINK
I much preferred it before Netflix got hold of it. It’s not bad now, just different.
It used to be dark scifi, now it’s horror.
I find real life depressing enough, after seeing a few episodes of seasons one and 2, I’ll pass thanks.
White Christmas?
The one with the pig.
Hawt
It’s getting hard to keep going with this series. Now it’s just full on horror.
My first (and so far only) episode I watched was The Entire History of You.
I need to be in really specific head-space to watch that show…
