Gabriel Almonte

The Black Mirror episode “Nosedive” was interesting, I felt like the episode had a lot of characteristics of today’s society while adding a futuristic part to it. The episode had a rating system, people were graded on their interactions with others and everyone could see other’s ratings. It led to a lot of issues in the episode because people didn’t want to associate with people with lower ratings because they were worried it would be frowned upon. I connected this to my experiences in social media because I see a lot of the same things on social media. People with a higher ratio of followers to following are referred to as “Instagram Famous”. These people often will not follow the people they speak to everyday in school or work on Instagram just because they aren’t “Instagram Famous”. I also noticed in the episode the main character wanted to raise her score and was told high ratings from people with high ratings will boost your score. That’s very common in the real world as well, people hold celebrities and people with authority opinions to a higher standard than others just because of their position. That’s why a lot of companies use familiar faces to brand their products because they know people will listen to them. Recently there has been a lot of controversy with this because celebrities need to get money to feed their family but often are advertising products that can be harmful. I was disappointed with the thought process of the episode, but I wasn’t surprised at all because these ideas are very common in the world today. Personally, I find myself stuck in the middle. I don’t want to pretend to be someone else, but I also don’t want others to look down on me. I will always be myself, but at times I must bring out parts of my personality that are better suited for the situation I’m in. For example, in job interviews people must bring out qualities that will show they are a good candidate for the job while wearing formal attire. On a regular day most people wouldn’t speak like they were in an interview and they wouldn’t dress like it either. I thought the rating system had flaws because some people may be a 5 to me and 1 to another person. People should just always have an open mind because there are a lot of good people and opportunities that are missed out on because of preconceived ideas.