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Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

theguardian.com

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Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#81

Post by ViktorRay »

anyfoo wrote: post #49
ryandrake wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, I do the same, I try to surround myself with positive people. Friends I choose, local businesses I frequent. But there are some forced interactions (like kid's school friends' parents for example) where you have no choice to have to interact with terrible people. My recollection is that niceness used to be the default in random people you might meet. But that's not been true for about the last ten years or so. Y…

Hmm. One thing I have noticed, and something that I discuss with my wife relatively frequently (she notices it as well), is that when I engage with "new" people in something like a professional context, the initial contact indeed often starts as "rough", not rarely unfriendly, even. And that's not just the first sentence, it's through the first few minutes or so. But when I persist in being nice, and having an "I kno…

Makes me wonder…

Are most of us kind but have to hide our kindness beneath a rough veneer due to the grumpy hostile antagonistic people who perhaps only make up some of the population?

But yes I agree with what that other guy said. It wasn’t always this way was it? I also feel like around 2015 people became more hostile and meaner to each other in general. I used to think it was my imagination but now I’m seeing this sentiment more and more from others. Not just here on hacker news but even some of my real life friends feel this way. Not sure what happened.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#82

Post by Denzel »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #64
moduspol wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part I don't like about it is that the premise is too often: "Imagine some theoretical technological advancement. Now take it out of context, put it in the worst possible circumstances, and imagine it appeared into a society like ours without any prior thought or discussion about the possible downsides of that technology." For example: in a society where autonomous security guard robots kill intruders, there woul…

> In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. I think this episode was one of Black Mirror's strongest, because not only would it suddenly come up, it does to a lesser degree with the technology we have today. I've been the guy obsessively replaying painful memories from old photos I have. I don't think it was real…

Correct. Kinda like it suddenly came up when Facebook started showing memories of dead friends and relatives to people that didn't want it nor enjoyed it. There's many instances of humanity plowing headfirst into some technology thinking "this will be great!" only to haphazardly run into the unanticipated not-so-great parts.

Not to mention there's literally people creating tech out here _today_ that's recreating _exactly_ what some Black Mirror episodes were talking about years ago. Like interactive chatbots model after dead people from voice samples, videos, and messages.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#84

Post by _carbyau_ »

The show is named Black Mirror after all. It is meant to be dark.

Stories about a utopia where everyone is happy tend to be boring.

Even "My Neighbour Totoro" has something "go wrong" for drama and interest.

Maybe we need more "My Neighbour Totoro"-like stories set in a Solar Punk world.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#85

Post by lolinder »

rottc0dd wrote: post #50
bawolff wrote: post #14

Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article. I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has. On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel…

It's not necessary for a work of fiction to focus on diverse and realistic characters, particularly when its primary aim is to critique a specific aspect of technology. In such cases, characters often function as just means to highlight and amplify that central theme. Take 1984. It reads like a thought experiment reflecting the author's deepest fears about the dangers of unchecked power structures. Allegedly, Orwell’…

> But, 1984 also features a great protagonist and an absolutely haunting language. While many of the other characters mainly serve to convey the broader ideas, it’s him who grounds the story emotionally. His suffering, his moral collapse, and the eventual loss of his ability was so tough to read and will forever haunt me. When he breaks, it feels like a loss for all of humanity. But, what I mean is characters are not essential to make a great work. When Orwell wants to convey his ideas, the characters are sidelined and ideas take the front wheel.

This paragraph goes one way and then suddenly pivots to the opposite conclusion without any justification. Orwell's character is why the story is wrenching. Without that emotional weight it has no staying power.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#86

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ryandrake wrote: post #31
mandevil wrote: post #17

I feel like a big problem in the modern world is the small scale of our dreams. Dreams drive us, they change the world. In 1865, French author Jules Verne decided to write a book to inspire people to dream big, impossible dreams. He decided to write a novel proving that humans could do anything- by describing how, if enough people worked together, they could journey all the way to the moon. This became one of the fir…

Maybe this is an oversimplification, but optimism is gone from media because people are no longer optimistic about the future. For a long time, the next generation always just kind of assumed they'd have it better than the previous ones. Apart from a couple of terrible historic blips like world wars, of course. Everyone has kind of believed they'd live better lives than their parents. The Baby Boomers were the last g…

> Maybe if we want more optimism in our media, we should give ourselves something to be optimistic about.

It seems to me that it's the opposite. Stories are how we form our views of the world and our dreams for the future. Therefore if we want to have people who build towards things worthy of optimism, we should start by telling stories that inspire them to be optimistic.

Look at Star Trek - Roddenberry didn't go "well the world is hella racist so I guess the show should be too". He made the show reflect his vision for how we could live a better life, and people responded to that over time. I think we badly need the same thing today.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#87

Post by dmix »

Why does media and film even need to be about changing the world? It gives perspectives and exaggerates it for entertainment from which we occasionally draw cultural memes. Those can influence us as societies occasionally but ultimately they are just stories, personal visions.

The exaggerations in media often defines our outward perceptions more than the boring reality of our actual lives. So it can equally do harm if taken too seriously. And it definitely won't make better films/tv shows.

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#88

Post by schiffern »

intrasight wrote: post #79
simpaticoder wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link - that was great. Yeah, with some exceptions (15 million merits being one, given that it's pure allegory) the show seems to ask, "given some new technology, what is the cruelest most horrifying situation in which it could be used?" This basic premise can indeed be applied to anything, past or present. Personally I'd take the automobile, call the episode "Meat Grinder," reference the ~30k deaths/ye…

Every weapon ever devised by humankind has been used

I must have missed the time we used tungsten telephone poles and cobalt bombs?

Re: Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

#89

Post by Dracophoenix »

throw310822 wrote: post #66
verall wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a society where people can play back and re-live prior memories, it would not suddenly come up that one can relive experiences with past lovers. I am not much of a TV watcher so this is the only episode of black mirror I've seen but this really got me - for a show that got so much hype - this is the first couple to have jealousy issues around this technology? Really?? And he has to cut it out of his head with a…

My take was that it was not about jealousy or wanting to forget, but about the obsession for an objective truth. The main character was rewatching his memories looking for the objective truth of what had happened, only to discover that all his memories were, in fact, a lie (because his wife was lying to him all the time).

This sounds vaguely similar to the plot of The Final Cut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film)

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