Monday, November 26, 2018

My thoughts about “Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation” and its message about technology


Monday, November 26, 2018
My thoughts about “Black Mirror: Hated in the Nation” and its message about technology
The overall concept of Black Mirror is to show how dangerous the future and its technological inventions and advances for humanity can be. It shows us possible outcomes and downsides or side effects of technology and the future itself, besides all the shiny, useful aspects. It really fixates on things no one is thinking about or willing to think about. The episode “Hated in the Nation” shows that in a cruel but also in a realistic and good way.
The episode is structured like a police procedural, in which law-enforcement officials try to protect innocent citizens from an unknown, deranged villain. This episode is basically about deaths of people who are hated by society. An unknown person created an internet game in which people could tag other people with the hashtag “#DeathTo” and their name. After 5 pm the person with the most “#DeathTo” will get executed. At 12 am the game resets every day. After some investigation of the law-enforcement officers it reveals that the mysterious deaths are caused by the robot honeybees, or so called Autonomous Drone Insects (ADI´s). These bees were originally created to fill the ecological gap left by the extinction of the real honeybees. Due to a security gap the unknown killer is able to hack the robot honeybees and use them as killer machines.
“Hated in the Nation” is focues on two huge problems of our society: autonomous drones which are used for flower-pollinating in the first place but are actually used for governmental large-scale aerial surveillance and on another technological problem of our society, cyberbullying. The cyberbullying is portrayed by the internet game #DeathTo, created by the anonymous killer. As I already explained, the purpose of the game is to determine a person, that will be killed, by the hastag DeathTo and the name of the disliked person. But all of the people are actually not aware that the #DeathTo hastag will actually kill someone. As already said, for them it is more of a bullying purpose.
If I think about “Hated in the Nation” my first problem is to determine its actual critique. I mean the episode talks about Psychopaths who are using advanced technology to kill people, collective cyberbullying and the problem of Drones doing government surveillance without being noticed by anyone. Which can get really confusing during you watch it. But I think the answer to this problem is, that it actually talks about all those problems at once. It tells the audience to mostly see the bad side in technology and the future of technology. The same counts for the people. Also in the episode everybody is at fault: the tweeters who keep the twitter game alive, the startup which agreed to leave a backdoor in the bee drones and also the victims of the hashtag game. But on the other side there are also some attempts to undermine stereotypes about cyberbullying. The preschool teacher, one of the hashtag tweeters and the one who sent the cake to the first victim, believes that all the people behind those questionable hashtags are normal people which normal careers who just want to express their hate or dislike towards someone in a certain way. I think the point Black Mirror is trying to make here is that people often represent or appear different in the internet than in real life. Mostly because they behave completely different on social medias than in real life. Which is supported by the anonymity the internet or social media provides.
I think the episodes biggest failure is to recognize the parts of its convoluted storyline which raises the most important and also interesting question. What happens if the people, who participate every day in the hastag game, would actually find out that they had the power of collectively determining someone to die? Could this lead to a more fascinating exploration of the human nature? Maybe more than the villain-focused story is telling instead.

Dominik König

2 comments:

  1. Hey Dominik! I really like how you brought up cyberbullying in “Hated in the Nation.” When I was writing my blog I was focusing on the internet paranoia, not the bullying side of the show. I think that people really act different on the internet than they are in person. I agree with your statement about the internet provides a certain anonymity. I think that people feel like they can say whatever they want if no one knows who they are. But with the “#DeathTo” game that was played in the show proved different. Everyone who tweeted and participated in the cyberbullying game “#DeathTo” paid for their actions. Each participant was killed by the ADI Bees just like they people they voted for to die. I like the question you asked about what would people do if they knew the tweet actually worked. I really think that most people would not use the hashtag if they knew it worked. But then I also know there are mentally corrupt people who would still use the hashtag because they would have no “blood” on their hands. I think an underlying message in the show is that everything you say and do has consequences.

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