Susan's Exit from the Credit System

"You don't know me so you're not really sorry. You're just mainly awkward cos I have sprung some cancer talk at you. Anyway, I five-starred every doctor, every nurse, every high-four consultant that we had. Ding. Ding. Ding. Thank you so much. The cancer didn't give a shit. It just kept growing. A couple of months in, we heard about this experimental treatment. It was very expensive. It was very exclusive. I did everything I could to get him a spot there. Tom was a 4. 3. They gave his bed to a 4. 4. So when he died I thought, fuck it. I started saying what I wanted, when I wanted. Just drop it out there. People don't always like that. It is incredible how fast you slip off the ladder when you start doing that. It turned out a lot of my friends didn't care for honesty. Treated me like I had taken a shit at their breakfast table. But, Jesus Christ, it felt good. Shedding those fuckers. It was like taking off tight shoes. Maybe you should try it?" - Susan, "Nosedive."

As awful as the consequences appear to be for foregoing the system of social credit in "Nosedive," I can't help but to feel relief to the knowledge that there are people who exist comfortably outside of that circle of society. When Susan suggest to Lacie to try being herself, she does so with the experience of both being at the tops and bottoms of the social ladder. The greater wisdom to Susan's advice is the option to opt-out of this system, something which seems feasible at only the cost of social isolation, which isn't nearly as bad as the opt-out cost of other utopias that we've looked at.