Nosedive rating

I give this society/utopia/dystopia 1 star. 

I enjoyed this episode of Black Mirror and while watching, I was trying to figure out why the title is "Nosedive". My first thought after watching it through was that it was titled as such due to the amount that this way of life might make someone want to nosedive off a cliff or something along those lines. 
This "life", if you could even call it that, seems like hell in my opinion. Its like Yelp meets Sims meets PsychoPass meets social networking hell. You get to rate people, and based on those ratings you either do well or do poorly in life. This seems like it would qualify as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. It seems to make it impossible to have a single bad day, ever. Or if you are having a bad day, I guess you should just not interact with anyone at all. But for some people that might lead to yet another bad day and without social interaction they may never stop having bad days. Anyway, I need to stop before I go off on a tangent, and I had another point I wanted to mention.
One thing I am extremely curious about is how this would work in other situations, such as college. Would your rating be treated the same as a GPA is treated now? Would people be turned away from certain schools due to low rating? Would people be sought after due to higher ratings? 
I was also wondering how this would work for relationships, jobs, different ages, parents to kids and vise versa, etc.
These were only some of my main thoughts surrounding this episode. 

People SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

Now that title isn't very yogic of me!

To remedy my absence from Blogger of late, I sat down for "Nosedive" with my iPhone Notes in hand, determined to take note of the important themes of the utopia and submit them for discussion.

But here is a sample of my notes:

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"ppl suck
Lacie is like 'no I have to get there it's my best friends wedding' instead of just being a nice person
'I am so sorry about that' flight lady too

Cat in the hat did cheesy pastel world better

Imagine that being high strung all the time

People running back into their cars when she needs help (me doing flyers stuff)"

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And so on.

This weekend I went door to door in my neighborhood passing out informational flyers for New Market's upcoming farmer's market, and though I had a couple nice interactions with people, the ones that stuck out were a frowning guy waving me away from his door as I approached, smiling, and another man with wary, staring family gathered about him aggressively saying "y'know, there's a sign down there that says no so-lic-it-ting," and the like.... This episode just compounded with that and made me think "God, people SUCK!"

That's the essence of my reflection, everybody. I don't really believe that people suck, or maybe I just like to say that. Maybe that's the point of this episode? To make viewers recoil at our world? To be reactive rather than proactive? "Nosedive" doesn't give much encouragement to actively work to remedy its uncomfortable echoes in our world...

Now for a fun gif of the incomparable Mike Myers' Cat in the Hat expressing how this episode made me feel towards people:

No Privacy

While watching "Nosedive," I couldn't help but have this song spinning in my brain. The lines "I always feel like somebody's watching me / And I have no privacy" and "I don't know anymore / are the neighbors watching me?" just fit perfectly with this world where no one can escape the perpetual cycle of increasing or decreasing online and offline status. Everyone, from your coworkers to a stranger passing you by on the highway, has the power to watch you and decide how lush or poor your life may be. Laci slowly devolves into manic obsessiveness over her stars not only for 'social fame' but housing and reputation and general security. Considering that a person can merely look at you and see your rating, the threat of being watched is enough to incite paranoia and a constant state of 'acting,' which is what Rockwell's song portrays and/or frets over.

Of course, other stalker/paranoia heavy songs that also popped into my head were "Private Eyes" and "Every Step You Take," but I stuck with "Somebody's Watching Me" because its almost helpless, manic-yet-calm assertion of prying, judging eyes seems to parallel and reflect the 'Utopia' in "Nosedive."


Here's the lyric video if the official music video isn't to our tastes:

The Currency of Social Media

With the episode of Black Mirror, I think it’s interesting that this is a current hot topic for The New York Times.

Anna Sorokin came to the United States from Germany under the pseudonym Anna Delvey and was recently found guilty for swindling New York’s elite socialites convincing them she was a European heiress. Friends paid for vacations, rent, and food (on one vacation she stuck a Vanity Fairwriter with a $62,000 check). This was all supported on credibility through her heavily curated Instagram alone, where Delvey started with little to no resources and resorted to falsifying checks and over drafting bank accounts before she was almost charged with second-degree grand larceny for trying to obtain a 22-million-dollar loan in an attempt to open a SoHo art gallery/night club. Even more strange, in my course of reading the story, I found that Sorokin is still supported by anonymous benefactors who lend her high fashion runway looks for her court dates and send a personal stylist to her cell in Rikers Island before her court appearances. These looks have evolved into an even more interesting Instagram account (@annadelveycourtlooks) where her fashions have been documented. The case has even started a brand of t-shirts emblazoned with phrases like, “Free Anna” and “My other shirt will wire you $30,000”; these nearly sold out on their first run throughs. Sorokin was found guilty for lifting $200k from many businesses, but has somehow concocted enough traction in her status to become a finessing icon. Yeah, I said it.

With something so current happening in the news I think it’s hard to forget that credibility on social media will take you very far in life if you play your cards right, just like the circumstances of “Nosedive”.

PS Shout out to the Uber rating system, where I won’t get in a driver’s car unless they’re over a 4.25 rating if they have more than 500 rides. Stay safe!

(Sorokin in Morocco as "Anna Delvey", from the article written by the Vanity Fair writer she swindled)

(from: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/my-misadventure-with-the-magician-of-manhattan))

(from @annadelveycourtlooks)

Here is the NYT article if you're interested: (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/nyregion/anna-delvey-sorokin-verdict.html)