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)

Still Relevant?

So I really liked this episode of Black Mirror, despite the fact that it looks like actual Hell to me - or maybe because it looks like Hell, and that makes it even more satisfying when Lacie actually realizes that the best way to win in her world is to not play the game. That being said, I have a question: do you all think this episode is still relevant? Since I got to college, I’ve made a lot of friends, and all the ones I’ve been closest with are the type of people who genuinely care for each other enough to accept each other’s flaws instead of either ignoring them or beating each other up about them. Since these are the people I surround myself with, I don’t really end up interacting a lot with “fake” people who have the kind of toxic friendships that are being addressed in Nosedive. Do people actually still behave like this, or do you think we’re finally starting to move past the point where it’s a problem?

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.

A Parody of PUP's "DVP"

NSDV

My Brother thinks that I'm a freak

He's been rating me 1 star, left him on his own for a wedding

NayNay will get me my rating

Yeah, nothing's working and the future's looking bleak and I say

I took the escape hatch fast, get drunk and I can't shut up

she says i'm good for rising

I fucked up and now I'm in jail

Susan says she was like me once

I'm talking fast to get away

doing 180 to NayNay's wedding

Yeah, I'd be better off dead

I don't give a shit, I just don't wanna rate and I don't want to suck-up

I took the escape hatch fast, get drunk and I can't shut up
she says i'm good for rising
I fucked up and now I'm in jail
Susan says she was like me once

I'll drink 'til I'm riding a 4-wheeler
I'll be just fine I'm numb and loose feeling
I can't tell lies anymore

I took the escape hatch fast, get drunk and I can't shut up
she says i'm good for rising
fucked up and i'm clinked up

I just don't know what to do, guess I'll cuss with my cell neighbor
he says "I don't like your aura"
face-to-face venting
our faces become one, fuck.

Sibyl

Discovering that the Sibyl System is merely a collection of 247 (I think) brains is extremely shocking, but the fact that it actually works and does result in peace for society might even be more shocking.
It's very interesting, though, and the fact that they take the characteristics from the brains of criminals in order to root out or search for other similar qualities in people in society almost sort of makes sense.
I understand Akane's conflict, as it reminds me of the issue in "Those who walk away from Omelas" and even in Minority Report. Although, in this case, no one is really suffering, but what is going on is still a question of morality.
I also wonder who implemented this system in the first place? Who watches over it now? And what if it didn't work, but forced the world into a state of destruction and allowed criminals to do whatever they pleased? It seems like no one would really be able to stop something like that if it ended up happening.

Ghost in the Machine

The big reveal of our second set of episodes, that the Sybil system determines Crime Coefficients by analyzing a scanned person's brain and comparing it to a vast catalogue of "deviant" brains collected over the years and which comprise the intelligence of Sybil itself, continues a running theme I've noticed in recent years. I think I could make an argument for having dystopia as a recognizable sub-genre.

The theme is this; a Dystopia either is the polar a bad utopia (in the sense that the writer intends for reader to not want to live there) or has a lie or a series of  lies which support the supposed Utopian society. We've seen a few examples of the latter this semester, namely Psycho Pass and Minority Report, but many others support this definition, including classics like Make Room (aka Soylent Green).

Utopias Overall

I've been a fan of Psycho-Pass for a few years now and initially I thought this would be a terrible world to live in but now I am not so sure. From all of the texts we have viewed/read in this class I realized there will always be something imperfect about society (violence, boring, everyone's a drug addict, etc). I think for many of these societies to be successful, it requires some level of unawareness and ignorance about the system from the masses. Kogami and Akane's increasing self-awareness seems to be a route of many of their problems as it isolates them from their blissfully unaware peers. As a result, it lands them in situations that causes them to pit their values against the ideas that have been ingrained in them by society and the Sybil system. Awareness seems to be a route of conflict for many of the characters we've studied (ex. if John hadn't been so painfully aware of the downfalls of the World State he would have assimilated into their society, been hopped up on soma, and living his best life). I guess what Im trying to say is sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.