Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode when people could post names of people they wanted to be killed and every day the most posted person were killed. After some time, the man behind that killed all of the people who voted for anybody.
So in that killer’s mind, wanting someone killed was the morally indefensible crime but actually killing ludicrous numbers of people is not? And he nor anyone else questioned that? 🤔
“What if technology was… (wait for it)… just technology, you ape with a gun”
Technology is neither good nor bad, it’s how you use it. The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology… but of course if you blame technology for your own actions, it doesn’t work.
The intent of Black Mirror is to make you think about how you use technology
This is the intent of the vast majority of most science fiction. It doesn’t make Black Mirror’s execution good or insightful. Much of Black Mirror focuses on people “surrendering control” to technology in ways that prove self-destructive or just generally destructive. At their best, many of the stories aren’t really about technology. Technology serves as an aesthetic component, but you could still make the stories work without them. The Orville actually has a better version of Black Mirror’s Season 3, Episode 1 episode “Nosedive.” It actually engages with the underlying themes and ideological basis of a world that operates like that and suggests that the technology isn’t really the problem: it’s how people elect to perceive and judge one another and the ease with which we condemn one another from a distance. It’s not a technological problem, fundamentally, but a cultural one. Technology can facilitate bad behavior or exacerbate negative societal tendencies, but it doesn’t sit at the functional center of them. Because, functionally, it’s just a Salem Witch Trial story with additional technological flavoring on top. This is something that Black Mirror never seems to “get.”
Which is why, and I will stand by this, the best Black Mirror episode is the gay one.
Bit of context and spoilers - He was making a statement about social media threats/harassment
The first part - using social media - whoever people vote to be killed, gets killed. Trying to show these actions have consequences. The people voting feel immune to these consequences. They just voted, they didn’t kill anybody.
He goes through 5 rounds of voting, with more votes every time. After each round, the most voted for is killed.
Up to this point he’s exposing people trying to use social media to try and harm people Eventually he turns it around, and kills everyone who voted
The whole thing kicked off because his friend/romantic interest tried to commit suicide from cyber bullying. He’s pushing that these actions have consequences, even if you hide behind a screen.
The killer himself is a psycho, so the morals aren’t exactly impactful to him. As for anyone else questioning, the definitely do.
Disclaimer - been a while since I watched the episode. It’s pretty good, definitely need some suspension of disbelief (but that’s most episodes)
I get that what he’s trying to do, it’s just his actions are self-defeating. The only reason the behavior on social media has violent consequences is because he’s imposing them; no one else in that story is killing people based on meaningless Facebook polls. They only matter because he makes them matter. He causes the problems he thinks he is solving.
Also he assumes his actions will make people reconsider their choices and change, which they won’t because people for the most part aren’t capable of change. Most people don’t have the ability to do so. Those who do deliberately refuse to because they’re happy the way they are regardless of their true nature’s consequences to other people.
It’s just a stupid gimmicky show pretending to be deep to get views. That’s all.
Behavior on social media can definitely have consequences in real life, even violent. Many shooters vere radicalized by social media groups, for example.
This is how every episode of Black Mirror is. Just little interesting “what if” scenarios that make you think. In the same way that fairy tales are contrived and unrealistic these are too.
The fact that there’s some discussion going on about it is evidence of that. It’s similar to the “would you press a button for a million dollars but a random person on earth dies” type of question. “Does voting to kill someone mean your responsible for the murder if they’re going to kill someone anyways?”
First of all, not helpful to any conversation. You just want to announce to everyone your personal issues. Cool. No one cared. Downvotes.
Secondly. There is plenty to hate about 4chan but why curated snippets? It’s an old school anonymous forum that is chaos trapped in a site. In all of that is occasionally interesting discussions, art, and insightful looks at the human condition. And racism and horribleness.
It’s Like saying you hate corn so you don’t drink any juice, don’t use gasoline, don’t drink vodka or whiskey. It’s a lot of things, but here someone has curated a snippet of the chaos they found interesting. It no longer is 4chan but just a piece of something.
If you don’t like this idea then sure whatever but it’s no more 4chan than this is a text to you.
Yeah and ethanol is basically corn on the cob and Caitlyn Jenner is still Bruce. Nothing ever changes and everything is exactly what it was. That’s why you are just a clump of cells with only a mouth and and asshole apparently.
Thank you! I couldn’t remember if people started out as just assholes, but I thought they did, but I went a bit further into the development of the zygote figured it was about the same. It’s a much better burn when I actually remember that.
Always fun when you got to remember advanced biology throwing out insults that can get you punched in the face.
They will release one episode a month to milk your $99 per month introductory rate. The runtime will be 21 minutes with 39 minutes of ads interspersed.
I’m halfway there, except my wife wants me to procure nonsense shows, and so I’m stuck between supporting Netflix or supporting my wife’s love for trash TV.
That might be kind of convenient actually - racist assholes of all colours will label themselves and probably kill eachother while (hopefully) most of the population’s foreheads will read “None”.
I don’t think this is likely unless if none is the most voted option none gets killed. But if one always gets killed then there will be lots of campaigning and manipulating for certain votes. And the past years have shown people will fall for it.
If voting is mandatory, the most ethical thing to do would be to figure out which race has the least amount of people. Instead of killing millions of people, you could probably get it down to a few dozen or hundred. Of course, nobody dies either way and the mark would show that you tried to do the right thing.
Majority white and black would vote for each other
And nothing we didn’t already know would be revealed
Also when an advanced race capable of killing the entire species says “you must” do something then I don’t think it’s racist to vote and I don’t think saying “none” is allowed because it defeats the purpose of the experiment
You really think the majority wouldn’t vote for “none”, given it’s an option?
Even if one were to think practically about it (if we all vote none, they won’t share the tech or whatever, for the sake of they hypothetical), wouldn’t most people just choose a super small ethnic group?
Like sorry Inuits, hate to say it but y’all shoulda tried imperialism lmao
Right, that’s what I was thinking : just try to pick the smallest race. I’m guessing the majority would try to do the same thing. Obviously you have people who hate other races, but I’m hoping that even if 30% have the same idea, maybe it limits casualties… unless we’re all allowed to Google though, I’m guessing most of us have different guesses as to what the smallest race is
I feel like sensible votes wouldn’t matter there are two many racists, it comes down to who the biggest population blocks are most racist against - and what counts as a race, like if it’s from a list of like five or six races then it’ll be different to having French and German rather than just European
Based on the way the meme plays off, the only practical way to get the tech would show you value life over technology, hence the option for none, if it’s not a consensus for none how could you expect that species to act responsible with the tech and hence the tattooing and leaving.
Based on the fact they tattoo your answer afterwards, the only way you would have gotten technology is by voting none in a consensus showing you value life over technology, therefore your more likely to be responsible with it, vote on anything other than none and you have voided your ability to be responsible hence no technology. The fact this is not a more common interpretation is honestly disheartening.
And I’m saying how that being such a common interpretation is disheartening. It should be more apt to apply that any sufficiently advanced being is going to value harmony not disorder which would lead to instability and eventual collapse, hence why it would be an apt litmus test to see if a society would be capable of responsibly utilizing any of their technology. The fact so many are just like “well I like tech” and someone’s gonna say a group so I should say a small minority is extremely sad to see being a common take. I would hope more would recognize the implications behind such an ask, but I guess in this small sample size that’s not the case.
Idk dude, I was raised Christian. I’m used to sufficiently advanced beings having totally arbitrary and often cruel intentions under the guise of being good.
I mean I had to deal with all the bs indoctrination of Christianity when I was growing up, but I definetly wouldn’t assign those barbaric constraints as the motive behind a highly advanced alien species, religion was a blight from power hungry authoritarian people in the past. As I’ve stated I don’t believe a society which has not mastered harmony with its own species and planet as capable to be that advanced. A greedy authoritarian society will tear itself apart before it ever reaches a “highly advanced” society. You could commit genocide and given enough time different races will be born again, bringing you into a repeating cycle of chaos. Look at how unstable any extremely religious area is on earth, you think that’s going to create advanced societies? I sure as hell don’t nor would I attribute such nonsense to a being capable of traversing the universe, one who understands the principles of physics and can unify them with the quantum mechanics is not going to assign unkowns to a god, they would investigate the mechanisms behind them and try to define them. That’s a step above what we have rationally discovered and I don’t attribute religion to rational beings, it’s completely at odds.
But why would you not just take something someone tells you at face value? Besides, believing that interstellar beings are perfect and therefore lying about doing a thing you believe is bad is classic religious thinking.
What if, instead of a tattoo, everyone who voted just becomes that race?
The logistics would be tricky. Aside from the fact that race doesn’t exist, people within an ethnicity don’t all look the same. And would they still have the background of however they were originally born?
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