How Social Media Changes Us

We all know that the rise of social media has completely changed the way in which we view the world and other people. Whether it be through pictures of a family trip or a review on our favorite restaurant, we all have an impact when we use social media. This empowerment that social media is able to provide, allows us to feel wanted and to have a presence in platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. There are many issues with how dependent our generation is becoming with social media as many mental illnesses are also on the rise such as depression and anxiety. I have chosen to do an analysis of an episode of one of my favorite shows Black Mirror, focusing on the season three episode “Nosedive”. If you are someone who has never seen Black Mirror before, the main idea of the show is to show the impact of technology on society and to tell a story showing how the “Black Mirror” which in this case would be a device with a screen that is a mirror and we tend to look through it. All of us have definitely fallen into the black mirror, and this is all by design from the engineers who are paid to make sure we the consumer is always connected.  I will also be divulging into how the episode tends to use Pathos and Logos to connect with the audience. Technology has been able to provide the world with many benefits, but there are so many more negative effects that we may not yet fully understand. 

I will begin by fully explaining the society that we follow during the episode “Nosedive”. The episode begins in a beautiful town that is seen as more dystopian in nature. The main character of the episode is Lacie Pound, who is rated at 4.2 at the beginning of the episode. The ratings in this society are out of 5, the higher you are to 5, the more that you can get out of your daily life in the town and the influence you have on others. When comparing this to our society today, it may seem that we are heading towards this kind of society, some tend to believe that the amount of likes they get is symbolic of their popularity and status. “Nosedive” 

The writer of the episode is able to use pathos to allow us as the audience to relate to the characters, as we see many times that Lacie tends to put a facade on while she is in public with others, and tends to act much differently than with her own brother who has a low score of 3.1. Influence is so important in this society, that when people with lower scores review someone, their scores are barely affected, but when much more influential people review them, the effect on the overall score dramatically goes up. As a viewer, when we see Lacie at first, at least I tend to think she is a shallow person who only relies on the approval of others, but the only reason she is doing all of this is to get through her life. Everyone wants to be approved by others, and Lacie is just conforming to the standards that society has put her under. 

We only begin to see more of Lacie when she decides to upload a picture of one of her childhood toys, Mr. Rags, which she and her childhood friend Naomi, who is a 4.8 and highly known in the community, made together when they were young. We begin to see the connection that these two vastly different characters have and Lacie is given the task to be her Maid of Honor, which would greatly improve her overall score and influence and allow her to purchase a new home that is only for those with higher scores. This is when it all goes downhill for Lacie, whether it be an outburst at the airport due to a canceled flight, which dropped her rating to a 3.3, and with many other things, her rating dropped to almost 2.9 before the wedding of her “lifelong” friend. The result of these events almost caused her to be blacklisted from society, and in these outbursts in public, we began to see the true Lacie and she showed her emotional side which had been repressed for way too long in her “perfect world”. 

The wedding turned out to be an emotional rollercoaster for Lacie, once she arrived, she had already been told to not come for the reason that her score was so low, and this sent her off the deep end and she just wanted to be there for her childhood friend. Lacie followed on her journey and she decided to crash the wedding and she was emotional with the aid of alcohol, she delivered her speech, albeit, without the childhood memories, she began to tell Naomi off and how she was treated as a child and how Naomi only kept her around because she was better than Lacie. Lacie was fully expressing herself as she had never been able to do so before and this completely derailed her rating and eventually, she was arrested for pulling a knife on the groom in her emotional tirade. In the end, we were able to see Lacie express herself, and she broke the facade that had plagued her life for too long.

The writer for the episode was also able to incorporate Logos into the episode by showing how vastly society will treat an individual with a higher score and treat another one with a much lower score. The first example is when we are shown the houses on Pelican Cove, which is a town with nice houses. One of the payment options for these homes relies on how high someone is rated. A 4.5 rating will receive a twenty percent discount compared to someone who is not at this range. We also see how logically, it is practically necessary to have a good score in this society because once Lacie was at around a 2.5, her options at a rent a car location were so limited it ended up in her being deserted to a dead battery. She had lived her whole life trying to keep her image and in the end, she was failed by a missed flight and multiple outbursts which derailed her ratings. When Lacie needed help, the only person who helped her was this woman named Susan, who was rated a mere 1.4 out of 5. Typically, Lacie would never approach an individual with this rating due to her image possibly being ruined. Lacie was practically saved and Susan explained how her rating never got her anywhere even when she was a high four rating individual.

Susan had to deal with pain when she lost her husband to cancer and the rating was the least of her worries. She finally had been able to freely express herself and she always wanted and people in this society did not think the same way at all. She went from a life of luxury to becoming a truck driver and she did not regret anything because her rating was only superficial in her happiness. Lacie in the end was able to freely express herself when she was in her cell and she followed by saying what she felt to her cellmate without fear of repercussions as she always watched in the past. 

This episode was able to use these two lenses in ways that we as the audience could clearly understand and apply it to our lives today. Social media is becoming more and more attached to our personal happiness and “Nosedive” could be a preview of what the future can hold. The more importance that social media is given, the newer generations will have a tougher time breaking from this addiction which never fully satisfies the user. Most social media is temporary gratification and never allows for a full human connection. Each decade, technology finds more ways to become a part of our lives, such as Amazon Alexa which has proved to be a monumental invention and even used by someone like myself, I feel that it has been able to make tasks easier. Over time, technology will fully automate our lives and there will be both positives and negative aspects from it. The idea of having a rating system seems more of like a science fiction movie, but each day the possibility becomes greater.