“Black Mirror” “Hated In The Nation” How much power are we giving social media? Are we the ones in control anymore?

I was lucky enough to have grown up in a time before social media was at its height. We had “AIM” AOL Instant Messenger when I was about 12 and I got into enough trouble with that. My mom caught me talking to some creep who claimed to be from England that I had met in a chat room and she squashed it before it got started. She is such an amazing mom and was always a vigilant parent growing up and I am so grateful for that as I was pretty naive back then.

Facebook came along the summer before I entered college in 2005 and YouTube followed up that same year. I remember my soon-to-be roommate calling me and asking me to connect with her on Facebook. I was like “oh okay, maybe, cool” but truthfully I thought it was a little creepy and an invasion of privacy.

Flashing forward to now, 2018, I think of all the drama Facebook has caused. Sure it has its cool points, keeping up with family, posting photos but it also gives everyone and I mean everyone, a look into your world.  Suddenly everyone knows your relationship status, your political views, and then they judge you for it and you judge other people. I am not saying  I am above any of this because it’s human curiosity to have an opinion on information placed in front of you or at your fingertips. But then it becomes an addiction to share and react to what others share. It’s your right to freedom of speech of course but before you know it you are sucked in and contributing to the surveillance society we have become.

This sets me up for this episode of Black Mirror that I just watched called “Hated In The Nation.” Basically, without spoiling too much, it goes off the idea that we have taken it upon ourselves to judge people based on a single post, televised deed or controversial article and in this episode they take that to the extreme. YouTube creators, celebrities, the media, and political figures are often at the mercy of a snap judgment from us that we post about it in a status. In this episode, the hashtag DeathTo is started after a columnist writes a controversial article dissing the disabled population. (For post-millennials or people who might not know, a hashtag is something you would write after a post or tweet ie: “The Eagles won the Superbowl #victory,#flyeaglesfly.) A pattern of murders follows drone bees are involved but that’s all I am giving you.

The main thing I loved about this episode besides the fact that the two lead cops working on the case were women was that it gives a much-needed warning to all of us, myself included, to think twice before we hit post or tweet.