I've joined the Black Mirror fans train a little late, but join it I did, and got the pleasure of binge watching 4 whole seasons in about two weeks.
While each season includes a few episodes that were kind of “meh”, each one also includes a few episodes that really left an impression and got me thinking. The episode that I wanted to talk about in this post is episode 1 on season 3 called Nosedive.
I won't get into details, because I don't want to give any spoilers, but the episode is set in a presumably futuristic world, where your social rating affects every aspect of your life.
People in this universe have some sort of contact lenses that enables them to view information about the person in front of them- name, age, rating and any other public information that this person might have chosen to share on social media.
So instead of likes, your friends rate you (between 1 to 5 stars) on everything you post. But not just that- people you interact with on a daily basis will also rate you, based on the interaction, and all of these tougher build your general rating.
Like I said, your rating affects every aspect of your life- based on your rating you will be eligible for discount on housing, plane tickets, better rental cars and even hitchhiking (no one wants to give a ride to an untrustworthy 2).
So after giving you the gist of the episode, it’s time for a confession- I struggled through this episode. It took me ages to finish watching it, and I mostly thought it was one of the “meh” episodes.
UNTIL! I could not stop thinking about it, especially when I thought about it in regards to Steemit, Dtube, and the whole distributed social media concept.
What do I mean? Well, it’s hard not to make a comparison between the kind of world where your social rating, given to you only by your peers, determines the kind of opportunities you get, with the Steem ecosystem where similarly, your peers decide who they will give their weight to, and by that decision they determined who gets payed.
But the “who gets paid” aspect is just the beginning, isn’t it? In a way, if Steem becomes the mainstream that we all want it to, its future is the ‘Nosedive’ episode, where what determines your value, is other people’s opinion of you and your content.
I’m not saying it IS wrong. I’m all for this concept where we all decide the content that we value, and get rewarded for our actions in the community- whatever it’s posting, commenting or supporting quality content.
I think it both promotes quality, allows the actual creators to get the full value for what they create and lowers the bar of entrance, so that all you need is talent or ideas, not financial backing by a corporate. But I don't need to tell you guys that, do I? You’re all here already.
That being said, we can clearly see, in the first few minutes of the episode, one big problem with this kind of world: it’s fake. You cannot be yourself. Think about a barista getting mad that your tip was not high enough, having the power to prevent you from getting a job, because they hurt your rating. Or a fight with a friend that can cause you to not be eligible for the house you wanted.
You would just have to be nice to everyone ALL the time, wouldn't you? Now there’s nothing wrong with being nice, but there is something wrong with stifling who you are because you might just upset someone.
It creates a world where you cannot express your authentic self about 99% of the time. We already put up a front online, but imagine having to match this front in real life interactions too, or else…
Well… it could be. It’s really up to us. As a platform that aspires to give the power to the people (go communism?), it’s in our hands- do we encourage fake, perfect looking, shallow content? Or do we encourage people to be real, vulnerable and flowed? And even more important- do we make it socially acceptable to use our voting power to extract personal vendetta?
From what I’ve seen so far- we’re doing pretty good at keeping the social standard high, and encouraging kindness in a way you will not see anywhere else online.
But, as human nature goes, the more the platform grows, the more of an issue these kind of things become, and it would be up to the influencers of the platform to set the standards of good behavior.
This is it for now, just another aspect of this ecosystem that I think we all need to consider when we interact here, so that it does not become something we don’t want it to.
Have a great, steemy day, Ruth.
