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Black Mirror’s pessimism porn won’t lead us to a better future | Louis Anslow
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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Black Mirrors shows the future, extrapolated from current systems and events. It's not about new paradigms that might be possible.
It doesn't "show the future", though. This is exactly what frustrates me so much about online discourse and shows like Black Mirror, some new technology comes along and people go "that's a terrible idea, haven't you seen Black Mirror?" As if Black Mirror was some kind of rigorous scientific study that shows the One True Way that the future will unfold.
It's an entertainment show. Its purpose is to draw in viewers and keep them watching. You don't do that with episodes that show a new technology coming out and everything turning out fine, you do it by presenting a scary, compelling narrative.
We don't get freaked out in real life by summer camps and restrict the availability of machetes and other bladed instruments near them because of what happened in that documentary series "Friday the 13th." It's fiction. Plot trumps realism.
I'm glad this conversation is happening because I hate Black Mirror for this. Everything that happens is the worst possible outcome. The ideas and situations are great, but actually watching it is a slog. Pessimism porn is the perfect designation.
I much prefer Love, Death, and Robots.
Same! I've been parroting this same discourse ever since the first season aired. It's not even good science fiction, it's just all exaggerated to invoke fear, it bears no resemblance to a real world and future, and it doesn't reflect on it. It's a glorified dystopian tv mindless drama. It doesn't make you question and think about things, it just always defaults to: "this bad, really bad".