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Black Mirror's pessimism porn won't lead us to a better future

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Huh, i guess i both agree and disagree with this article.

I disagree that black mirror has to save the world. Art doesn't have to literally save the world to be useful, it just has to add to the conversation. The fact we are talking about it proves that it has.

On the other hand, i've never really liked black mirror that much. It feels polemical to me. Its unrelenting pessimism robs it of nuance, which makes it feel flat to me. To be clear it doesn't have to be happy, it can still be grim and dark, but when every character is a terrible character, it undermines the story

Take the episode "nosedive" where everyone is obsessed with social media ratings. Compare it to other people who copied it (meow meow beans in community, or majority rule in the orvile). I think the other tv shows did it better and honestly made technology look worse, because they had characters that weren't cartoon villians.

Maybe the part i don't like about black mirror is not that it showd technology stripping people of their hummanity but that all its characters already lack humanity so there is nothing to strip, which is kind of boring.

9 months agoby bawolff

I disagree with the premise of this article.

Sometimes an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future CAN change things...by making it so people are determined to fight to prevent that possible future from ever happening.

The novel 1984 by George Orwell was published in 1948. It is an extremely pessimistic vision of a possible future for mankind....and many of us over the generations who read it really really did not want to live in such a future and acted accordingly.

Black Mirror's pessimism could be similar.

Also in Black Mirror technology in of itself is never portrayed as inherently bad in any episode. It is the people and the way they choose to use the technology that leads to the horror. In that way every Black Mirror episode has that element of optimism. If only each new piece of tech in reality could ever be introduced so we maximize the positives rather than the negatives.

9 months agoby ViktorRay

It's not that Black Mirror is bad. It's that, as the article points out, we don't have a fictional vision of the future to use as a goal.

The author mentions Jill Lapore's 2017 article in the New Yorker, which is sort of a survey paper of dystopian fiction from that period.[1] No alternatives are presented.

For most of human history, the big problem was making enough stuff. There just wasn't any way to make enough stuff for everybody. In the 20th century, high volume manufacturing got going. By the 1950s, the US had this totally worked out. At long last, society really could make enough stuff for everybody. Science fiction of the 1950s is mostly utopian. With scarcity conquered, the future looked bright.

But it didn't work out.

Think about why for a while. I'll wait.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/a-golden-age-f...

9 months agoby Animats

> [During Covid] In a moment when screens kept us connected, protected and employed, the reductiveness of dystopian science fiction felt silly. Biotechnology like GMOs and mRNA offered existential hope, rather than risk.

He can thank Elon & the Tech Lords for bringing the public perception of tech right back into dystopian nightmare territory.

But even apart from that, this seems like an extremely selective recollection of the Covid era. Yes, technology was a livesaver during that time, and we all were using it in frequency and to a degree like never before. (And indeed even that time brought lasting new "skills" which offer genuine new possibilities, like the new casualness and ubiquity of online meetings)

But I also remember that tech didn't actually feel very empowering during, on the contrary: Suddenly being online changed from something fun and interesting to mandatory: You had to be online, even for the things you'd much rather do offline. What been an extension of possibilities before now became a constraint. This definitely made it feel much more dystopian than before.

> We must move away from binary tales of catastrophe, not towards naive utopianism that ignores problems and risks that comes with change, but hopeful solutionism that reminds us we can solve and mitigate them [...]

I think this misunderstands the reasons why people are wary of new technology and instead pulls up the old "Luddite" strawman (which was itself a misrepresentation).

Of course we could introduce new tech carefully and with a strong emphasis of identifying and mitigating the risks. The problem is that we won't do that, because the incentives point into the opposite direction. Companies don't want to fall behind, so they move fast and break things instead of being careful. The general population then finds themselves as guinea pigs in barely tested new technology with little power to actually influence the course this technology takes. This causes a feeling of helplessness and resentment.

9 months agoby xg15

Black Mirror is dystopian fiction that hits pretty close to home. Maybe too close to home.

S07E01 "Common People" hit me pretty close to home with my own healthcare insurance experiences, where my rates go up every year and my coverages go down, and things that were formerly covered are now covered in Plus/Premium add-on packages. We also see this streaming and cellular services, except those are more elective.

The way I see it, if you don't like it, too bad.

9 months agoby runjake

Yeah but toxic optimism won’t lead us to a better future either. We need optimists to work towards a better society and pessimists to keep them in check when they are being naive to a fault. Optimists built the nukes, pessimists keep us from using them.

9 months agoby darth_avocado

While I don't fully agree with the article, I really like this sketch about "Black Mirror in medieval times": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1aSqZ23ydk

It does show rather well (and rather funnily) how it can be a fine line between warning about technology, and taking it too cynically.

9 months agoby anyfoo

"Absent is the plot twist of Pandora’s box that made it philosophically useful: the box also contained hope and opportunity that new knowledge brings."

Yes, add that and it might be something interesting but sure not the Black Mirror I want to watch. I mean it is called Black Mirror for a reason.

And it is not even true. Take the episode "San Junipro" for example? Isn't there some hope and opportunity in it? And yet, this episode (one of the best in my opinion) only works because the hope can shine against a black background.

9 months agoby weinzierl

Humans need some level of paranoia, mistrust and waryness of new technology in the same way electrical circuits need circuit breakers and ships need life boats.

Pessimism saves lives and resources. It won't lead us to a better future, but it might save what does.

Furthermore, for many of us, we are already in a state of technological mindfuckery beyond Black Mirror levels. Black Mirror sounds like a fairy tale.

We need humans, kind humans that are not fools. That's very hard to make. Without that any future, technological or not, is bleak.

9 months agoby alganet

Trying to replace everyone with AI and actively build a surveillance state also won't lead us to a better future. They say Black Mirror is dystopian but I would say we are on the dystopian timeline so it is just emulating reality a few years into the future.

9 months agoby 9283409232

When did it promise that it would? I feel like people reject these stories not because they're counterproductive, but because they frighten them. We feel so personally and viciously attacked by modern narratives because they question everyday concepts and routines we're all comfortable with.

I'm reminded of growing up watching episodes of Twilight Zone and Star Trek that yes, were kitschy stories, but instilled lifelong lessons about independence in their audience. Black Mirror isn't my favorite show but it seems to resemble the same "near future cautionary tale" archetype that has remained popular for centuries.

9 months agoby bigyabai

Unrelenting pessimism without nuance is no more profound than unrelenting optimism without nuance, but it comes off as “deeper” and more “sophisticated” because of human negativity bias.

Dark, pessimistic, sad, tragic things seem superficially more profound for the same reason that people slow down when they pass a car wreck and true crime shows about serial killers are popular.

We are this way because it probably had evolutionary survival value. “If you mistake a bush for a lion you’re fine, but if you mistake a lion for a bush you’re dead.”

9 months agoby api

Why does media and film even need to be about changing the world? It gives perspectives and exaggerates it for entertainment from which we occasionally draw cultural memes. Those can influence us as societies occasionally but ultimately they are just stories, personal visions.

The exaggerations in media often defines our outward perceptions more than the boring reality of our actual lives. So it can equally do harm if taken too seriously. And it definitely won't make better films/tv shows.

9 months agoby dmix

>It is an inherently populist narrative, one that appeals to nostalgia

I don't agree with this or the article at all. There's very little nostalgia, if any, in Black Mirror. (nostalgia being a desire to return to the past, or romantic display of the past). The show is very firmly centered on present day or future abuse of technology, that much is true, but there's nothing wrong or inaccurate about that.

The article just does what is common but wrong, fetishize technology, that is to claim that technology itself makes the world better. But that is to attribute agency to something that has no agency. We're not better off than the past because of technology, but because of ethical progress. Technology is a lever. It as easily makes you a virus as it can make you a cure.

Give modern technology to a dictator and you get the most total surveillance state on earth. Black Mirror makes an accurate observation, that technological progress is outrunning our ethical progress. Insofar pessimism is justified. When you're at the mercy of at best idiots and at worst despots not handing them bigger levers is not nostalgia but just means you have a healthy survival instinct.

9 months agoby Barrin92

I don't think Black Mirror is supposed on it's own to lead us to a better future. It's list of things that could go wrong maybe counter the Sam Altman like tech boosters.

I can't help feeling

>Biotechnology like GMOs and mRNA offered existential hope, rather than risk.

rather skips over the fact that the whole pandemic was probably set off by a lab screw up illustrating the value of warning about such things.

9 months agoby tim333

I agree in the sense that Black Mirror seems almost required to be extra pessimistic when... there's a better and far more complex story available with a different approach or ending.

Granted I'm also WAY burnt out on pessimistic Si-Fi, it's the default now, and it's predicable and far too easy.

That's not to say it can't be mostly dark, but for many movies and shows, that's most of the meat...

9 months agoby duxup

I was on a project that avoided making a bad decision because of Black Mirror. The project didn’t succeed regardless but people do get insights from the show even if it’s not always a plausible scenario.

9 months agoby Nuzzerino

I feel like a big problem in the modern world is the small scale of our dreams. Dreams drive us, they change the world. In 1865, French author Jules Verne decided to write a book to inspire people to dream big, impossible dreams. He decided to write a novel proving that humans could do anything- by describing how, if enough people worked together, they could journey all the way to the moon. This became one of the first hit books in a new genre, science fiction. Sure, plenty of people had written about travelling to the moon before- e.g. the Roman poet Lucian wrote of being sucked up into a giant waterspout and deposited on the moon- but Verne was the first to write at a level of detail that made is seem realistic, something that humans could do- e.g. he spends several pages discussing- with math- how, if you are in America and want to go into space, the coast of Florida is the right spot (he picked a spot two hundred km from Cape Canaveral). These stories are important. The fathers of rocketry in at least two different countries (Konstantin Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany) were inspired by Verne (Goddard of the US was more inspired by H.G. Wells than Verne). They independently realized that you couldn't build a cannon (like Verne depicted) that could let humans survive and get to the moon, so they went into rocketry. Verne and H.G. Wells told stories that were the first step to changing the world.

And modern science fiction seems stuck in a dystopian rut. Most of the good sci-fi (and I enjoy things like the Murderbot Diaries) are largely dystopic. Hell, Star Trek- long the most utopian of sci-fi- is doing movies about Section 31 and whole seasons about android slave uprisings. No one is inspired to build a better future by "Don't create the Torment Nexus", they just get inspired to build the Torment Nexus.

Basically, we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote.

Thank you for reading my TED talk.

9 months agoby mandevil

How did we have shows like The Handmaid's Tale and 50.5% of America was like yeah that sounds good let's go for that?

How did we have decades of superhero movies and then elect a bonafide fascist villain? I don’t know. The lessons we were teaching weren’t the right lessons somehow. Or they were swamped by social media nonsense and decades of underfunding education.

9 months agoby Mistletoe

This article, I feel, misclassifies the show and then criticizes it on the wrong grounds.

It's in the horror genre. Of course it's fearmongering, that's what horror stories do. Just because it's not the stereotypical horror doesn't mean it's not in that domain. It's great as a horror show because it shows somewhat plausible futures, and that dream/nightmarelike quality is truly gripping.

9 months agoby mullingitover

The 80s had tons of scifi based on nuclear annihilation, pent up fears about nuclear annihilation based on the cold war. I dont know if that 'lead' us to a better future but we got an at least slightly better future. So the impact of pessimistic scifi is somewhere between nil and good.

9 months agoby protocolture

"San Junipero" I think was the kind of black mirror episode that black mirror always should have done. An honest depiction of a certain technology to its ultimate realization. Is it completely perfect? Absolutely not, but it's good in all the ways that matter to people.

9 months agoby dclowd9901

I always go read a novel or two of Iain M Banks' Culture series whenever I want a Utopian future. It hits everything I want fairly perfectly.

Honestly there are way too many dystopian "omg this tech will do this" media as opposed to "this tech will do this good thing."

9 months agoby lannisterstark

So, it starts by showing Black Mirror is playing on people's fears in cheap ways that could have negative, long-term effects. Then, it switches to throw out lots of political, talking points with loose connection to the original story. I wish they stuck with that line of questioning.

So, in the Psalms, many of them are lament. The structure addresses God, lists the complaints, and usually ends on a positive note citing His future promises. They might cite previous times God delivered them. So, the pattern is a unifying, objective truth followed by a mix of bad news and good news that offsets it. This helped the Israelites stay mentally strong as they faced circumstances like the Exile.

The author wondered if Black Mirror could explore the risks without pessimism porn. I think the pattern in the lament Psalms could be helpful. We know, though, that Hollywood often appeals to the dark, sinful part of our psyche. The producers know people often want to watch horrible things more than pleasant things. That's the real reason.

9 months agoby nickpsecurity

I'm not sure the pessimistic screes are so bad. We need criticism to keep us honest and make sure we think things through a bit.

I think the issue is that we seem to be getting less creative and less adventurous. We have fewer visions and stories of what could be.

9 months agoby erikerikson

Personal pessimism is the only form that is actualy possible to achive.Unfortunately anything dreamed up to do with society is no longer capable of bieng called pessismistic, as something worse is happening out there already.

9 months agoby metalman

Cyberpunk is now a well known aesthetic, Cyberprep[0] not so much, yet

[0] https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberprep

9 months agoby 7373737373

It’s doomer fuel, just like how most AI doomer always reference Skynet to scare people. Most lack the practical imagination because it is often complex, so they let Hollywood do most of the work for them.

9 months agoby m3kw9

Toxic positivity. Some of us just enjoy dark fiction. Let us be.

9 months agoby mvdtnz

Charlie Brooker has said that the new season of Black Mirror is different. In a recent interview (amusingly, also in The Guardian) he said, "If you want dystopia, look out your window."

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/apr/04/if-you-...

9 months agoby filoeleven

If you're new to the realization that every technology has both good and bad effects, where have you been in the last 40 years?

9 months agoby TomMasz

Don't forget nuclear power in the Simpsons and many shlocky horror movies before that. America could have had thousands of nuclear power plants by the 2000s. Though oil politics and deep pockets directly funding anti nuclear advocacy groups plays more of a role here than fiction.

The direct cost is at least 100,000 lives in America alone, all the technological advancement that comes with cheap electricity, and who knows what affects it would have had on the climate.

9 months agoby casey2

You know someone could make white mirror (or a title of a techno utopia) but those people are too busy making memes using AI.

9 months agoby afinlayson

I like that term "pessimism porn", although I might qualify it further as "techno-pessimism porn"

9 months agoby pmarreck

It is weird to read this. It is especially weird read this on HN and see arguments for and against "Black Mirror" as a piece of art as opposed to direct, stark warning of 'what if the wrong path is taken'. In that sense, it is really simple and, frankly, not nearly scary enough given how the author of the article attempts to dismiss it. That said, at least the author of the article is consistent with a consistent tally of war on doomers of all stripes.

I am mildly amused. We all see the ways technology goes wrong and every day. It is right and proper to at least try to see into the future by exploring all the ways it can go wrong if only because we do.. or at least should know.. that Murphy was an optimist.

9 months agoby A4ET8a8uTh0_v2

It helps extrapolate the already present dystopian things the tech industry is doing.

9 months agoby antfarm

Black Mirror of all work should not be called "pessimism porn". It's not unrealistic for the depicted scenarios to happen in real life.

You can kill a messenger for delivering a false message, but not a true one, even when it's bad.

9 months agoby crvdgc

Tell that to the people funding kill bot technology.

9 months agoby tehjoker

The show is named Black Mirror after all. It is meant to be dark.

Stories about a utopia where everyone is happy tend to be boring.

Even "My Neighbour Totoro" has something "go wrong" for drama and interest.

Maybe we need more "My Neighbour Totoro"-like stories set in a Solar Punk world.

9 months agoby _carbyau_

The problem is the constant fear-mongering instead of simply presenting the facts. Honestly, the emotional overdrive in our culture is exhausting. It's like everyone's hooked on a steady drip of doom, and for some reason, they crave it.

That said, I won't lie-watching a corrupt politician fuck a pig on a livestream was a hilarious idea.

9 months agoby hsuduebc2

wot if ya mum ran on batteries

9 months agoby tuveson

""" A new progressivism embracing construction over obstruction must find new allegories for technology and the future """

WTF? Somebody needs to touch some !@#@%^ grass. Like roll around in it for hours, maybe smoke some (legal) weed before hand.

It's sci-fi entertainment, for crying out Louis, not a political or philosophy movement.

Get over it, get outside, and go hug a tree.

9 months agoby FarMcKon

"How dare you try to make things better by making big changes, make small incremental changes that get pulled back in four or eight years instead and be happy about it"

9 months agoby anothernewdude

> Black Mirror fails to consistently explore the duality of technology and our reactions to it

Reality fails to present a reason to expect there to substantially be a “duality”.

9 months agoby alabastervlog