Hi Everyone, welcome to another instalment of my Black Mirror series analysis.
Today we’re going to be explaining and analysing the episode Nosedive.
In this episode everyone has a social media account that allows other people to rate them.
The platform itself seems to be a combination of Instagram and Uber with people constantly
uploading aesthetic pictures of their life and being on their best behaviour as every
upload and every interaction is rated.
These ratings are very important as it determines people’s value in this world. Anything above
a 4 is pretty decent, anything between a 3 and 4 is still respectable - but the people
who have that rating don’t seem to care as much or buy as wholly into the ratings
system as the people with higher ratings and finally anything less than 3, is problematic
- you’re at the very bottom of the social ladder and might even be considered dangerous
by others.
Every person has contact lens technology that allows them to read a person’s rating at
a single glance.
We follow the story of Lacie Pound who is obsessed with her rating.
When she’s not uploading carefully constructed images of her life, she’s furiously rating
everyone she knows with 5 stars, hoping that they will return the favour and boost her rating.
Her life is exhausting as she’s always striving for perfection.
Lacie had an eating disorder in the past and she’s always jogging and working out.
She’s also determined to be nice all the time - going so far as to practice different types of laughter
for every occasion - in hopes of getting highly rated wherever she goes.
All her hard work seems to have paid off - she has a rating of over 4.2, which is high enough
for her to enjoy most of the advantages available in this world.
But even then she’s not satisfied.
She’s well and truly fallen down the rabbit hole. She is aspirational and wants more out
of life and she constantly compares herself to others.
All this makes Lacie deeply unhappy and unsatisfied, although she doesn't seem aware of the toll
her social media usage is taking on her mental health.
When she is looking for a new apartment she’s seduced by the artificial perfection that
is available at Pelican Cove.
The marketing is clever and sells a lifestyle to Lacie that she desperately wants. Not only
does the apartment boast access to exclusive restaurants and other perks, a hologram shows
her, a potential future of herself with a gorgeous man in tow.
Lacie’s life lacks real human connection and it’s this vision of herself and her
potential future that makes her desperate to lease the apartment.
But there’s an issue - she can’t afford it.
The real estate agent tells her that if Lacie can raise her rating to a 4.5 she can get
a 20% discount, making the apartment just within Lacie’s financial reach.
This reflects the real world where Influencers and celebrities are often given discounts
not available to the ordinary person. They are the chosen few and the reasoning behind
giving them these discounts is that they have a sphere of influence that will make whatever
they are consuming more in demand by the masses, who will have to pay full price.
In Lacie’s quest to reach a 4.5 rating she enlists the services of a social media consultant
to help strategise.
This is similar to how companies will employ these social media experts to come in and
boost their presence on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etcetera.
Interestingly the consultant points out that Lacie’s high rating comes from people who
are deemed mid to low range folks and on the platform their ratings do not carry as much
weight as the ones from quality people, who have the ratings in the high 4s.
Lacie needs to get these quality people to give her high ratings, not just people like
the service industry worker who serves her coffee every day.
This reflects once again, how in our Instagram age, someone who has a decent social media
following is immediately deemed more valuable than someone who's following is made up of
just family and friends.
In an attempt to reach these quality people Lacie uploads an image of Mr Rags - a toy
she made with her childhood friend Naomi, who is undoubtedly a quality person, having
a rating of 4.8.
On the social media site, anything over a 4.5 makes you a prime user and the profiles
of these people are accompanied by a prime user label, similar to how the verification
icons work on Twitter and Instagram.
Lacie’s post of Mr Rags has the desired response and Naomi contacts her out of the blue.
Lacie’s in the middle of making tapenade and she suffers a spillage, something which
happens in everyday life, but this world doesn’t allow for imperfections and when Naomi
calls her, Lacie hurriedly pulls on a shawl to cover the stain.
Naomi tells Lacie she’s engaged and she shows off her luxurious surroundings - she’s
staying in a private island owned by her fiance’s family.
The pair both blame themselves for losing touch and the conversation is blatantly insincere
and practised.
This is the norm in Lacie’s life - she’s often involved in these fake-sounding conversations
as her ultimate goal is always to get high ratings.
This can sometimes even land her in trouble as her inauthenticity can be so obvious that
it puts people off.
When she tried to offer a fellow office worker a croissant in hopes of ingratiating herself
the strategy backfired and Lacie was rated a 3.
As Lacie and Naomi’s conversation continues there does appear to have been some sort of
genuine connection between the two in the past. Naomi’s recent engagement seems to
have triggered feelings of nostalgia that’s made her re-evaluate their old friendship
- so much so that she invites Lacie to be her maid-of-honour and to give a speech at
the wedding.
Lacie is overjoyed at the prospect of being invited into the heart of Naomi’s inner
circle - a circle that consists of high 4s. She wants all those potential high ratings
at the wedding from these quality people.
The pair end the phone call and just as Naomi is switching off the camera, her face falls.
The whole performance of the phone call has been exhausting and her expression falls back
inline with what she’s actually feeling.
Lacie’s brother, Ryan, who has witnessed the phone call is disgusted. He reminds Lacie
what a poor friend Naomi was to her but Lacie doesn’t want to hear it.
Ryan is the one person in her world that genuinely cares for her but Lacie is too blinded to
recognise this.
All she knows is that he’s a 3 point something while she’s striving for something more.
Lacie’s promising start toward her goal of reaching a 4.5 rating is swiftly derailed
as events spiral out of her control when she’s on her way to Naomi’s wedding.
It all begins as she and her brother argue once again over Lacie’s obsession with the
ratings system. He realises how unhealthy it is but Lacie won’t listen - she’s truly addicted.
The argument results in Lacie not only missing her first cab and getting rated down by the
driver, she’s also rated down by her brother in retaliation for her rating him down after
their fight.
In her rush to get on her way she bumps into a lady with a rating of 4.8, which causes the
lady to spill a drink on herself, resulting in Lacie getting yet another low rating and
this time from someone with a fair amount of clout.
On the cab ride to the airport Naomi calls Lacie to find out how she’s doing and to
give Lacie pointers on her draft maid-of-honour speech.
The pair are highly irritating with their fake squeals and the cab driver is unimpressed.
When Lacie gives him a 5 star rating in a blatant attempt at currying favour he gives
her a 1 star. Lacie’s inauthenticity has once again got her in trouble.
Not everyone in this world is OK with insincerity.
At the airport Lacie’s plane is cancelled and Lacie is told she’s unable to book another
flight because her recent spate of low ratings has meant she’s fallen under her usual 4.2 rating.
The attendant behind the counter is very unhelpful and Lacie explodes with anger.
She’s so tightly wound, always putting on a fake persona that now that her plans for
4.5 rating are being derailed she loses control of her emotions as she’s desperate to get
to Naomi’s wedding as planned.
The attendant then calls security who penalises Lacie for her outburst, docking her a full point
from her ratings and also multiplying any negative rating she gets for the next 24 hours
- Lacie is on ‘double damage.’
Lacie then attempts to get to Naomi’s wedding using a rental car but her low rating means
she’s limited to one of the worst vehicles available.
It’s a 9-hour trip to Naomi’s but Lacie is so determined to get there that even though
she’s barely able to keep her eyes open from tiredness she still drives on.
Her priorities are all wrong.
As the night wears on things go from bad to worse, her car runs out of electricity and
she’s unable to recharge it as it’s such an old model that the chargers at the charging
station don’t fit.
She then has to resort to hitchhiking but people don’t want to offer her a ride as
her rating has now dropped even lower.
Instead of people offering to help they actually rate her down as they drive past her.
It seems that low ratings encourage others to also rate the person with the low rating
unfavourably.The ratings act as some sort of social proof - if someone has a low rating
they deserve the bad rating and it’s OK to continue to rate them low.
This is what happened to her colleague, Chester, earlier in the episode.
After he and his boyfriend broke up people took his ex-boyfriend’s side and Chester’s
ratings plummeted as everyone jumped on the bandwagon and rated him poorly.
His ratings fell so low that he was unable to enter his own office building
as his access became barred.
On the flip side it appears that the higher a person’s rating the more likely it will
be that they will continue to accrue high ratings.
And those with high ratings tend to surround themselves with others who also have high ratings.
They create cliques who are continually giving each other 5 star ratings and as
the higher your rating, the more your ratings count they end up creating little pockets
of exclusive 'quality people' - much like how social media stars in today’s world form
groups and friendships which has the benefit of allowing them to grow their popularity
and following.
One kind soul does ultimately give Lacie a ride, that’s Susan, a trucker with a lowly
rating of just 1.4.
She’s a breath of fresh air and she doesn’t have any time for anything other than honesty.
She offers Lacie a drink from a blue flask full of coffee or a red flask full of whiskey.
This references a scene from the sci-fi film The Matrix where the protagonist, Neo, is
offered a choice of either blue pill or red pill. The blue pill will allow Neo to continue
living the life he knows whereas the red pill will allow his mind to detect the simulation
he is living in.
Lacie refuses both and instead tells Susan her plan to get to a 4.5 rating.
Susan indulges Lacie’s foolishness before sharing her own story. She was a 4.6 once
but when her husband got sick she realised that despite her giving 5 stars to all
and sundry she could not save him. When his bed was given to someone with a higher rating
she lost faith in the whole system completely.
The ratings in this world reflects the class divide in our own world.
The ratings system in Nosedive is a way of quantifying a person’s socioeconomic status
and we all know that in our world, the better someone’s socioeconomic circumstances the
more privilege they will enjoy and the more opportunity they will have access to, from
education to healthcare to future job opportunities.
When Susan can’t take Lacie any further she bids her goodbye and leaves her with the
red flask of whiskey.
While Lacie is using a service station toilet she overhears a couple of girls talking about
how they are on their way to a convention for a sci-fi fantasy show called Sea of Tranquillity.
The convention is near where Naomi is having her wedding and Lacie jumps at the chance
to hitch a ride by pretending to be a down-on-her-luck fan of the show whose car broken down.
Her plan works but the group is suspicious, and as they are quizzing her on her knowledge
of Sea of Tranquillity she gets a phone call from Naomi who no longer wants her at the
wedding as Lacie’s rating has fallen to a dismal 2.6.
Naomi tells her she was happy to have a low 4 at her wedding as it would have played well and
boosted her own ratings based on simulations she and her fiance ran before the wedding.
But a sub 3, as Lacie is right then, is unacceptable.
Lacie finally snaps and tells Naomi she’ll be at the wedding come hell or high water
and then she turns and tells the group she’s hitching a ride with she has never actually
seen their show.
This promptly gets her thrown off the bus and a bunch of low ratings.
Lacie then chooses the red pill by gulping down her whiskey and determinedly making her
way to Naomi’s wedding. She borrows quad bikes from strangers, wades through muddy
pools and strides through woods with her pink suitcase on her head, like some kind of warrior
going into battle.
Naomi’s wedding is pastel perfection, and indeed the world of Nosedive has been nothing
but pastel perfection this whole time, mimicking the look and feel of highly curated Instagram feeds.
There are hints however that other subcultures do also exist in this world. Lacie’s brother
is a gamer and Lacie refers to how he and his gamer buddies rate each other.
The Sea of Tranquility fans are also engaged in the ratings game with one complaining how
her dad 1-starred her.
And while these people are engaged with the social media platform, their usage and habits
are not as extreme as those that Lacie aspires to be like.
The people who live in the world of pastel perfection have set themselves an extremely
high bar to live by. Lacie’s brother even claims that the high 4s are probably suicidal
on the inside.
At the wedding it’s evident that Naomi’s fiance, Paul, is in love with his male best
friend but instead of living his true authentic self he’s chosen to marry Naomi so that
together they can present the perfect couple to the outside world.
When Lacie bursts in on Naomi’s wedding she launches into her speech and has a very
public meltdown. Her speech is a garbled combination of the one she has rehearsed and some home truths
that she can’t hold back any longer.
She recognises how Naomi played on her insecurities and looked down on her and how ultimately
Naomi dropped her as a friend when Naomi’s rating went up.
Lacie's finally stopped by security and she’s dragged out of the event.
Her public disgrace leads to her eye technology being removed so she can no longer see ratings
and she’s thrown into jail.
She sheds her pink bridesmaid dress and finally takes the time to appreciate the beauty of
the world around her - she smiles her first genuine smile in a long time.
Lacie observes a fellow inmate in the cell across from her and having shed her fake persona
Lacie demands to know what he is looking at.
The pair trade insults and find release in yelling and saying whatever comes to mind.
They smile as they hurl abuse at each other as they are finally free.
This episode of Black Mirror highlights the dangers of social media and how living solely
in this virtual world and measuring our self-worth by likes and followers is dangerous to our
mental health.
Not everyone buys into this world but the popularity of social media indicates that
a lot of people do.
The lesson here is that in a world full of Naomis it’s better to be a Susan.
And that concludes my explanation and analysis of the episode Nosedive in the Black Mirror series.
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