Season 3 - 6 episodes (2016)
Written by: Charlie Brooker
Directed by: James Hawes
Starring: Kelly Macdonald, Faye Marsay, Benedict Wong
Plot
Black Mirror examines the pitfalls when technology and society intersect. What happens when technology goes off the rails, creating a horrifying situation? Ultimately the questions are, does technology make us happier, is being connected at all times beneficial, and does it do more harm than good?
Black Mirror is an anthology. Each episode is self contained with completely different actors.
The sixth episode of season three is Hated in the Nation, where infamous celebrities are actually dying due to online threats and autonomous robotic bees might be part of the conspiracy.
Verdict
Hated in the Nation tackles online bullying, hate, government surveillance, and the waning bee population. The internet mob picks someone to die for a minor offense and that person actually does. This episode imagines consequence for online threats, for those issuing the threat and those receiving it. This is a deadly version of the golden rule.
Watch it.
Review
A well known internet 'journalist' writes a take down piece against a wheel chair bound martyr. The piece goes viral, as intended, generating an endless stream of online threats against the writer. When the writer is found dead by her husband, a veteran detective, Parke, and a rookie from internet investigations, Blue, are handed the case.
We see through the detectives the disconnect between what people do anonymously online and in real life. People call for death and punishment when they're hidden, but in real life they seem normal.
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| Episode 6 - Hated By the Nation |
With any technology used for aid, someone will find a way to hack it and manipulate it for destruction. The government loves the bees because it allows them to spy on anyone everywhere. Agent Li, assigned to Parke and Blue, drives a tricked out automated Range Rover. The government isn't hurting for money in this story.
Parke and Blue take the next #deathto hashtag target to a safe house. This turns into a mix of Hitchcock's The Birds and an episode of The X-Files as the bees swarm the safe house, covering the windows, while slowly entering under the door and through the ventilation. The target dies and the bees disperse.
This episode really goes through the paces covering a broad swath of topics. We get social media hate, online bullying, government surveillance, 'fixes' to the biological economy without knowing the full repercussions, and a game of unknown consequences.
The perpetrator was upset that cyber bullying almost resulted in the death of someone in his apartment complex. He wanted retribution, but also to stop the cycle.
All too often we'll say, "I hate that person." The internet gives us a shield to amplify that hate and make it a death threat. The terrorist in this episode enacted the executions as bait to lure those filled with hate and those swayed by hate to catalog them and rid the world of them. He's out to prove that words have consequences. Anyone that used the hash tag is a target. Even the people that didn't mean it, but joked about it, or were just following the crowed, he wants to rid the world of all of them. There is no bargaining, no graduated punishment. It's one recourse for all.
The message that people discharging death threats should be punished is too simple, and this episode wraps it in an elaborate plan. None of the people we see that used threats felt bad about their action. They saw nothing wrong with exacerbating the mob mentality. Every single one of them paid for it. Every single one got exactly what they wished for. They called for death and they got it. Over three hundred thousand people died.
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