Do you stop to think how much does social media affect your life? You may think I’m going to talk about productivity and how it can distract you, but that’s not my point here.
As a human behavior and technology enthusiastic, I’m always trying to understand how one affects the other. And it didn’t surprise me how much people can’t stop talking about Nosedive, the first episode of Black Mirror’s 3rd season released last month.
What is Nosedive about?
You probably have heard about Black Mirror. It’s a British tv show that explores the “dark” side of technology affecting our life – with things we can already see happening or the ones in the future (maybe not so far in the future). For me, it goes beyond that, but let’s focus on the main topic here.
Nosedive is the story about the world where people are valued by points they receive from other people, all over your work, family, friends or just someone that cross your way during the day.
Everywhere you go and everything you do influences in your score – that goes from 1 to 5. It means if you just bump into someone on your way to work can make your score go down on the same side that if you help someone with their grocery bags, your score can go up.
And in a world where everything is measured like this, people with the higher scores have more opportunities – they can have a discount for buying a house, for example.
Sounds crazy, huh?
What if I tell you something similar is already happening? China has a program that measures how trustworthy people are based on the societal feedback they receive. And a low score can influence in your life – a lot – like The Business Insider listed:
- You won’t be considered for public office
- You’ll lose access to social security and welfare
- You’ll be frisked more thoroughly when passing through Chinese customs
- You’ll be shut out of senior level positions in the food and drug sector
- You won’t get a bed in overnight trains
- You’ll be shut out higher-starred hotels and restaurants and will be rejected by travel agents
- Your children won’t be allowed into more expensive private schools
So, being valued by its collective score is the point of the text? Not really. And neither is the purpose of Nosedive. The point is:
How much are you willing to do in order to get your score up?
The point to consider is: If everything you do affect your score and the bigger your score is more things you can get, how many times would you do things just to increase your personal score?
It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but imagine having to calculate and pretend to like things you don’t, people you can’t stand or hide your feelings almost all the time…
How long can it go on before you just can’t do it anymore?
A lot of people still have the feeling that you and your online persona (let’s call that approach) are different. However, let me tell you something: there’s no such thing. Your online persona is a continuation of the person you are “in the real world”. But that’s something to discuss in another post.
What I want today is just to make you think if you are proud of the person you are on social media – and how hard you work to be that person.
And the main question is: is it worth?
See you soon.
