Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Just finished the first episode, took a bit of time to digest, and read a few reviews to get some additional perspectives and I have to say - super disappointed in Brooker right now, he's usually a lot better than this rubbish.

Anyone who's read aforementioned reviews will likely find that sentiment odd, it's being raved about, declared the best episode of the season and perhaps of the whole run of the show. But for me it's the culmination of a trend I've been noticing more & more often recently - the primary villain of pop-feminist critique being recast as socially-awkward or neuroatypical male nerds. In the show, a stereotypical nerd retreats into a stereotypical fantasy world to enact stereotypical revenge on those he feels slighted him by making the other avatars in his fantasy look like his coworkers and treating them like garbage and playthings, with the Black Mirror "twist" being the avatars are actually(somehow) living sentient beings created from said coworkers and etc's DNA.

What's sad about it is the real stereotypical fantasy on show isn't the subject of the plot, it is the plot. There are a lot of gakky people online, no doubt about it, but a key thing all the reviews were keen to bring up rather undermines the premise - the internet isn't just for nerds anymore, everyone uses it. That doesn't mean there are no gakky nerds of course, or that a socially-awkward bloke has never made a woman feel uncomfortable, but more & more often the narrative surrounding "gakky Men"(as DoG puts it) is being shaped around a stereotype that is, frankly, bs. Do you know who most of the men victimizing women are? Successful men. Powerful men. Men capable of "reading" social situations to know exactly what they can get away with at any given time. Men capable of manipulation and guile. Popular, socially-successful men.

But that's uncomfortable to confront, isn't it. That your well-off boyfriend, or your funny brother, or your pal from work who everyone likes is also an abusive an/or predatory scumbag. Much easier to point at the weirdo who people tolerate out of politeness, the sad nerd who spends all their time online, the nutter who gets confused by social rules. Much easier to pretend all the Gamergate chimps are cheeto-stained socially-awkward stereotypes rather than the same dudebro types who gak on women all the time offline. Much easier to pretend nobody you know could be one of the 4chan Trumpsters, because everyone you know is "normal".

And what's really sad is that's exactly the kind of attitude that permitted all the awful situations that led to the "MeToo" backlash in the first place - but going after obvious, easy targets is always much less of an effort than addressing the real problem no matter what the subject is, so why should feminism be any different.

You know, I really want to agree, much of what you've said there is perfectly sensible.

Yet



I'm not even a Black Mirror watcher...

There are scumbags in every group, as I said in the OP. Whether the person in that story is one of them I can't say as it lacks any detail there - I'm willing to bet there's a fair few more "normal" dudebro types playing CoD than there are "weirdos" who fit the stereotype the episode indulges in. Regardless, the argument is not "no socially awkward nerds are ego-tripping sad cases and/or misogynist gits", it's that if you(general, nonspecific) look at the reality rather than indulging in preconceived and stereotypical caricatures then the ego-tripping socially awkward/misogynist nerds are such a tiny part of the problem overall, constructing whole narratives around them being the problem is disingenuous and will end up causing more harm overall, both because it encourages harmful stereotypes and because it helps to mask the real problem.

I suppose I'm just getting fething sick of the whole thing. Neurotypical people slaughter each other with guns, and they blame the mentally ill to avoid confronting that fact. Neurotypical people engage in an orgy of drunken violence practically every weekend, but it's the "violent nutter/schizo" stereotype that NT folk choose to be irrationally afraid of. When a child is abused statistically speaking the most likely culprit is a neurotypical and socially-capable member of their own family, but it's the "odd" middle aged loner that lives down the street who's most likely to get all the suspicion and accusations. Neurotypical people come online and colonise all the places where neuroatypical and socially-awkward people withdrew to years ago to escape the gakky treatment we get from NT folk on a regular basis IRL, but when those places spawn abusive behaviour we're still the ones held responsible even though we're now a tiny minority of the userbases.

Neuroatypical people are orders of magnitude more likely to be victims of violence or abuse than perpetrators of it, yet we're featured constantly in fiction as rapists and murderers and stalkers etc etc, and seeing that come from the pen of a writer/producer I'd quite respected and thought above such lazy stereotyping is depressing.

What was the name of the episode? I'm now curious t see what exactly it's about. The kinds of reviews I've heard make it sound like a Take That at Star Trek fans.

USS Callister - the first episode of the 4th season. I definitely wouldn't say it was a shot at Star Trek fans, just one specific dude.

I thought it was OK, personally. I haven't watched the whole season yet.

Just finished the Metalhead episode.


fething knarly.

I just finished the series. I watched them mostly in order, except Hang the DJ, which I saved for last per a recommendation - it was a good recommendation and I suggest it. It's nice to save the sort of sweet/hopeful one for last as opposed to a more typical disturbing one.

I liked last season better but that was largely because I liked San Junipero so much, I think. It was still a very solid season generally - I think Crocodile was the only episode that was weak, and even then, the first half or so was pretty good. It just got dumber and dumber in the last third though, especially right at the end.

I thought Metalhead was a little lame if you actually look at the story itself, especially the rather inane twist at the end - but the machine concept as well as the pacing was so good that I liked it anyway. Still, now that it's less fresh in my head, it feels more like the middle chunk of something better which can't quite stand on it's own. If you haven't seen the Boston Dynamics machines that inspired it, you should check them out.


I thought Arkangel was maybe the strongest episode this series, and the most thoughtful one.

Black Museum I thought was just OK. Some of the little vignettes were really strong (the doctor addicted to pain) but the one at the end that tied it together was not so hot, IMO.

In terms of concept and production value, I felt like USS Callister was probably the best this season.. but I liked Hang the DJ the best, I think.

USS Callister was probably my favorite out of this season.

Mainly because I like the 3 main actors Jimmi Simpson(great in everything I’ve seen him in) , Christin Milioti and Jesse Plemon (both great in Fargo season 2, as well as Breaking Bad for the latter).

Man Against Fire and Hated in the Nation are probably my favorites from the entire series.

Started on USS Callister, felt a bit overlong, also not sure how memory / personality is stored in DNA (still think Be Right Back had the most interesting take on AI and might be the best episode)

I love the first three seasons of Black Mirror. there are so many amazing episodes that it's hard to pick a favorite, and even the more mediocre ones are better than your average TV show. Unfortunately, I was a bit deflated by this season. I really liked Metalhead, but none of the other episodes really did it for me.

The premise of USS Callister has already been done at least twice in Black Mirror, and I would say each one of those takes was better. The Christmas Special just did the idea so much more justice, and really explored the horrifying implications of enslaving sentient, digital copies of people without resorting to nonsense like copying someone's personality from their DNA. The dating app episode of this season is the same idea AGAIN but from a different angle.

The wife and I kinda binged them all starting friday night and finishing the last few this morning. Season 3 was by far the strongest season. Out of all 4 seasons I only really didn't think S1EP1 and Crocodile were poor episodes. I was meh on the post apoc dog robot one but I think the rest were generally really well done and cause you to really think about where technology is going and how we're going to manage and control how it's implemented. Some really good and really interesting things.

I thought "National Anthem" had quite a lot going on but it all just foghorned out by the pork prodding issue (it became kind of oddly prescient when rumours regarding the real PM David Cameron and Ham-o-centric hijinx in his University times surfaced)

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
I thought "National Anthem" had quite a lot going on but it all just foghorned out by the pork prodding issue (it became kind of oddly prescient when rumours regarding the real PM David Cameron and Ham-o-centric hijinx in his University times surfaced)

First thing that ran thru my mind when I heard the demand actually. Had to look it up to make sure I wasn't misremembering. Oh for the days when that was one of the silliest things a world leader had ever done...