Social interaction is a building block of society. It occurs as an exchange between two or more individuals. By socially interacting, individuals design rules, systems, and institutions in which they desire to live (Grazian, 2017). The episode of Black Mirror demonstrates social interaction between the characters when they transact, converse, and collaborate. It shows that social media interaction can be dramatized and thus be dishonest. People pretend to be kind to everyone, even when they have insincere interactions to maintain their ratings.
In the episode "Nosedive," social media status is an important aspect because it determines how people interact with one another. Individuals with higher social media status have access to better deals, amenities, and services. Social media status is important in real life as it enables people to feel acknowledged by society (Grazian, 2017). It also enhances people's access to communicate and influence other people's opinions. Brands can, therefore, use an individual's social media status to promote their services and products.
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The real-life presentation of self on social media is a bit accurate to the portrayal in the film. People are increasingly interested in their social media status and go to extremes to boost their social media status. Some pretend to be happy just to post images of them enjoying their day. Others post every exciting moment of their life online to boost their social media status. People also use social media to catch up on people's lives by going through their feed.
This episode brought to light how trivial things on social media can blind people. For them, it was all about ensuring their ranking is either maintained or risen. This made me feel the need to often unplug from social media and look for ways to interact without social media. It also made me feel that a dependency on social media could end up ruining people's lives.
There were some evident connections between this episode of black mirror and the concepts learned in class. In the film, individuals competed amongst their friends and acquittances for prestige and status (Grazian, 2017). They also internalized the cultural attitudes that their groups had generated, such as always being kind and polite to each other (Grazian, 2017). The film also evident that individuals' evaluative judgments were influenced by those surrounding them (Grazian, 2017). A good example was when Lacey tries to be kind to her co-worker but is dissuaded by her workmates and ends up ignoring him the next day.
Reference
Grazian, D. (2017). Mix it up: Popular culture, mass media, and society. New York: WW Norton.
