Netflix also cannot escape the “Black Mirror” treatment

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Black mirror has never been subtle. Charlie Brooker’s famous dark Netflix Sci-Fi series has the role of technology in our lives, surveillance culture, social media and concerns for her seven seasons. It showed us how our over -control to the convenience of the digital world can damage the real damage. Black mirror It is also often self -referential to an error that distributes its episodes with Easter eggs to other rates and builds a large universe together. In his seventh season, the Meta-Textual reflexes of the show came closer to home: this time streaming platforms, just like the spectators who see the show.

The setting of the series compared to the subscription service economy is clear from the first episode. “Common People” is a tragicomedian to Amanda (played by Rashida Jones), in which a brain tumor was recently diagnosed, and her husband Mike (Chris O’Dowd). The couple signs their life for the MedTech start-up Rivermind, who digitally preserves part of Amanda’s awareness After an emergency operation. Rivermind will upload Amanda’s spirit to her brain, which has been permanently changed by the operation. So that it can live a normal existence – for a member fee.

The service has some minor inconveniences such as a limited geographical coverage area and a lengthy, necessary shutdown phase. Finally, Rivermind encourages its users to improve at higher price levels with more discounts, which makes life unbearable for those who do not do this. Amanda can no longer afford the more expensive options and deteriorates even more for up to 12 hours a day; It reviews abruptly advertising for random products, including Christian advisory websites and “healing stitch erectile dysfunction” without remembering it. Amanda and Mike reluctantly register for Rivermind Plus, even if the monthly fee continues to rise, which in turn is urging Mike to become unpleasant money earning systems in order to maintain their membership.

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Rivermind is also damn a model of the “Enshittification” – the colloquial term for the gradual deterioration of services over time to maximize profits – how Black mirror has ever imagined. What happens to Amanda is also an overly familiar experience for anyone who has ever registered for a streaming service, only for everything they liked in order to suddenly be dismantled behind increasingly higher prices. In Amanda’s case, her life hangs in balance, and she and Mike ultimately have to decide whether life is worth all the difficulties.

The season finale “USS Callister: In Infinity ”, a similar devil’s angle on the monetization of things. A continuation of the premiere of the fourth season of the retro relay“ USS Callister“The story takes up some time after the protagonists -digitized clones of the actual people who are in an immersive online multiplayer video game called Fixed infinity-Sie are in content pirates: The parent company of the game has monetized everything and obliges the players to buy “credits” to access functions in the game. As avatars without real means, however, the clones cannot buy any of the necessary credits. A minor trouble for players in the real world is a real “cost of the existing crisis”, as one of the crew members of the ship, Elena (Milanka Brooks), explains for those who are caught in the game. If the team does not have enough credits to fly, it cannot escape the danger. And while regular avatars can simply meet again after they have been shot with a laser cannon if one of the CallisterThe crew dies in the game, they are dead forever.

This is stressful enough, but the sharpest criticism of the episode lies in the representation of the CEO of the parent company, James Walton (Jimmi Simpson), who only has a profit with eyes and is at the thought of Freeloader players without paying. When he finally entered the game and interacted with the crew of the crew Callister– Human beings whose life are at stake – his first instinct is to fire them. In an extreme way, the murderous, bootlegger-youth managers, such as streamer have introduced increasingly closer restrictions on online piracy and password tips and at the same time increase prices for as many functions as possible.

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This is not the first time Black mirrorThe alternative universe near the Fukter has targeted the streaming media ecosystem. The premiere of the 6th season “Joan is terrible” contained a Netflix Isque service called Streamberry. The company’s predatory terms and conditions entitle it to automatically generate television episodes based on the life of streamberry subscribers. The episodes are extremely little flattering and yet undeniable; The outrage that you are excited about creates how every internet user understands, the attention that is ultimately useful for the company. However, they also cause real, irrevocable damage, such as everything that the Subscribers of Streamberry do and everyone with which they use interacting-fecomes food for the new hit program of the streamer. The satire belongs to one Black mirror‘S blastest, a dark funny exploration of the effects of the tailor -made stories.

The new season goes one step further. In an ever more app-based world, a future is not too difficult to imagine. We pay for the privilege of using the gyms of our choice, driving our cars, listening to music, ordering household items and accessing medical care. Subscribe services issue their users the films and shows they see and the video games they play all can disappear on the moods of their rights holders. As for the residents of Black mirrorEvil has never been more banal; It is interwoven in her miserable life about money -sucking levels of convenience.