This Black Mirror episode, ‘Hated In The Nation’, was a scary and crazy episode, which wasn’t too surprising knowing Black Mirror’s futuristic climate. This episode exploited how the freedom speech of the internet can turn into bullying. People having “Twitter fingers” and not being able to actually have the guts to state the same statements aloud are astounding to me in real life and on this episode. People were able to make such an impact towards a journalist who wrote a controversial article and created the hashtag ‘#DeathToJo”. Jo saw all the tweets that she was being tagged in and from the hashtag and was quite amused because she wasn’t as phased as the internet’s rage wanted her to be. However, she was killed that night by an electronic bee in a very violent way. These bees were able to be hacked and used to attack and reroute their actions from doing the job they were created to do which was simply being a bee. Soon, the bees went on killing sprees mainly based on their hackers opinions on if the person deserved to live based on their actions. This goes closely to today’s nature of ‘Cancel Culture’ which people over social media believe they have the right to cancel someone’s existence and accomplishments based on the person’s past social media posts, videos or actions.

James Vincent states, “However, the report found that if individuals felt that their Facebook friends were more likely to agree with their position on a given issue they were 1.91 times more likely to join in a conversation about it, with this tendency increasing among those who held strong opinions – they were 2.4 times more likely to join in conversations online. The suggestion is that these mechanisms accumulate; snowballing to create an atmosphere online where the most fervently held opinions are the most likely to be aired, while individuals with moderate or dissenting views hang back on the sidelines. Although the report’s scope was limited, it’s easy to see how widely its findings apply … and how important they may be to democracy as a whole” (Independent). People seem to be more engaging and willing to express their opinions over social media without fear of being exiled, that is if they are commenting on other people’s lives. The more people comment, the more power commenters believe they have and it has shown that they can get the exposure they crave digitally. Some of these people who search for evidence to bring someone’s reputation down, especially for celebrities, can be seen as these killer bees from the Black Mirror episode. Also, the media has affected the way people view other people and their circumstances. The society has become a norm to criticize and nitpick everyone else’s life but their own publicly. It can be pretty frightening to even express yourself because it may be used against you in a month or even decades later. In a way it is positive when finding evidence against people who are truly unjust. But where does the limits of this expression of speech through social media come to a realization that you can’t actually cancel someone’s existence. Do you think there will be limits to social media hate posts and comments from various people and bots?

Justice For Breonna Taylor. Rest In Paradise Breonna.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/23/us/breonna-taylor-attorney-general-grand-jury-announcement/index.html

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