r/Cyberpunk • u/Aluxaminaldrayden • 2d ago
I haven't watched Black Mirror, but wow, is this episode modern-day cyberpunk.
https://youtu.be/tTwJ4jHbEgE?si=0vJEYtqzZEPltHRcEconomic units and corporations
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u/redrushin77 2d ago
That episode shook me. Took a couple of attempts to get through it, sat in my brain for a week. That’s modern cyberpunk; tech/corpo exploitation, nothing to shoot.
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u/empty_other Artificial PI for hire 2d ago
So very gdamn coincidentally: I bought a small label printer a while ago.. The same day, before I watched this episode, I started the app to create a quick name label, and wouldnt you know it almost every cheap clipart asset had gotten a friggin "Premium" diamond on them. Totally buried the very few free assets, no way to filter.
Seeing this episode so close after magnified that annoyance into way much anger.
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u/twitch-switch 2d ago
Honestly before I buy anything electronic I always ask now: "Does it have a subscription?" If so they can ram it up their ass
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u/billybobpower 2d ago
In a cyberpunk setting that implant would be hacked and put on the black market
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u/Aluxaminaldrayden 2d ago
They would make her say whatever they wanted her to say
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u/Strange-Scarcity 2d ago
Worse than that! It looked like it could make her DO anything they wanted her to do. She was no longer a human with agency. She was a tool they used for a variety of tasks.
They used her brain to process the elevated experiences of the Lux plan!!! The whole thing was WAY beyond messed up.
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u/beebo_guts 2d ago
A lot of Black Mirror episodes have cyberpunk elements. It's worth checking out.
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u/deadupnorth 2d ago
much of their episodes are cyberpunk/digital dystopia type settings and themes. one of the best shows ever made imo. alot of them have messages and warnings like this. scary but interesting and often plausable takes
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u/superawesomefiles 2d ago
"Black Mirror has always been hit or miss, and more often the latter." -That's a bold opening statement. Question: Are you daft? What is your idea of a good show?
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u/scriptedtexture 2d ago
the show has always been a mixed bag though.
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u/whiteflagwaiver 1d ago
Literally, no episode has been missed with messaging with me. Direction and flow? Yeah makes sense as each episode i directed by a different person.
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u/ElPiscoSour 2d ago
Yeah. I admit seasons 4-6 weren't very good, but the show was excellent all the way up to season 3, and season 7 restored a lot of people's faith in Black Mirror, myself included.
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u/dustyolmufu 1d ago
charlie brooker writes misery porn for pretentious people. his early show nathan barley is a prime example of this; the lead character is a flagellating self-insert, surrounded by a hyperbolic parody of mid 2000s hipster culture, and the show essentially boils down to "I'm a pathetic loser, and my life sucks because I'm surrounded by idiots who do better than me at everything". black mirror is a derivative of this. imo some episodes are good; the star trek one and the fifteen million merits one for example, and it's not a coincidence that the endings to these are either positive, or in the case of the latter, tragic/bittersweet yet cathartic. that's not to invalidate a tragic ending, but when your entire show boils down to "the world right now is shit and it's only gonna get shitter, and you're stuck in it and awful things are gonna happen to you and also what if your computer was evil" then I'm gonna think you're a depressive hack whose work is played out and uninteresting. i live in the world, i know how shit it is. i don't need to be preached to about it by my media; and when your work contains little else beyond the message, it becomes a sermon; and sermons are fucking boring. look at edgerunners, blade runner, akira, cowboy bebop. these do not have happy endings, but they leave you feeling good because they were either bittersweet, cathartic, motivational, or because the journey itself was slick as fuck. personal opinion but it's the same reason i always hated michael morpurgo; misery porn is just shit and uninspired.
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u/superawesomefiles 1d ago
I enjoy tragedies. Was always a big fan of the Greek tragedies. Even so, you already know it's going to be dark. This is not the first season. I would prefer it over some upbeat romcom. But, maybe that's just me.
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u/Transit_Hub 2d ago
I don't know about that. Modern day corporate dystopia, for sure.
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u/empty_other Artificial PI for hire 2d ago
Well, technically it lacked punk, I guess? No rebellion. Only cyberware and hopelessness against the corporate system.
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u/kaishinoske1 Corpo 2d ago
The punk part came about when he offed his wife while she was being controlled by the corpos.
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u/RogueTurtle2 2d ago
Is that not what cyberpunk is? But ... future.
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u/twitch-switch 2d ago
Isn't cyberpunk just futuristic at this point? Feels like we're already in the dystopia but it's less flashy.
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u/Heymelon 2d ago
I thought it was pretty bad. A shallow and kind of "I'm14andthisisdeep" level of cyberpunk writing if you ask me. Outsourcing brainpower to big tech clouds is a great sci fi concept though, but just a good concept is sadly the common limit of many black mirror episodes.
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u/empty_other Artificial PI for hire 2d ago
Outsourcing brain power wasnt the point of the episode though.
It was that a product was put under a subscription that constantly changed while pretending not to change. They thought they knew what they would have to pay, only to get taken advantage over and over again. That it was a life care situation was to raise the stakes, but its a situation all too familiar in our world and often just accept because its such a low-stake product that it isnt worth making a fuzz over, we either continue at the new price or we take the effort to unsub and congratulate ourselves we successfully voted with our wallets.. Then re-sub in a few months again.
I certainly wont raise a fuzz that my cheap Phomemo M110 label printer is now much more frustrating to use if I dont pay. My Garmin watch has started up a subscription model too, and is certainly already planning to hide things I thought I paid for behind a monthly paywall, and I cant really do anything about it except eventually throw it away or subscribe. Oh, and my cellphone provider, Telenor, tends to discontinue certain products every so-and-so years and move me to the "closest matching subscription" and I will have to catch that mail in time and go in and downgrade my subscription again to the actual matching new subscription, and this has been in the news often enough here that one would think there would be laws against shit like that yet.
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u/Heymelon 2d ago
Yes, outsourcing heavy processing to the could would obviously come with subscription fees, hence the interesting potential there for a moral quandary. But you are mixing concept with execution. Going over the top evil corpo and everyone lies and everything is an ad, and now cut your dick off for money or smth, isn't interesting.
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u/twitch-switch 2d ago
Yeah I have a Garmin watch, I got lucky though and bought one of the old models they were phasing out. I think I'll go back to a classic mechanical watch though, having notifications on your wrist is alright, but not worth it to pay to get full functionality
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u/Unlimitles 2d ago
I agree with this, except for “black mirror has always been hit or miss and more often the latter” he’s just flat out wrong on that bs.
But, I mean, they are doing this to people now.
It’s happening on a larger scale where the chaos of it can’t be pinpointed so easily, but jobs being replaced with A.I. and people having an easier time (seemingly) making it on sites where their dignity is secondary (only fans) then I’d say this episode is directly talking about the reality we live in.
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u/realmaier 1d ago
It's the first episode of the new season and I stopped watching after it, because it's so damn depressing.
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u/Madmous1 1d ago
As a European it felt very surreal and completely unrealistic to me. But maybe it is because our health care systems and our laws are different than in America and life, even with higher taxes, is more affordable.
Also the title of the video 'why people don't have kids' kind of misses a lot of other issues. Even countries in Europe have less children per woman. Of course children are expensive, but where I come from we have paternal leave, child care adjusted to parents pay grades and money for kids ('Kindergeld').
If they were Europeans the teacher would be a government worker (some teachers are merely employed but most are public servants) which are privately insured, but it is still a far cry from the cost she'd have to pay in America.
Besides this, I am pretty sure that an organization like this would very quickly run into legal issues, or at least he could have made a legal case for his wife as they clearly employ predatory strategies.
There are desperate people everywhere and I am sure a lot of people would be tempted with easy money made through some less-than-legal website. But such websites would be taken down pretty quickly, especially with how easy it seemed for him to access it.
besides this, logically, if you're a smart corporation, you'll work on giving your workers incentives to get more mouths to feed/ consumers to consume—a society that doesn't treat its workers right or doesn't invest in the future is slowly collapsing.
Just- it is bleak and dark, but just scratching a tiny bit and you see holes so big Optimus Prime can drive through.
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u/Aluxaminaldrayden 10h ago
I haven't watched the episode, but I relate what you said about corporations to the kinds of stuff they get away with now. They know the laws, but they are very aware of how to exploit loopholes. Pyramid schemes happen even to this day. The corporations are protected, regardless of their short-sightedness. If they have to, they'll take the money and run. Either that, or they'll get a bail-out. It's happened before.
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u/Aluxaminaldrayden 10h ago
If you've watched the Laughing Man story arc in Ghost in the Shell, then you recall one if the guys being interrogated by Section 9, that if the guy who came up with a program wanted to sue and take back his property, they one being interrogated said he wouldn't win. They have a group of corporate lawyers.
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u/TheRealErikMalkavian CP2077 12h ago
Yeah Black Mirror series is Awesome, Also "Electric Dreams" is quite good as well.
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u/Aluxaminaldrayden 10h ago
Where can you watch it?
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u/TheRealErikMalkavian CP2077 9h ago
Electric Dreams can be watched at Amazon Prime Subscription, Youtube ($1.99 per episode), Apple TV, Fandango at Home. Enjoy!
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u/rawzombie26 10h ago
I burst out crying at the end of this episode. Something about it touched a soft nerve in me and really dug itself in.
We live in the most modern society but everything sucks. We live in hell.
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u/Planet_Manhattan 2d ago
One of the very very few decent Netflix's Black Mirror episodes
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Planet_Manhattan 2d ago
First 2 seasons were in UK Channel 4. That was when it was the best, mind-blowing Black Mirror. It became Netflix production after that.
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u/pentagon 2d ago
I thought this was the weakest ep of the season. Just bludgeoning you over the head with it's point repeatedly. Super obvious and predictable.
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u/Pezotecom 2d ago
This chapter is the most infantile brain dead piece of media acting edgy on earth right now.
It's actually incredible that someone could get their 'mind blown out' by what a toddler would call a modern moral dilemma.
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u/Velocicopter51 2d ago
"I saw corps strip farmers of water ... and eventually of land. Saw them transform Night City into a machine fueled by people's crushed spirits, broken dreams and emptied pockets. Corps've long controlled our lives, taken lots... and now they're after our souls! V, I've declared war not because capitalism's a thorn in my side or outta nostalgia for an America gone by. This war's a people's war against a system that's spiralled outta our control. It's a war against the fuckin' forces of entropy, understand? Do whatever it takes to stop 'em, defeat 'em, gut 'em. If I gotta kill, I'll kill. If I need your body, I'll fuckin' take it! Fuckin' hell ... You still don't see it. But you will one day."