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This interview goes into more detail about the purpose of his show intertwining with reality.

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It's almost a cliché to say it but, if you haven't yet seen Black Mirror, you should probably stop what you're doing and go watch it.

A series comprised of standalone parables, each set in a dystopian world terrifyingly not far removed from our own, it was created by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones in 2011 and originally aired three not-so-humble episodes in the UK on Channel 4.

Following its addition to US Netflix last year, the world took notice - chief of all Netflix bosses who acquired the series, injecting it with an inflated budget and episode count (season three clocks in at six episodes).

In line with its release (all six new episodes are available to stream today), we were granted the opportunity to meet with co-creator Brooker where we spoke in detail about spin-off potentials, his inspiration behind the (often disturbing) storylines and - of course - Piggate.

"It's quite daunting," the 45-year-old tells me humbly when I liken him to esteemed showrunners Vince Gilligan ( Breaking Bad) and Matthew Weiner ( Mad Me n). "I wouldn't put myself on their level at all."

It's a good job the fans will then, isn't it.

That's a cheerful one [laughs]. It's funny, no one can agree on what is their favourite episode. It's interesting. People say about that one: "Oh my God, it's absolutely chilling" and other people go: "It's about nothing, it's boring." People react really really differently to the episodes - they're very adamant over which is the best and worst.
It reminded me of how I felt when I watched [season two episode] ' White Bear' .
That's interesting. We wanted slightly more variety of tone across this season because we were doing six episodes. The first one I wrote was 'San Junipero' which has more shards of light in it so we were thinking: 'Okay, now we've got to do some more grungy horrible stuff,' so we went into 'Shut Up and Dance'. We didn't want it to always be bleak and depressing like it traditionally had been because it'll become unbearable if you're doing six in a row.
Was it the increased episode count that inspired the variation in tone then?
Not just that; we knew we were going to be making more episodes so we wanted to mix it up and introduce as much variety as possible. It's just [working out] how you do that without breaking what the show is. There's much more variety in this season then there ever has been before.
Which episode did you enjoy writing the most?
There's one called 'Hated in the Nation', which is a detective story. That's a very genre thing to do so there are tropes that you can't get away from; there's a scene where there's a body, there's tape and flashing lights and discussion of the crime scene, all of that sort of stuff. And that's quite fun to do... once [laughs]. I did a spoof cop show called A Touch of Cloth that was in the back of my mind [while writing it] so I was slightly worried. The process of writing them was very different, though. 'Shut Up and Dance' is sort of a kitchen sink horrible thriller and "Nosedive" is a heightened world; they're all very different styles.
Black Mirror is now for people around the world kind of what Breaking Bad was for us in the UK.
Do you think?
In terms of it being on Netflix later than it was in the country that it originated and has gained a cult fanbase - and now pretty much everyone's talking about it.
It's very hard for me to gauge who's talking about it really. Do you know what I mean? Obviously, I'm hearing a lot about it at the moment because I'm promoting it.
I suppose with Netflix, it's not like you're going to see the overnight viewing figures. But you can get a strong sense that because Netflix is now such a large platform, people are going to watch it even if they haven't before.
Yes, I suppose. We are aware that we'll get a lot of first-time viewers this time around which is why we agonised for a long time over the order. You can watch them in any order [but] we went with what we thought was probably one of the most accessible episodes ['Nosedive'] first, partly to slightly ease people in. Then I thought afterward: 'Oh no, I want to change the order again.' But then it was too late.
What did you want to change it to?
Originally we started with "San Junipero" and then we thought it was too "high concept". So it was literally random. I would have used Shuffle mode. It would be great if people go to the episodes and pick the one they want to watch first because you can do that. It is a box of chocolates in that respect.

What's your advice on how many episodes people should watch in one go. B ecause some might binge it all in one day which is...

...perjurious to your mental health?
Exactly - and also, it's a good show to eke out, right?
It's up to the individual really. We're not naturally a binge-watch show because we have a beginning, a middle and an end - it's like you've had a full meal - whereas generally, the binge-watch model is to go: "Ooh, something's about to happen." Even if it's like: "She's going to open the biscuit tin! What's inside the biscuit tin? Ooh, and the end credits are playing and there's a bit of mournful music now. I'll stay where I am and find out what's in that biscuit tin." We don't do that trick of keeping you tantalised at the end of every episode so it's up to the individual. We were gonna start with 'Hated in the Nation' at one point - that's 90 minutes long; [adopts voice] the research shows that you really shouldn't open with a 90-minute episode.
Did the Netflix bigwigs tell you that?
They did make a very good point: if you watch a 90-minute episode, you're less likely to watch the next immediately afterward and what they want is for newcomers to the show to understand that each one is different. Because not everyone would know that. When the first ones went up on US Netflix, some people watched 'The National Anthem' and, when they came to episode two, they were like: "Oh my God, what's going to happen next? Now what's he going to have to fuck?" They weren't expecting it to be a different story.
This being an anthology series, do you think you'll ever revisit past worlds, characters and storylines?
We nearly have. I've got an idea for a sequel to ' White Bear' . I wrote that script really quickly and it was totally different; well, the story they tell her before they reveal to her what's really going on was totally different. It was more a zombie apocalypse type thing about a journalist and this signal bouncing about the globe. But while we were scouting for locations - that's how late in the day it was - they went: " Well, we can't afford the script you've written but we're based on an RAF base. Here's what we can fill - what do you think of it?" I was looking around and there was a housing estate, a petrol station and a big fence around the whole thing. I was like: "Hmm, a big fence. Hang on a minute, what if - oh-oh-oh!" and went off and wrote that in two days - and it was a much better story. Quite often things like that happen when you suddenly have a breakthrough and go: "That's what it is."

So there was an extra step in ' White Bear' that we didn't get a chance to do because it was too complicated - it had her finding messages that she'd left herself on previous run-throughs because the wiping thing was starting to not function. So I sometimes think we could do that. It'd probably be a heck of a job to go back and recreate the entire fucking park because it's gone now. It might work better as a graphic novel or something like that. There was a whole extra idea for ' Be Right Back' too, where we'd see other people who'd been brought back from their social media profiles. In this season, there's a detective episode and I've sort of figured some characters from that could recur.
Would you do what American Horror Story does and bring back old cast members as new characters?
We have one of our first ever recurring actors in this season - Hannah John-Kamen - who showed up in 'Fifteen Million Merits'. She plays a singer who you ever only see onscreen. This time around, she shows up in 'Playtest'. We did have a little in-joke where the song she was singing in 'Fifteen Million Merits' was playing on the radio but we couldn't get a licensing thing, it was a nightmare. There are actors we've tried to have back that weren't available. I don't think there's anyone that we wouldn't have back. I mean, The Twilight Zone had William Shatner every other week.
Get Shatner!
[Grins] That would be amazing. In all sorts of ways.

Halfway through the writing of that already...
...and do you reckon there's going to be more?
Beyond that? I don't know.
Would you like there to be more?
Yeah, I hope so. As long as there's still ideas, yeah, I don't see why not.
You know how Woody Allen apparently has a drawer of ideas where he picks one out every now and then - do you have a drawer of ideas?
No, I tend to have an idea that rattles around for ages and I don't know what to do with it. With 'Playtest' I had an idea about a whack-a-mole game that you can't switch off where the moles kept popping up forever. I thought: 'Well, that's a ten-minute story - now what do I do?' and then the other stuff came in later. But no. I wish there was a drawer but there isn't.
Does Black Mirror have to be set in a world similar to ours for it to have the desired effect? Do you think there could be an episode set in medieval times or something similar?
Weirdly, we are... [long pause] We're doing an episode that's different. I can't say anything about it, but we're doing one that's in a setting we've never done before. But I have been thinking about how we would do medieval times and things like that.
Like a space episode or something?
[glances at me suspiciously] Yeah, there's still settings we haven't done that are in the pipeline.
Do you have a roster of directors and actors who've approached you to be on the show?
We've had people who've approached us that we really want to work with that schedule-wise we haven't been able to get things to work, so that's frustrating. But we're very fortunate. Do you know Jodie Foster's directing one for season four? So that's quite good.

Because of the nature of the show, it's a pretty good gig for a director because it is like making a short film. ['Nosedive'] director Joe [Wright]'s been quite candid about this; he'd been feeling quite bruised after doing Pan and [ Black Mirror] was a good thing for him to get his teeth into which wasn't the full five-year commitment of a movie. He had a lot more say and power than he would if it was one episode of a series that was the same every week because these are basically little films. That goes across the board with composers and casting. In some ways, that makes it a challenge because you've got to build the whole world from scratch each time but on the other hand you get to work with new people who come with their own ideas and influences.
What episode do you get asked about the most?
It really varies. At the moment, I'm getting asked a lot about 'The Waldo Moment' which I felt I didn't quite get right at the time and thought maybe should have been a separate mini-series than a Black Mirror. Now it feels quite prescient because of [Donald] Trump. 'White Bear', people ask me about, and 'Be Right Back'. When things in the news start to parallel things in episodes, people ask me about that.
It must be cool when you turn on the news and think, 'I kind of predicted that'.
No, I'm terrified. Piggate - that was a fucking weird one. I genuinely thought I was living in a weird simulation - it was too big a coincidence; I must have known! That really unsettled me. It was very much a destabilising moment.
How do you and Annabel come up with episode ideas?
I wish I knew; the ideas just pop up. Sometimes, we've had the odd writers meeting where we sit there and just chew the fat. Nine times out of 10, if you sit there to try and come up with a story about Brexit or the Samsung Galaxy phone that blows your hand off, an idea that isn't to do with the thing we were meant to be discussing just pops up and comes out fully formed. Earlier today I was in a cab and the driver did something - I don't want to say what it is - where I thought: 'Yeah, that's a thing isn't it.' It's often an observation or it's something somebody says. It's usually just a sort of: "Hey, I'll tell you what would be mental: if you could inject a video game augmented reality system into your fucking eyes."
Which is great because then you get 'Playtest'.
Yeah. That's quite a rompy episode. It's not about anything particularly. I just wanted to do a haunted house movie.

With Black Mirror's global recognition, your name - as well as Annabel's - are going to be mentioned alongside other showrunners including Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Matthew Weiner (Mad Men) and Damon Lindelof (The Leftovers). Is that something you think about?

That's quite daunting. I've met Vince Gilligan and [ The Wire creator] David Simon and I wouldn't put myself on their level at all. I'm quite the control freak so I tend to write most of the episodes and I'm across all the details. Doing five seasons of Breaking Bad must have been mental - and he directed some of those. I'm in awe of that level of ability.
How easy is it to get a TV show made today?
I've been very lucky. There are more opportunities now because there's loads of platforms and channels; everyone's making them - if you'd been told Amazon would be doing TV shows a few years ago, you'd have gone "What?" Tesco will probably be making fucking TV shows soon. There's an HBO anthology show called High Maintenance which started on Vimeo and a Netflix comedy called Haters Back Off which is based on a YouTube channel - that would be a very practical way of kicking something off. I've done it in a roundabout weird way whereas most writers write on other shows like Casualty or Holby City or . Now that would be a really good gig! I was approached for Doctor Who and I just didn't have time. It was really annoying. I was really busy and they haven't asked me again since. It was a bit like the Home Office asking you to do something.

The advantage of now is the equipment and technology is such you could make at least a reasonable facsimile of what you want to do which is a way of expressing it in the purest way. Later on, you're going to have to compromise all sorts of things until you get to a verified lucky position where you can kind of do what you want. So if you can do something that's idiosyncratic enough so that it takes off, that's probably the best way of doing it. I don't know if that's the worst advice ever. The only way to get something to work is to keep plugging away, I suppose. I had no career path. I've done all sorts of different things. I've bounced from one thing to the other; I was a cartoonist, a video game reviewer - I never had any clue what I was doing and have always been quite lucky. Like: "Oh, I'm in this carriage now - what's going on in here?"
Well, you can see how that variation has lent itself to Black Mirror storylines.
I've got no attention span. That's the reason why it's one-off stories - because I don't have the patience to come up with a five-season arc for something. I did spend about a year developing a show that was Black Mirror-esque that had an ongoing storyline. It was at the time when American networks were like: "We like Black Mirror but we don't do anthology shows." This was before they changed their mind when it actually went on Netflix and started doing well. But trying to think of a three-season arc storyline did my head in. It was brain-melting.
Do you have any other TV shows in the pipeline?
There's always things I want to do. I wanna do some more goofy comedy stuff; I really enjoyed doing A Touch of Cloth. Something like that might be good.
Do you think Netflix will be open to more seasonal Black Mirror specials?
I wouldn't mind doing a Halloween one. I've been thinking about that. One of the reasons we shot 'Playtest' up in the running order [it's number two] is because we knew Halloween was coming and we thought it was perfect for that. And the PlayStation VR was being launched. But yeah, I want to do a Treehouse of Horror; the Christmas special ['White Christmas' starring Jon Hamm] is kind of that. So I'm toying with the idea of doing another one with several interweaving stories.
You have a hell of a lot of material for the Screenwipe end of year special.
We'd normally have our first winter's meeting for the end of year show in October; this year we had it in July which gives you an idea of the many horrible things that have happened. Even the fun stories have a horrible thing attached to them, so we're working out what to do. You know, there have been several stories that have dominated the year - like Brexit, Trump - and, of course, every cultural icon you've ever liked dying. There are no laughs in that. We're still debating how we're going to cover it. That's one of my next tasks. It's always a fucking headache. I've thought, 'worst year ever' for the last four years so I'm loathe to say this year's the worst year ever because 2017's coming.
You're a keen gamer - what are your views on No Man's Sky?
What happened with that was that people's expectations outstripped what they were given. It was partly because there was a small team - and I actually feel really quite sorry for them - that made it who maybe didn't have the experience to know that they were talking about it excitedly while they were developing it. It is technically an amazing achievement. It was just funny that you bring out this infinite universe full of boundless variety and people start going: "I'm bored of that, boring, it's boring." They had a point; it got samey too quickly, there wasn't enough of a narrative and they probably charged too much money. But if it had been half that price and had dropped as a surprise, it'd be the fucking toast of the town.
'Black Mirror' season 1-3 is available to watch on Netflix now
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Our 40-minute chat with Black Mirror co-creator Charlie Brooker

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It's almost a cliché to say it but, if you haven't yet seen Black Mirror, you should probably stop what you're doing and go watch it. A series comprised of standalone parables, each set in a dystopian world terrifyingly not far removed from our own, it was created by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones in 2011 and originally aired three not-so-humble episodes in the UK on Channel 4.

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Vice sat down with Brooker and discussed aspects of the show.

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Photo: Chris Pizzello AP / Press Association Images

It's a Sisyphean task, reflecting on something as fleeting as the "present." Yet it's striking how different the planet is compared to 2011-just five years ago-when Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror first aired on British TV. Comprised of three one-off stories-each posing menacing what-if scenarios sprung from the interplay between technology and society-the series painted a near-future that was both darkly entertaining and disconcertingly plausible.

Yet now, in the strange, lurid nightmare that is 2016, it's hard to tell if Black Mirror is more necessary than ever, or has been rendered completely redundant. Why bother scripting the nightmare when reality is just as bad?

As I sit down to meet Brooker in the corner of a Soho restaurant in London, I'm unsure whether to expect someone entertaining and inviting, or cynical and incredulous. To anticipate the latter doesn't seem unreasonable. One possible critique of Black Mirror, particularly from the audience of "self-obsessed millennials" who make up a substantial portion of its viewership, is the potential for it to get a bit "old man yells at cloud." Is it cultural criticism, or just a guy in his 40s complaining about how often we all check Instagram?

"I'm certainly of the generation that is inherently suspicious of the level of performance required on social media," Brooker concedes. "I'm old enough to feel like selfies are a bit weird, but I can understand it's probably more interesting to look back on-how you've changed across the years-rather than the crappy photos I tried to take of a sunset in 2006."

That said, he doesn't see the show as a vehicle for judgement, or damning of our relationship with screens. "I'm generally not anti-technology-I just worry about everything. I could worry about this tea scolding me, or gouging my eye out with this spoon," he says, raising a small silver teaspoon to eye level at an alarming speed.

If there is more at play than dystopian cynicism, is Black Mirror a misunderstood project? Does he mind, for instance, the extent to which its title has become a byword for any remotely sinister event involving technology? "I don't mind in that it's free publicity-anytime anything fucked happens people mention the show," he says. "If Samsung brings out a phone that explodes, people say, 'Oh, that's quite Black Mirror.' So if it's bad for the world, it's probably good for the brand!"

He laughs, but it's impossible not to recognize a hint of frustration in his voice when I mention the binary "technology goes wrong" view of the show some people have. "I think sometimes, when people are parodying it, they miss how self-aware it is," he says. "I know when it's being a bit silly."

It's an important distinction, given the 21st century's unstoppable, almost unknowable rate of progress. The idea of being lectured or chastised for behaving in a certain way feels alienating and reductive. Yet, crucially, Black Mirror has never really set out to make people look stupid; rather, its intention has always been to make people look like people. Flawed, bruised, and lacking the requisite software to cope with the threats and promises of the digital age.

Take "Be Right Back," surely the best episode of the second season-if not the entire show. It's a harrowing hour of television, in which a young woman clones her recently deceased husband using the blueprint of his identity, as spread across his social media activity. The episode isn't a lecture: The characters are left confused and morally conflicted, much like the viewers. Is this where satire has to turn in an increasingly extreme world? To the intimate and the personal?

"Possibly," Brooker nods. "I hadn't thought about it like that, but quite possibly, that's where you have to go if reality starts outpacing the grotesqueness of the fictional world."

This outpacing, of course, specifically alludes to the two starkly prophetic instances in earlier episodes of Black Mirror- series one's "The National Anthem" and series two's "Waldo Moment," both of which depict events with eerie similarities to real political events: Cameron's pig-fucking debacle and the rise of Donald Trump, respectively. Yet, while the parallels do bear striking resemblances, the episodes show more the mind of a writer who is fearful of ochlocracy and the corrosion of democracy. I ask him when this fear was born.

"How old are you?" he asks.

"25," I respond.

"I'm 45, literally 20 years older than you, you young fuck," he exclaims. "Look, one of the most formative things I can remember was when it looked like nuclear war was a real, likely thing. In the early 1980s, it looked like we were preparing, quite literally, to have a nuclear war. There were documentaries about it, dramas about it, and that's where I expected to die, as a result of technology and progress. I believed I would die in burning fireball. That's quite a traumatic thought-that stays with you-and I think that comes out in Black Mirror."

Brooker delivers this point with exactly the sort of flamboyant disdain he's perfected across years of panel show appearances. It's a sort of elaborately worded shoulder shrug that makes the oncoming apocalypse sound like he's just spilled coffee on his shirt.

"That's what worries me about my kids," he laughs, as though giddy at how terrifying the world may become for his children, aged two and four. "I don't worry about them losing all sense of reality in the year 2030 by putting on a VR headset that allows them to eat holograms, or whatever. It's more the big nuclear missiles sitting around in silos waiting for people to launch them."

For someone so politically fearful, or at least deeply distrustful, I'm curious as to whether or not he's been politically engaged. "Like anyone, I have my traditions-I grew up in a Labour household, and I definitely lean on the left side of things," he says. "But I think, as I've got older, I've gotten less sure of my convictions, or less sure of my opinions."

Britain's current political climate, he tells me, has him pining for the simpler days of Cameron and Clegg. "I miss the time, a few years ago, when everything was bland and 'meh'-when all politicians were the same, and everyone was boring and safe and stale," he muses. "I emailed Chris Morris after the referendum, actually, and said, 'You should do a one-off Brexit Brasseye -you know, a bit of fan mail-and he said, 'Well, the problem is it requires a form of authority to subvert for it to work, without that new tools are required.'"

He gets more animated the more he thinks about it all. "It does feel like we're at a really fevered time now," he continues. "You've got charismatic figures popping up on all sides, or monsters-depending on your angle. Then someone like Corbyn, who is kind of like an indie music act-like Arab Strap, with passionate followers, and you've got to admire that, but you just can't ever imagine them cracking the mainstream. I do admire that, but my pragmatic boring side says, Really? Do you really think that's going to work?"

Has work started on the 2016 wipe, then? "Put it this way," he says. "Normally we'd have our first writers meeting about the end of year show about now. This year, we had it in July."

Our time is nearly up, so my last question relates to the one Charlie Brooker project that, if you work at VICE, you are reminded of almost every waking day by tweeters and below-the-line commenters: Nathan Barley.

"The first thing to clear up," he interjects, as the words are leaving my mouth. "There is an episode of Nathan Barley where they produce an issue of Sugar Ape magazine called 'The VICE Issue,' which wasn't meant to be a direct comparison - it was a coincidence, literally just a coincidence. After it came out and people said, 'Ah taking the piss out of VICE magazine,' I thought, No! Of course people are going to think that! I think it weirdly even looked a bit like the old VICE logo. We had looked at VICE, of course, but it was never a direct piss-take.

"It's odd looking at that show now," he continues, now that the air is clear. "We worked out the storylines for a second series that moved away from the style magazine and was about his financial support being cut off, and he was facing cold, hard reality, which-had we known the term-would have been far more 'millennial.' He was left adrift in a world where things were crumbling, and he was less certain of things."

As we part ways, I'm struck by his hypothetical Nathan Barley-floundering beneath his failing ironic veneer. It says a lot for Brooker himself-not the failing part, but a writer often misread as a cynic, who is in fact simply trying to communicate an ounce of the bewilderment we surely all feel. Not that he'd say that himself, of course.

As he puts it: "I think it would be arrogant for me to assume I can change people's minds with a piece of fiction. I'm sure that has happened, but I don't know if I'm the person to do it."

Follow Angus Harrison on Twitter.

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We Spoke to Charlie Brooker About 'Black Mirror,' Fear, and the Future of Satire

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Photo: Chris Pizzello AP / Press Association Images It's a Sisyphean task, reflecting on something as fleeting as the "present." Yet it's striking how different the planet is compared to 2011-just five years ago-when Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror first aired on British TV.

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This review goes on about what Brooker has been known for and maybe why Fifteen Million Merits is the way it is.

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Welcome to our weekly video series Sight Unsound, where filmmaker and writer Ted Wilkes offers his own alternative theories on film, television and pop culture.
This week: 'Fifteen Million Merits', the second episode of the first season of Black Mirror. As Ted states, "In my eyes this storyline is the best to start with as it's the one which most accurately represents Charlie Brooker's own voice and the overall message he's trying to convey to us through Black Mirror... before it's too late."
And for those who prefer a long-read, here's the full text from the video...
If you haven't had the delight of seeing them yet, each episode of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is a frighteningly warped insight into a slightly altered version of our not too distant future that critiques the present day. In an interview Brooker professed that the series was like a "box of dark chocolates" - riffing on the famous quote from Forest Gump - you never know what you're going to get, but it's going to be bleak.

'Fifteen Million Merits' draws on the two things Brooker is best known for: video games and ranting.

The overall aesthetic of the episode gives the feeling that the occupants of the pod-like structure we're introduced to is akin to a large games console. Even our hero's name, Bing, is a reference to this. It's onomatopoeic - eerily similar to the noise that an Xbox or Playstation makes when you turn it on. Also, at the end of 'Fifteen Million Merits' we see Bing's assent from bike to on-camera commentator. The second of his rants is one which could be an extract from Brooker's own on the Channel 4 series Ten O'Clock Live. It could also be said to be a more complete representation of the themes and tone that are within the rest of the series; touching on several motifs which will pop up throughout. So this is where we're starting.

This will be no means a complete discussion of all of the themes and references within the episode. Brooker has packed so many interesting ideas surrounding control, freedom, creativity and technology in that I can't possibly cover them all in the time I have, but I've tried to highlight some of the more interesting ideas contained in the show.

The world of 'Fifteen Million Merits'

In 'Fifteen Million Merits' we're introduced to Bing who lives simply to pedal away on a static bike in front of a screen in order to earn 'credits' - the currency of the world he inhabits. He's in the fortunate position that he has inherited 15 million of them from his brother and thus can exist rather comfortably without having to worry too much about the consequences of the world around him.

The world is reminiscent of the 1970's sci-fi epic Logan's Run: sparse, technological and populated only by youthful inhabitants. It shows us a future where the developments in technology have created a more effective and pleasant form of social control, which the society seems to be in step with. Doing away for the need of any totalitarian structure and forcing them to obey.

Although not ever directly referenced, it can be inferred that there is a punishment that comes with refusing to peddle, as those in the pods wake up every day and continue to do just that without being coerced. Being a slave to the mindless, meaningless, mundane task of constantly peddling brings to mind the daily nine-to-five grind experienced by most in the western world.

It's a place forewarned by German philosopher and political theorist Herbert Marcuse. In One Dimensional Man and Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse warned that advanced industrial society would create false needs, which integrate individuals into the existing system of production and consumption via mass media, advertising and industrial management. Read: a terrifying dystopia similar to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World or the Compulsion Games title We Happy Few.

The populace of 'Fifteen Million Merits' are controlled because they want to be controlled. We all secretly crave fascism, but don't like it being called that. The most efficient forms of managing us are ones that we have accepted, or demanded.

Screens and simulation

The major theme within 'Fifteen Million Merits', and across Black Mirror, is our addiction to screens. The title of the series itself is a reference to the notion that once an LCD, tablet or phone screen goes dark we are left with only a dark reflective surface to gaze at. Brooker said he found this a cold and horrifying experience, forcing us to look upon ourselves at a time when we are not typically expecting to. It gives us a chance at a moment of self-reflection straight after the screen in front of us has ceased being active.

In this episode the characters are accompanied by a screen for their entire waking day. The bikes they grind away on have a large screen in front of them, which placates the rider during their toil. In their engagement with them they forget the blandness and absence of 'real' natural things around them. Even the pod they are allowed to rest in is surrounded by four walls of oppressive interactive surfaces. Screens are there, it seems, to keep the populace passive and obedient.

Seemingly the only thing that a rider is able to 'spend' the credits they earn from their labour besides food, is skipping the pop up adverts that pollute their vision at random intervals. What is interesting is that the penalty for not watching an ad is much greater than buying a single piece of most basic sustenance. The screen becomes a master, and it must be obeyed and looked upon at all times.

Away from day-to-day spending our characters use their hard earned credits to customise their dopples: the tiny avatars which represents them in the digital world.

As so much of their time is spent looking at screens these might as well be the actual representations of their physical self, and throws up questions surrounding Simulacra and Simulation as hypothesised by Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard claims that out current society has replaced all reality and truth with symbols and signs, and that the human experience is now only a representation of the real.

Who or what is the real Bing? Most of the interaction that he has with others takes place in the virtual world. The physical form that our characters have is seemingly only used to peddle (or create energy); bringing to mind films such as The Matrix where Baudrillard's questions are once again considered on screen.

However, the version presented to us in 'Fifteen Million Merits' is all the more terrifying as it has tangible links back to our own society with our obsession with the customisation of our online persona(s) across various media and the importance we place on creating and maintaining them. Frequently going as far as spending our own real earnings to alter them if not directly, then indirectly.

Representation

Brooker has written at length about the representation of the working class in the media and discussed it on his TV series Weekly Wipe. In 'Fifteen Million Merits' he continues this work with the depiction of a subordinate class to the peddlers who clean up the trash dropped on the floor behind their bikes.

In a game the peddlers play to pass the time, the yellow suited workers are the enemies in a First Person Shooter and are the figures of ridicule in the media that some watch on their bikes. What is interesting is that they are all shown to be overweight. This places them as unable to access the systems (the bikes) which will bring them out of their assumed poverty. A striking comment on the inability for many to gain a foothold in the processes which will allow for social mobility within society.

In the narrative this is a direct reminder that it could be worse and they need to continue with their labour, otherwise end up in a lower tier than they already are. What is interesting is that they are also encouraged to abuse and degrade those on a lower strata by the media, which spills out into both verbal and physical abuse in the 'real' world.

This is potentially a direct reference to the sensationalist poverty porn programming that was widely prevalent at the time of 'Fifteen Million Merit's release and which Brooker is on record as disagreeing with.
More next week in the second part of Beyond Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits. To make sure you don't miss an episode of Sight unsound, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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Beyond Black Mirror: 'Fifteen Million Merits' - Side One | Sight Unsound

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Welcome to our weekly video series Sight Unsound, where filmmaker and writer Ted Wilkes offers his own alternative theories on film, television and pop culture. This week: 'Fifteen Million Merits', the second episode of the first season of Black Mirror.

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This review goes above and beyond explaining every aspect of the show from sex roles, freedom, to some production.

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Black Mirror Reflections | Issue 97 | Philosophy Now

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Terri Murray illustrates Marcuse's critique of technologised society using an episode of the British TV series Black Mirror.

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This article looks at a couple of episode, but it shows you how the series have an overall theme of predicting the future.

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Netflix

Saying a TV show is "so good it's scary" is usually a figure of speech. With Netflix's hit sci-fi drama "Black Mirror," it takes on a far more literal (and terrifying) interpretation.

"This is futurism for futurists," Dylan Hendricks, program director of the Ten-Year Forecast at the research organization the Institute for the Future, told Business Insider.

Part of what makes "Black Mirror" so unsettling is that its episodes take place in worlds that could easily pass for our own, save for some leaps in technology.

Curious just how big those leaps might be, Business Insider spoke with Hendricks about which of the show's 19 episodes are closest to becoming reality.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Black Mirror."

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10 terrifying predictions from 'Black Mirror' that could become reality

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Saying a TV show is "so good it's scary" is usually a figure of speech. With Netflix's hit sci-fi drama "Black Mirror," it takes on a far more literal (and terrifying) interpretation. "This is futurism for futurists," Dylan Hendricks, program director of the Ten-Year Forecast at the research organization the Institute for the Future, told Business Insider.

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This short clips let's you see how she is chosen, and how she gets on stage. This clip unfortunately ends right before the judges force her to become a porn star (compliance).

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jessica brown findlay   anyone who knows what love is black mirror   15 million merrits

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Uploaded by funsizefourteen on 2014-03-14.

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This short trailer helps you understand the plot of the episode a little further.

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Here are the words, written down, of Bing's speech. If you click around it can help further explain what he was talking about.

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Black Mirror (Ft. Daniel Kaluuya) - Bing's Speech

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Judge Hope: Speak! / Bing: I haven't got a speech, I didn't plan words, I didn't even try to. I just knew that I had to get here, to stand here and I knew I wanted you to listen

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The demographics of this show is mainly young adults 18-29, according to IMBD.

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How Fifteen Million Merits creepily is who we are.

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How Fifteen Million Merits creepily is who we are.

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We as people are falling fast into an unknown future. Our pop culture and way we treat each other possibly isn't what we think.

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This summer, I was fortunate enough to learn of the existence of Black Mirror, a British television programme (that's how they spell it over there!), thanks to a friend who tends to be plugged into that sort of thing. Naturally I swam over to England and gobbled it up as fast as I could (may or may not have happened, you'll never know!). The series comes from insane genius Charlie Brooker, the same man who gave us the incredibly fun and brutal Dead Set, a zombie series told from the perspective of a Big Brother-style TV show. Dead Set was laced with Brooker's trademark chomping satire, and it impaled reality television and the spectacle that surrounded it.

Brooker's newer series, the six-part Black Mirror (it's technically two seasons of three episodes each), is even better. Delving further into intellectual and bizarre satire, Black Mirror makes us face the literal "black mirrors" we stare into for 12 hours or more each day: our computer, smartphone, and television screens. The anthology is part Twilight e-Zone and part Tales from the Gigacrypt, presenting various scenarios in which technology and society intersect, typically in horrible ways. Black Mirror is a warning of sorts, showing us what could happen if we get too addicted to apps or lose our sense of self and decency through anonymity over the internet.

Most of you Americans in the crowd probably haven't seen , and chances are you never will, even though DirecTV recently started airing the series exclusively for its subscribers. But you should make an effort to seek it out. And if/when you do, be sure not to miss last night's episode, " Black Mirror 15 Million Merits"; it's one of the most beautiful and haunting hours of science-fiction television you'll (n)ever see.

The episode follows a drone named Bing who-like many other members of the young, fit workforce of whenever the show takes place-spends his days riding an exercise bike and ingesting various forms of media to earn credits. (There is a class system, and less-attractive and unfit people wander the grounds playing janitor; those who can't hack the exercise bike are shipped off.) There's a break for lunch, there's some free time after the work-cycling is done, and there's not much else. Bing lives a mundane existence. And for Nihilists, this world is a mirror image of today's office bees, who punch in and punch out each day to make just enough money to order some pay-per-view, play a first-person shooter, and squeeze out a gob of toothpaste, then wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

There is a way out of all this monotony, however, and like the dream of so many of today's millions of dead-enders, it's through a televised singing competition that feels like a more punishing and gladiatorial version of American Idol. The rewards are great, the costs greater. And Bing's quiet life is shaken up by a beautiful woman, who compels him to spend 15 million merits-nearly all his funds-on an entry ticket into the competition for her. It's a hyper-real look forward into our celebrity-obsessed culture, and how the fame machine chews up and spits out attention-starved starlets who are looking for anything more than a normal life. It's frightening, to say the least.

Brimming with gorgeous visuals, a moving score, and a fully realized future that might not be too far off, there's never a moment where "15 Million Merits" is anything less than gripping, scary, and thought-provoking. It may make you want to hang yourself, it may make you want to throw your computer out of the window, it may make you want to quit your job, it may make you ponder the meaning of life, but its goal is simply to make you aware of such things so that we may avoid such an awful future. "15 Million Merits" wants you to look in the mirror and do something about it.

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Black Mirror's 15 Million Merits Is One of TV's Best Sci-fi Episodes That You'll Probably Never See

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This summer, I was fortunate enough to learn of the existence of Black Mirror , a British television programme (that's how they spell it over there!), thanks to a friend who tends to be plugged into that sort of thing.

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Why Black Mirror is called Black Mirror.

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Why Black Mirror is called Black Mirror.

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The creator of the show came up with the title of the show by relating to the public. Black mirrors are all of our technology screens.

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Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone for the modern age, minus the reassuring presence of Rod Serling. Its main writer, Charlie Brooker, has spent a lifetime buried in social media, pop culture and the worst advertising tat our generation has been able to spew out into the world, so it's not that surprising that the stories Black Mirror tells are a twisted, disturbing but painfully accurate reflection of modern times.

And one of the things it has a lot to say about is the way marketing works now. If you work in marketing then you'd be right to feel insulted by Black Mirror - it's abundantly clear from the six episodes that have been made so far that Charlie Brooker doesn't like you one bit. However, he's also got a lot of useful things to say that could actually help you understand your industry.
It's not a mirror, it's a lens
The name of the show, Black Mirror, refers to screens. It doesn't matter what the screens are. It could refer to your TV, your laptop monitor, your iPad, your phone, the screens showing adverts that you pass on the tube or the screen by your hospital bed playing a looped greeting by the health secretary. To be a human in Western civilisation in the 21st century is to spend your life looking at a variety of differently sized glowing rectangles, as Charlie Brooker himself has pointed out.

But in Black Mirror the screens don't just reflect ourselves back at us. Instead the technology is the way we see the world. In White Bear the crowds of spectator zombies view everything through the screen on their phone, a sight that you know not to be science fiction if you've been to a live gig recently. In The Waldo Moment the main character is better known as the blue, CGI bear he plays than he is as a person. In Fifteen Million Merits the protagonist's bedroom walls are simply huge screens, and he leaves that room to go and ride an exercise bike in front of other screens during the day - he's more likely to see his friends' cartoonish Wii Mii style avatars than the real people. As someone who has introduced myself to people at parties only to discover I speak to them daily on Twitter, I can identify with that.
What does that teach us?
Basically, we now live in the Matrix. From a business perspective the virtual world is now every bit as real to people as the physical world. The lines are getting blurrier all the time, with videogames building economies that can match some countries, and products like Google Glass aiming to bring augmented reality into the mainstream (which you can be sure marketing will take advantage of). Right now what this means is that your online presence is very much how people see your company, which means if you ruin your social media campaign, it's going to hurt.
Your life experiences are now a commodity
Two of the Black Mirror stories deal with this directly. In The Entire History of You, everybody is constantly recording everything they see and hear, with the ability to refer back to it at will. Your employers can ask to have a look through your recordings as part of a job interview, and then afterwards you can replay the job interview over and over, literally. Security guards at airports can check over your memory before letting you on the plane. If you're having an argument with your partner about something you said last week, you can go back and review the footage.

It's science fiction, but not quite as science fictional as it could be in a world where people regularly photograph their meals and upload them to the Internet, and employers think it's acceptable to ask to see your Facebook login information.

It goes a step further in Be Right Back, however, where companies are offering to take all your social media information and use it to create a computerised ghost of you, who talks exactly like you would while gently up-selling your grieving loved ones from a text chat interface up to a fully realistic robot replica. Oh, and there's already a real company offering the same service.
What does that teach us?
There's a popular saying about people who use social media. They aren't the customers - they're the product. Social media sites acquire vast numbers of users, who willingly pour all their information into the site, then they sell that information or use it to direct marketing at their customers. And their reach is broadening - with sites like Foursquare and Facebook's check-in option, combined with smart phones, these sites have access not just to your likes, demographic information, friendship network and relationship status, they can also track your movements and routines. With Google Glass on the way, the reach of these sites is going to go even further, to the point where services like the one in The Entire History of You aren't entirely implausible.
Dissent is a marketing tool
There's a lot to be said for George Orwell, but you've got to admit the guy thought small. In 1984 the gigantic evil dystopian government deals with rebellion by locking it in a room and torturing it until it doesn't want to rebel anymore. In Charlie Brooker's universe this is seen as an awful lot of unnecessary effort. In 15 Million Merits the protagonist is driven to despair by the society he lives in, and ends up bursting onto the stage of a Britain's Got Talent style show with a shard of broken glass pressed up against his neck. He then launches into a speech about all the terrible things that are wrong with the dystopia they're stuck in. The judges respond by giving him his own show.

In The Waldo Moment the main character doesn't even want to rebel against the powers that be, he just wants to make lots of knob gags, with the people around him shoving him onto the political stage, where his CGI bear becomes an icon for the disenfranchised. Soon shadowy Americans are talking about what a great political product the bear could become, and by the end of the show an Orwellian dystopia has been created - with blue bear pictures everywhere.

In Brooker's world you don't crush dissent, you repackage and sell it.
What does that teach us?
A huge part of the message the general mass of advertising gives us is "You're special. You're unique. Others might follow the crowd and do as they're told, but you're a free thinker, a rebel who doesn't play by the rules. Buy hair gel." We all want to think we're Luke Skywalker (okay, Han Solo) and nobody wants to be one of the anonymous storm troopers. This isn't new. Hell, in 1984 Apple was using 1984 to sell computers. See also this example of an ad where eating at McDonald's for lunch is portrayed as the first chapter of Das Kapital.

Even better, take this very article, which takes some of the most biting satire writing in the last couple of years and metamorphosises it into a list of hints and tips on how to be a better marketing manager. The world is becoming more and more like an episode of Black Mirror every day. Which is something David Cameron should worry about.

Attached Images:

License: Image author owned

Sam Wright is a freelance writer who always preferred The Outer Limits.

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What Black Mirror Can Tell Us About Modern Marketing

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Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone for the modern age, minus the reassuring presence of Rod Serling. Its main writer, Charlie Brooker, has spent a lifetime buried in social media, pop culture and the worst advertising tat our generation has been able to spew out into the world, so it's not that surprising that the stories Black Mirror tells are a twisted, disturbing but painfully accurate reflection of modern times.

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The show overall likes to mock how we are in the real world. The show is almost like a sign telling us to watch out.

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You either have no clue what Black Mirror is or you're a rabid fan of it.

THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS!

Black Mirror came out in the U.K. in 2011 and was recently released in the U.S. on Netflix. It's an anthology series, like The Twilight Zone, with every episode focusing on a unique story and cast. There're only 7 episodes so you can binge watch it in a day ( here's a guide to do that).

The series explores how technology is changing society. Charlie Brooker, the show's creator, explained Black Mirror as the reflection "you'll find on every wall, on every desk, in the palm of every hand: the cold, shiny screen of a TV, a monitor, a smartphone."

There's nothing like Black Mirror on TV. It's the smartest science fiction I've seen since Battlestar Galactica's reboot. It's also the first show to really get 21st century technology. Check out what Wired had to say:

These episodes don't scream "TECHNOLOGY IS BAD!!!" They're not too far removed from contemporary life, and they're not too familiar, either. Instead, they quietly, diligently burrow into the heart of what's so terrifying about tech to begin with: our tendency to make stuff that caters to our worst selves. And that, friends, is what dystopian sci-fi is all about.

This is why I'm so obsessed with Black Mirror - it reveals dark truths about human nature and warns us about what might happen if we aren't careful.

I'm going to expand on that and explore the psychology of Black Mirror. I won't spoil the episodes - they work best if you go in without knowing what to expect. If you've seen the show, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, hopefully this will convince you to give it a try. Just skip episode #1, "The National Anthem", because no one likes it. The rest are awesome though, I promise.

Without eye contact humans become inhumane

"The Waldo Moment" shows us how easy it is to insult someone when you're sitting behind a screen. We see the same type of stuff happen with Facebook bullying, Twitter GamerGate death threats, blog post comment flame wars, and Xbox Live hate speech.

What is it about the internet that makes it easy for humans to become inhumane? No eye contact!

Empathy, the ability to understand what other people are thinking and feeling, happens when we see other people. Here's how it works:

1. You do something hurtful.

2. You see that the other person is hurt.

3. Mirror neurons (empathy brain cells) detect their pain and make you feel bad.

4. You stop the thing that hurt the other person and (if you're nice) apologize for your actions.

None of this happens on social media. You don't see the emotional impact of your actions. Without eye contact, your mirror neurons have nothing to do. No empathy.

You can predict when this is going to happen using my formula for online rage:
(Anger + Anonymity) - Eye Contact = Internet Trolls.
Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon - the nasty effect (a.k.a. the best psychological term EVER).

What's the solution? I don't have a good one - it's very difficult to maintain the privacy of the internet while also promoting empathy. Creating self-governing communities where diversity of thought is rewarded and trolling is penalized is the best option we've got (for now).

Agreeing to a small thing makes it easy to agree to a big thing

"Fifteen Million Merits" takes on a lot of topics including reality TV, online avatars, freemuim games, and a little bit of Kickstarter. Dr. Jamie Madigan has covered most these including the psychology of video game avatars, Candy Crush, and Kickstarters.

What I want to highlight is the "foot-in-the-door technique". It's an old sales tactic that's grounded in science. Get people to agree to a small request and they're more likely to agree to a big request.

Maybe a friend doesn't have HBO and asks if they can come over to watch Game of Thrones with you. You have fun and it feels good to share the awesomeness of Westeros with them. A few days later, they ask you for your HBO Go password. This is where the foot-in-the-door technique kicks in. You're more likely to say yes to them because you want to stay true to what you've done in the past. I explore much more about this phenomenon (cognitive dissonance) in in my article on why people deny science and this episode of The Psych Show.

The foot-in-the-door technique is very profitable. President Obama's 2012 campaign made a lot of money by getting you to open their emails, donate a small amount, and then ask for more money later on. Kickstarters projects succeed because once you've donated money you're more committed to getting others to donate too. After you've invested a lot of time into a free game, spending some money to level up isn't that big of a deal.

Revisiting memories changes them

What if you had the ability to replay any experience you've ever had in your life? That's the premise behind "The Entire History of You", my favorite Black Mirror episode.

Memories aren't a perfect recording of what's happened in the past. Each time we think of something, new information gets combined with old memories. Think of memories like a live concert - the same song always sounds different depending on the venue, how the band is performing that day, and how we feel at the concert. There are infinite ways in which we experience the same memory.

How does this fit in with "The Entire History of You"? Even if you had a perfect recording of what happened in the past, you'd never have a perfect memory. Each time you'd play it back, your experience of that memory would change based upon how you're feeling, who's with you, and what's happened since the recording was made. The more you'd revisit the memory, the more it would change. Certain details would stick out, others would be forgotten, and false memories could easily be created if people lie about what's happening in the recording.

Relying on recordings also gets in the way of forming memories. That's why Instagramming every moment of your vacation is a bad idea - you're not going to be fully aware of what's happening around you. Practicing mindfulness and taking photos of certain details you really want to remember is a much better approach.

One more thing - obsessing over every detail of everything you've recorded, that could lead you to experience a symptom of depression called rumination.

You are what you post online

Can you recreate someone based upon their online identity just like "Be Right Back" (and while we're at Caprica)? Yes, for the most part.

Researching how people use the internet is difficult. Science is slow - research takes a lot of time to develop, get funded, cleared by ethics boards, and analyzed. Meanwhile, technology develops quickly. One day everyone's talking about Meerkat the next people have moved on to Periscope. But based on what we know now, the way you use the internet is a good reflection of who you are.

The strongest relationship seems to be personality and social media. The updates you post and the things you like are a good reflection of your basic personality - how much you want to be with people, how trusting you are, the stability of your emotions, your ability to organize, and your curiosity. Social media can also predict your gender, religion, sexual orientation, and how much you use drugs based on things like whether or not you like curly fries and thunderstorms.

While all this stuff is important, there's much more to you than your personality and demographics. What you've done in the past isn't always a good predictor of what you'll do in the future. Your actions are a complicated mess of what you've learned, how you're feeling, what's happening around you, and your immediate thoughts. Your internet profile doesn't have access to all that data, at least not yet.

Here's how this does impact you right now. Companies are already using Google searches to screen applicants. It probably won't be too long until your Facebook likes impact your credit score and your tweets influence your health insurance premium. Then there's the pesky question of who owns your social media after you die...

Being recorded changes your behavior

What happens when people take photographs and videos of you on their smartphones (like "White Bear")? Something called objective self-awareness.

This happens whenever you see your reflection in a mirror, realize you're being watched in a bank, or see a photo of yourself on social media. You compare how you think of yourself to how you actually are. Most of the time this leads you to change something. Maybe you fix your hair, act more professional, or get stuck thinking about a specific part of your body.

Technology is increasing objective self-awareness and with wearables, drones, and live-broadcasting gaining popularity, things are going to get worse. For more on this topic, check out my video on how technology is turning everyone into a celebrity and the paparazzi.

Self-awareness makes artificial intelligence alive

The most recent episode of Black Mirror, "White Christmas" touches on the ethics of artificial intelligence. It's a popular topic right now as Her, Chappie, Ex Machina, and the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron tackle similar issues.

The big question is this: how will we know if an artificial intelligence is alive? Futurist Martine Rothblatt, a pioneer in the field of cyber consciousness, believes objective self-awareness is the test we'll use to figure this out ( check out her SXSW keynote for more on that). Does the AI understand what it is? Does it value its life? If so, how does it want to live? Like all basic human rights, Rothblatt believes artificial life should have the choice to be in the type of state it wants to be. The problem is as cyber consciousness gets close to human consciousness, it's going to be very hard to know if the AI is mimicking humans or if it is really alive.

This moment of technological singularity could become the greatest test humanity has ever faced - how will be treat a species that is just as intelligent as us? I'm hoping for more of a Star Trek: The Next Generation outcome and less of a Terminator future.

There's a lot more I could say about Black Mirror, the psychology of technology, and where we're headed as a species. But I've had my say - what do you think? Are we doomed to live in a dystopian science fiction future or will all this technology usher in an era of peace and prosperity? Let's discuss in the comments below.

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Black Mirror Reflects the Psychology of 21st Century Technology

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You either have no clue what Black Mirror is or you're a rabid fan of it. THERE ARE NO OTHER OPTIONS! Black Mirror came out in the U.K. in 2011 and was recently released in the U.S. on Netflix. It's an anthology series, like The Twilight Zone, with every episode focusing on a unique story and cast.

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Bing accept the offer after trying to save Abi, and when he gets to the top he realizes maybe it isn't what it's cracked up to be.

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When Bing get's on stage, he voices his opinions about their corrupt society.

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S01E02 - 15 Million Merits Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/Fyoj/