[Review] Black Mirror: Fifteen million merits (S01E02)

There is a profound sense of sadness which pervades this episode. The dialogue is scintillating in some scenes, the story is not preachy, and it touches on a host of contemporary and old issues.

'Either... or...'

The characters are given two choices at many instances in the story. Either you go back to the back-breaking bike or you lose your own identity and become part of the enterprise. The episode is more about the effects of centralization or monopolization on our society, With a monopoly, there are greater ways of control on your life. Abi is only a 'good' singer and since all slots for singing were taken she wouldn't make it as a singer. Who decides the number of seats? The characters are forced to watch disgusting adverts if they cannot pay to skip them, even if they have to go through mental trauma doing it. This is opposite of a free market democracy which emphasizes more choices and organic development of solutions to existing problems. In a monopoly only those solutions are developed which benefit the monopoly.

'It is not fair!'

It is shown that one contestant is unable to get a chance to showcase her skills because she has an unlikeable personality. The screening round of the contest is totally arbitrary and depends on what would sell (someone ethnic? someone dark-haired?). Bing and Abi decide to enter the tournament because they expected a fair treatment. Instead both are assimilated into the system contrary to their own expectations. Bing's passion was against the system itself--he had worked tirelessly to enter the contest again--but he chooses to become a part of the stream, someone who benefits from the monopoly. Abi wanted recognition for her singing talent, but instead she accepts to become a porn star on the stream because she was deemed beautiful.

"I pay for this!"

The story dwells on the theme of consumerism, populism and socialism. The show was not able to deny Bing because the audience's engagement with his speech was high. Similarly Abi's audience engagement was high because of her beauty, so she was also not denied. It is shown that people buy avatars or other such virtual 'stuff' with their hard earned merits, and it becomes a source of joy for them. It celebrates being a consumer instead of being a producer, because a consumer needs no qualifications. The currency which signifies a token of value and which should have been used as a proxy for exchange of goods, instead has become a token anyone can earn solely by riding a bike. Anyone without any skills can now earn this currency which has basically become like free money. So instead of meritocratizing a skill based on its intrinsic value (if it is more valuable than anyone else having that skill), the system has instead distributed this currency to everyone regardless of who deserves how much. This is the problem in a 'one size fits all' approach which only a centralized system can do. So every person is now a consumer, and they get to dictate how the 'producers' should produce. Since the consumers are all equal (free money), the most aggressive consumers will be able to dominate over the other consumers, and there will never be any incentives to the producers for skill or quality. Hence the system all goes down into a degenerative spiral. This domination of the aggressive consumers in an 'equalized' society is shown when the decisions of the populist judges are on the basis of the audience's reaction.

"I just want something real to happen"

This is the overarching theme of the Black mirror series. Technology is often a mapping of a gamut of signals from the real world to a depleted subset of monochromatic signals inside the system. In the real world, the array of information available to us is limitless. But technology being inferior in definition and modeling, can only converse in a subset which humans deem important. Here humans deem profitability as important, so out of those 'n' reality bits, only a few are chosen as worthy of selection, like looks, or passion. The rest of the spectrum is discarded, tossed away as 'unworthy'.
Reality is what makes the world beautiful. The rest of those attributes make up for that missing reality. That is why technology comes across as bland or monochromatic. Bing's realness is what makes him splurge on avoiding his consumeristic tendencies, gifting his merits to Abi, and then using his merits to try to expose the system's exploitation to everyone. It is his realness that makes him fall in love, his yearning for beauty which causes him to search for it in even a toilet. The system keeps trying to engage with him according to a 'one size fits all' pattern, but his realness won't allow it. It shows how insufficient technology is when it comes to interacting with the real world. Technology is not a substitute for reality.

"Stop there or I'll do it!"

A monopoly encourages arbitrary constraints on people and increases discontent. It also shows that an unbridled power foments revolution. In one instant Bing loses everything, his love and his merits. Because of how unfair it was, he works hard to expose the system to everyone. Generally this is how the world's history has been, a topsy-turvy never-ending chain of upheavals. There is a concerted effort to centralize control, then time's relentless march stops this centralization, leading to a chaotic phase of decentralization, and so on.

"Still I'll be there for you"

Love is a major theme. It begins with the song which Abi hums in the bathroom, and it is about "they can't see you like I can". Bing, lost in the mirage of the unreal, glimpses and immediately recognizes beauty. The song is a desert rose, untouched by the compressive, compartmentalizing algorithm or blinding light of the screen. Abi is fresh into the system, she is still real, still true, still innocent. It is not her physical beauty he is attracted to. It is the genuine smile she gives him, the true joy he feels in a selfless act of giving her everything he owns, the unanticipated and spontaneous holding of hands. The story makes the distinction how a true emotion between two real people is different from the 'fake' emotions that is evoked by the screen. The emotions that are programmatically evoked from people are from the seven sins from the Bible ie pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth.
But unlike the traditional portrayal of love, the story treats it real--just like any other emotion. Love is not all-conquering, it is not undying, it has a price. The price was the promotion of a consumer to a producer, perhaps the highest price that the system could give.
After Abi is assimilated into the system, it is his genuine feeling for her that makes Bing plan the expose. Just like the song, he wants to be there for her. He runs the marathon, he watches the adverts, and skimps and scrapes and finally makes it back to the stage, only to realize that Abi is nowhere closer than before. When it finally hits him that he is just another 'performer', he gives up and accepts a position in the same system.

"...bigger cells and bigger screens..."

Much of the story is about the authoritarianism of a monopoly. After his outburst, Bing moves into a spacious 'cell' and here he has--ironically--a much bigger screen which does not play annoying adverts. He looks much healthier, and he places his shard of glass in a slick box. The story goes on to show that even a revolutionary piece of glass, with which he had intended to kill himself, could be changed into a pretty souvenir, a gimmick prop for his stream. When he says that he still wants to kill himself on the screen, we feel that he is lying, that he has sold his soul to the algorithm in exchange of comfort. And so he bids farewell forever first then changes to 'till the same time next week'. A monopoly can change a person by giving them the right incentives, however motivated they might be.