If you have been playing free penny slots while watching the Nosedive episode of Black Mirror, then you may have missed the story and got confused with its ending.
Today, we will talk about this episode and explain what the ending is all about.
WARNING: Major spoilers ahead!
The Story Line
The story follows the life of the leading character named Lacey. She lives in a world where everybody gives every other person a rating between 1 and 5 stars, with five being the highest. They rate each other using their phones in real time.
Due to this rating, the average rating of an individual determines how other people treat you. Your rating is visible to everybody. A low rating means you cannot even find a job, and a high rating means you can get to spend time with the affluent, and you also get more opportunities for a job and get discounts.
The Dream
Lacey’s score is 4.2.
She wants to live in a bigger house, but she cannot afford it. However, if she can manage to bump up her average rating to at least 4.5, she could get a discount of 20%.
It is at this point when an old friend of hers invites her to be one of the bridesmaids on her wedding. This friend is rich and is surrounded by “quality people”. Lacey sees this as an opportunity to bump her average rating and agrees to go. If she can “wow” them with her speech, they may give here high ratings.
The Conflict
Lacey’s problem begins on the day she has to leave to go to the wedding. And here is a sequence of what happens:
- She gets into a fight with her brother, and her brother gives her a low rating.
- She rushes outside the house and bumps into a neighbor, spilling coffee in the neighbor’s shirt—she gets a low rating.
- She gets late for her ride, and the driver gives her a low rating for that.
- At the airport, she misses her flight, gets into a heated argument with the attendant, and gets a low rating.
By the time she gets to the wedding, her rating diminishes into 3.1, and the wedding area only accepts guests with a rating of 3.8 and higher.
She finds a way to sneak into the wedding, make a speech about hypocrisy and really makes a mess out of the entire situation. The guests rate her badly, and she gets imprisoned.
The end of the story shows Lacey and another prisoner scream and curse each other, showing us that they are finally free of this rating system.
Summary
The story is a great tale about how people today seek validation through social media—Facebook, Instagram likes, and all that. The episode tells us how this kind of mindset destroys us from the inside, and how it controls our behavior just to be liked by other people.
The moral of the story is that we should take the red pill—the reality—and be real, with no regard to what other people say about us. It shows that we can live better and more fulfilling lives with higher self-esteem if we just stick to what we really are.