I am not optimistic for a better world.
As the world melts down throughout the past week, the past year, the election results, the protests, the chaos, the riots, the social media- The Social Dilemma? See what I did there?
Horror writer Brian Keene sent out a Tweet regarding this new documentary on Netfix, he specifically described it as his prediction for the most terrifying film of 2021. Hyperbole? Just a recommendation? Hard to tell- because we all have different tastes and different thoughts and different considerations. So let me give this one a watch and share my thoughts.
Is it terrifying? I believe it is- for so many of the reasons that one would expect, for so many of the details that it shares, and what so many people are going to take away from the film itself. It is even more frustrating in that the film is- almost ironically- exactly what it sets out to warn you against. It tells you nothing that you don't, deep down, already know about Social Networks- how the algorithms work, how advertising are manipulating all of us, how our internet experiences are changed depending on our clicks, our likes, the amount of time we stare at one photo or one video or one app over another and another. How it is so obviously someone out there who is to "blame" in the end of all this.
The Social Dilemma attempts to explore the influence of Social Media platforms on our lives, our ability to communicate with one another, and our ability to interact with a series of interviews engaging industry insiders who initially designed these very same algorithms that now threaten to overwhelm us and lead us into dystopia. They talk about the profit motive, the lack of ethical guidance, the pinging interest that drives their own careers- they discuss the responsibility of Social Media and how they use their data collection, how they collect revenue, how they trade their real product, how we catch up to the technology that is evolving faster, spreading wider, growing beyond our abilities to even comprehend, much less control.
Throughout the interviews, the film-makers weave in a dramatization of a family and how it is affected by Social Media. It shows a young teen girl who is unable to give up her phone for even a single dinner, a teenage boy who is quickly being radicalized by conspiracy videos and websites, another who is terrified of the affect social media is having on her siblings, a mother who seems distant, and so on so forth.
And it tries to leave us with a "hopeful" message in it's closing moments.
Unfortunately, it's a message that is every bit as manipulative and destructive as the one they are warning us against. They tell us that we need to start agreeing that there is a "truth", but none of them can really agree on where that "truth" comes from. They say the business model is evil because it focuses on a profit motive, the next speaker says that we need to use the profit motive to change the business model, another speaker things the government needs to step in with laws, another one reminds us that the people attempting to sway our elections to BECOME the government, and the list goes on and on and on.
I respect Mr. Keene as an author and I follow him for his views on the world and his observations. It may come as a shock, then- in that I don't often AGREE with Mr. Keene. What a boring world that would be for me if I were only sold the things that I was already going to agree on, if I were only expose to the things I "liked", or just lived in an echo chamber 24 hours a day. And, much like him, I am going to go out on a limb and declare that the Social Dilemma may just be one of the most terrifying movies I watch in all of 2021.
8 out of 10
