Jo Bell, How the internet is changing the way we grieve, The Conversation
In this article by Jo Bell speaks about virtual living. After a loved one dies people go on sites like facebook and can fight there loss online. She says that virtual memories are taking over for physical objects during morning. People also have a virtual footprint that is left behind after death. Interests, pictures and videos are all saved which can help people morn deaths of loved ones.
Jean Baudrillard, Part 1 on Postmodernity, Purdue.edu
According to this article the postmodern world has become dull and without meaning. Its a consumers world that consumes everything including itself. Baudrillard says that the world is losing touch with what is real. The mass market products reduced all take humans away from what is real in the world.
Jean Baudrillard, Part 2 Simulation, Purdue.edu
This part explains how humans have lost touch with the difference reality and the simulacrum. Instead of buying things people need society has moved to buying things because of a commercial image. Baudrillard says this keeps people one step away from what is real in the world.
Annika Blau, Social Media and the Hyperreal, Medium.com
Blau brings up Baudrillard and tries to help explain what he writes about the simulation and simulacrum. She explains how pictures are part of a simulation and that we can tell the difference between a picture and the real thing. This is the lower order of simulacrum and in the higher order it becomes much more difficult to tell what is real and what is not.
Episode Analysis
This is one of the saddest episodes that black mirror has to offer because it all revolves around grief. After Ash dies Martha is absolutely heart broken and refers back to different ways of remembering him. Just like the article written by Bell, Martha is able to remember by txting ash that using all his online interactions to come up with a simulation of what he would actually say. This part of the episode is very weird because it seems like this could be done in todays society because everyone has so much about themselves on the internet.
Baudrillard’s articles relate to the episode in a different way then Bell’s. In the first part the article speaks about how people are losing touch with what is real in the world. This could not be more true for Martha. She is not to blame with terrible things happening to her but the company that sells the grieving service is more to blame. It seems so wrong to make money off of someones heartbreak and it is companies like this that consumes the consumer.
Ash is probably in the higher order of simulacrum. When the viewer and Martha first see him he is indistinguishable from the real Ash. But as time goes on Martha starts to realize that it is just not him and a copy of him. This reality might not be as far away as people think. VR is starting to become huge and the high quality VR look extremely real. Once they become indistinguishable from reality which reality is real?
Questions?
Do humans have a ethical responsibility to not create something so indistinguishable from being real?
Could looking at social media profiles, messages and videos really help with grief or is it just prolonging the sadness?
Black Mirror Blogs 