Black Mirror

I said a phone goodbye to Catalin this morning. He was flying to Dubai and from there to China. He is a good friend of mine and it's strange to internalize the thought that the next time I will see him will be in two years. It's a fill in the gap grammar exercise. He was the one that inspired me to go to Budapest and take the CELTA and thanks to him I went to a summer school in England last summer. My little fishbowl spit out water and the drops turned into a rivulet flowing towards something I can't quite describe yet. I might leave the fishbowl too to China. Who knows?

And also thanks to him I started watching Black Mirror. We often exchange TV-shows recommendations. It fit to the collection of books that I've read lately: The Piano Player of Kurt Vonnegut, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, The Humans by Matt Haig and the one I've recently started, The handmaid's tale written by Margaret Atwood..

I was caught up from the first episode. It teeters on the edge of contemporaneous mundane realities:  people who would rather film a crime than intervene, the alternative virtual avatar created by social networking services, hypothetical memory chips, mass media manipulation, animated cartoon republic presidents etc. To be honest the whole Netflix series (made of distinct episodes without interrelated stories) is a bit bleak reminding me of The Twilight Zone, but it is smart story-telling which creates a sort of ripple echo effect in the mind of its viewers.
I was especially impressed by White Christmas episode: people (who made you feel pain) being blocked like on Social networks, becoming grey shadows in front of the others...and not being able to know, to apologize, to...And the mind of people becoming computer intelligence, secretarial voices...

I also recommended it to Ab., R. and a couple more and now I am writing about it.
It's a different emphasizing of my linking and also a sort of checking up if the others have a similar opinion.

What is the concept behind it? Well, Charlie Brooker, the shows creator, said:

“If technology is a drug – and it does feel like a drug – then what, precisely, are the side-effects? This area – between delight and discomfort – is where Black Mirroris set.” 

** found this on the FB page of a friend: