Black Mirror “Smithereens”
(Spoilers ahead!)
In Season 5, Episode 2 of Black Mirror, the plot revolves a compelling (and befuddling) series of connections.
The episode opens with an identified man, who works for a rideshare company. He is seen picking up a passenger outside of the UK office of Smithereen, which is depicted similarly to real-life Twitter. He appears disappointed when she reveals she does not work for Smithereen. Later on, we discover he is purposefully hovering by the Smithereen office in order to pick-up a Smithereen employer, who he will kidnap and hold hostage. His goal is to get into contact with CEO Billy Bauer through the hostage’s connections and gain closure for the death of his fiancée, who died from a car accident caused by a social media notification. What seems to be an improbable plan is set into action when a Smithereen intern enters his car and reveals that he works at the company…
This episode calls into question the responsibility of social media companies to their users as well as their shareholders. On the one hand, social media companies want to create addictive products in order to retain users and profit from advertising partnerships. On the other hand, the very real consequences of social media addiction are harmful to our society because they reduce one’s awareness of our surroundings, the quality of one’s in-person relationships, and worse- can result in loss of life from distracted driving.
However, most compelling of all is the rideshare driver’s plan (later revealed to be Chris Gilhaney), which revolves around the connectivity of networks. Although not explicitly stated, the episode’s premise rests upon the strength of weak ties. The characters in the episode form one giant component because they are all connected via weak or strong ties. Our estranged and erratic driver, Chris Gilhaney, has an intuition that any given worker at Smithereen will be able to reach upward in a chain of command in order to connect him to the CEO, located in the US. His hunch is correct, as the kidnapped intern can contact the most senior person he knows, who can then contact the most senior person she knows. The intern contacts Hannah Kent from HR, who then alerts the police and other colleagues about the hostage situation. Then Hannah connects Chris with Smithereen executives in Silicon Valley, and soon the CEO himself connects to this deranged social media user in England.
The concept of six degrees of separation, the idea that all people are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other, is demonstrated here. Chris’ strategy of reaching one’s most senior colleague allows him to contact the CEO of a significant company with only 3 steps, or edges. In fact, research has been done on the degree of separation between two users in social networks, like Twitter. One 2011 paper “Degrees of Separation in Social Networks” by Bakhshandeh et al. found that the average degree of separation between two random Twitter users is 3.43. This is a remarkable number, especially considering the global reach of Twitter and the sheer number of users on the platform.
The premise of this episode is profound because of the concept of shared responsibilities and the chain of both personal connections and consequences. Chris blamed Smithereens for designing an addictive product that led to the death of his fiancée, indicting the engineers and business managers for causing an unpredictable externality. It is important to remind ourselves of the potential for harm that our actions have—if not for the intrinsic merits of behaving ethically, then at the very least to minimize the negative impact we can have on any given person, who lies just 6 connections away.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6516/c3f2d5c7a33440bccfc45d988c3088e2d2ba.pdf
