Talk about worst nightmare come to life. This episode is all about what our “big data meets big brother” reading talking about–a rating system where people rate one another and that rating has direct impacts on your opportunities in society. Specific experiences are allowed or disallowed based on your ranking–express lines for 4+ ranked folks, better rentals, reserved seats on flights…
Is it creeping you out yet or is that just me?
It would be ignorant to say that our society doesn’t rank folks; we have a-list actors and b-list, and c-list… we have social media influencers that directly gain social capital from ‘likes’, there are ranking sites for professors, for restaurants, for using uber (I’m a 4.99, if you were wondering), and for our credit with credit scores. The list goes on but I think I’ve made my point. The biggest thing that this episode explores that isn’t currently in our ‘today’ is the ease at which someone’s ranking can be known, and the ease at which someone can rate you without interacting with you at all.
Something that was brought up in the aforementioned article and then shown during the episode was the lack of situationality–Lacie tries to explain her situation for her current ranking, but the context doesn’t matter, only the number does. This drama is played out across Lacie vying to raise her score (and even working with a consultant to do so), and Naomi, an old childhood friend that invites her to her wedding. It comes out that both women are attempting to use each other to up their rankings, showing quite clearly that whatever genuine friendship they had has been overtaken by the ranking system.
While I honestly couldn’t stomach watching most of this episode outright (I get secondhand embarrassment so bad, so, so bad), to me, it weirdly ended on a high note–when Lacie and an unnamed man yelled at one another, it seemed Lacie was for once really speaking her mind, or more so stopping the self-censorship she’d been cultivating for the sake of ratings.
While we do rank so many aspects of our lives already, my question is–when does our ranking and rating flip into the ‘too much’ category? Are we already there?
Media Musings 