THIS IS VERY BLACK MIRROR: digital narcissism and algorithmic vigilance in the composition of the contemporary ethical crisis
Black Mirror; Anthropotechnical; Ethical Crisis; Digital Narcissism; Algorithmic Vigilance.
In December 2011, a British TV channel broadcast the first episode of Black Mirror, a dystopian series that will soon be treated as a canon for Western artistic productions. Characterized by showing prognoses related to the advances in the field of digital technology production, this series, in twenty-four episodes today, built allegories that refer to the correspondence between developments of such advances and corrosion of ethical standards in contemporary times. We developed this thesis by looking at this correspondence. Our central analytical object were four episodes of the Black Mirror series. Our main objective in this research was to deepen reflection on the processes that connect or involve digital resources and the patent ethical crisis in modern liquid society (BAUMAN; DONSKIS, 2014). In this cognitive incursion, we highlight two negative effects that make the impacts of the crisis evident: digital narcissism and algorithmic statistics, both represented in Black Mirror, respectively in the episodes “Nosedive” and “The Entire History of You”. We chose the concepts of anthropotechnics and anthropotechnical exercises (SLOTERDIJK, 2018) as the appropriate tools to fulfill our objective. The South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han writings also anchor our intent, bringing to light to the presupposition that life in the Digital Sphere results in a context of absolutization of subjectivities and a consequent denarrativization of life.