Black Mirror spoilers follow if you don't want to know that technology creates a lot of moral grey areas.
Many things about Black Mirror Season 4 rubbed me the wrong way, but none so much as what the show doesn't seem to understand about dating.
In the new season, "Hang the DJ" has already become one of the breakout episodes. It tells a very sweet love story about two people enrolled in a mysterious dating service. The two charming characters have an introduction, are split apart for a while, get back together, and are almost split apart again until they rebel and unveil their world's true nature.
Because of its sweetness and its ultimate positivity, "Hang the DJ" is basically this season's "San Junipero."
I admit it's a disarmingly cute little story with some interesting ideas, but the final twist seems to tell the exact opposite of what the episode spent so long trying to convey.
In the end, the two main characters flee this 'system,' only to find out that they were living in a simulation, which judged their actions for use in a real world dating app. All this so the two people could know that they're compatible. The last shot is the two characters' supposedly 'real' selves smiling at each other, meeting at their first date.
"Hang the DJ" seemed at first to be an earnest look at how modern dating can weigh on an existence. But the ending heavily implies the opposite; that dating apps and the algorithms they use ultimately will lead you to happiness.
I'm all for a closer, darker look at what modern dating can (and does) do to me, and the ending robbed me of that, giving instead a very shallow view of how we should think about dating apps.
Dating has seen an extremely sudden shift because of technology and Black Mirror squandered an opportunity to investigate where this path may take us.
However, what the ending suggests is that dating apps are great, depending on their algorithms. Because of this weirdo simulation, where everything is perfect except the number of times you can skip a stone, those real world counterparts can live happily ever after. All thanks to that algorithm! How great!
(Also, how truthfully can a dating app replicate a person in a synthesized world to see how they will interact with others? Seriously, how good would that questionnaire have to be? I've filled out hundreds of questions on OkCupid over the years, and it still doesn't know who I am.)
In trying to tell a story about how isolating and confusing modern dating can be, "Hang the DJ" instead ends that story suggesting with the suggestion that modern dating is fantastic because it will ultimately guarantee you will find the one for you. Eventually.
Dating has seen an extremely sudden shift because of technology, and Black Mirror squandered an opportunity to investigate where this path may take us. What does the impermanence of all these interactions leave our ideas of closeness? How does finding attraction in some Tinder pictures and a short bio change how we see others? When you have so many fish in that Bumble sea, how do you know when to stop fishing? These themes are all almost explored in "Hang the DJ," until the final shot tells us that none of that matters because dating apps work.
Finding love online is here to stay. Modern dating will only to continue evolve along this track, and so will our reactions to the carousel of names and faces that pass in front of us. Instead of actively investigating that and what this speed dating lifestyle does to us emotionally and psychologically, Black Mirror would rather tell a cute love story about how dating apps make people sad, but are also good at finding love.
According to Black Mirror, swiping is soul crushing, so I should keep swiping.
Topics Black Mirror Netflix Tinder
