Nosedive & Humanity: "The Most Human Human" Goes to...

For Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human” is a question of what it means to be human, not necessarily to be kind. He asks, “How, in fact, do we be the most human human we can be—not only under the constraints of the test, but in life?” (31). He uses the Turing test to analyze this, and modern day technology. However, Black Mirror offers a stranger analysis with “Nosedive” in its third season. For “Nosedive” too the technology allows a closer look at our human tendencies, both good and bad. “Nosedive” offers up a deceptively simple premise: what if social media determined your real world status? This pitch has been nagged to death in thinkpieces about millennials, however “Nosedive” portrays not the young teen desperate for attention, but the adult desperate for success.  

  

Lacie, the main character, begins as a slightly above average ranking out of 5, at a 4.2/4.3. She is constantly rating those in the service industry as a five in hopes for reciprocal ratings, taking carefully staged pictures for a platform like Instagram, in her pastel world and her pastel clothes. She is living in some satisfaction, but she obviously longs for more—told she could afford an apartment in a better neighborhood (with holographic marketing placing a husband cooking for her at the counter) if only her rating was higher. Then she begins to spiral into a desperation and anxiety as she is asked to be a maid of honor for her ex- friend turned star, one event after another cracking her perfect life into shards, until everything, as the title suggests, absolutely crashes. 

  

To follow her allows for a critical eye of humanity where any good thing is done must be done for a selfish reason, ie Lacie ranking service industry folks and smiling unflinchingly until they rate her back. She screams, yells, cries, goes through a rollercoaster from unlikeable at the beginning to almost likeable by the end for the audience. To be ranked makes every aspect of you public, and therefore any success is scraped out, individuality suppressed, and any bad emotions traded for a cute smile in a selfie. 



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Though this could easily have become yet another article criticizing technology, the technology is barely a backdrop for the human drama. Everyone in “Nosedive” is competing for the prize “most human human” as Christian does. However, they do so desperately, clawing for any measure of success, ironically forfeiting their true humanity. In pursuit of an ideal, a certain kind of success, humans have lost the means to do so—honest emotion, honest human kindness. Any kindness is for gain, any smile is for popularity, every individual seeks individuality yet becomes practically anonymous among the mass. The consequence of a simple click becomes real, a breakup keeping a fellow coworker from even entering the building as everyone had ranked him badly. Mob mentality becomes the rampant, snarling normality of cruelty behind the smile. 

  

This stark parallel between Brian Christian’s work and “Nosedive” offers a fascinating look at the phrase “most human human” and what kind of title that is to have or pursue. Can there be a middle ground between philosophical pursuit or desperate ambition? Is there a different possible meaning for the ranking of "most human human?"