Since the introduction of Social Media on the internet, reality as we know it has changed. We seem to put more effort into polishing our online personas, creating engaging content on our profiles and posting manipulated photos than tending to our actual lives and the people in it. We much prefer typed conversations and the anonymity of the screen and are losing our appreciation of the human voice, the human touch and relationships in general. Our obsession with Facebook, Twitter and the likes has reached new heights; privacy is a thing of the past. A lot of us still haven’t grasped the vastness of the internet and the speed at which it moves; we still tend to think of our Facebook profile as friendship books, like the ones we had in pre-school. We are naïve to think that our online friendship books are our own private property and that the only people invited to take a peak and leave a loving message are indeed our closest friends and family members. Facebook has exceeded the idea of Big Brother is watching you.
In a sense Facebook has made life extremely easy for us. Making friends has never been so simple; “add friend” and the rest is history. In real life you might be too shy and awkward to approach someone for a chat; Facebook allows you to hide behind your online persona and, in not actually being face to face with the person you are trying to strike up a conversation with, you have a lot more time to obsess over your messages, comments and responses, allowing you to perfect yourself. We’re almost certain that the impression you have of your Facebook friends online would be a whole lot different to the one you would get of them in reality. A lot of the people on your friends list probably aren’t even real to you. Sure, you can see their photos, their comments, their status updates… but in our minds, they’re just Cloud inhabitants, another phantasmagoric presence. As easy as it is to make these surreal friendships, it’s even easier to discard of them. There are many trends on Facebook and one is the ritualistic “Facebook Cleanse”, where people delete and block their friends regardless of what that might mean for the person blocked. What do you care? It’s not like it’s real; it’s not like you physically or mentally hurt the person you’ve blocked. Not yet, anyway.
This is one of the ideas Charlie Brooker explores in his Black Mirror special White Christmas. The first three “acts” of the episode trick us into believing that Broker has for once taken a softer stance on his technological paranoia, when in fact he was just setting us up for a frenzied finale. The episode opens to what seems like a landscape of the arctic tundra with not a soul in sight. The camera scans this isolated, depressing winter wonderland before luring us into a little cabin, the home of Joe Potter (Rafe Spall) and Matt Trent (Jon Hamm). Their situation is a bit reminiscent of Desmond Hume and his hatch in the hit-series Lost. The first conversation between Potter and Trent reveals that they have been stuck in the cabin with just the bare essentials for over five years, working on a job that isn’t detailed any further. Their relationship seems tense at best and Potter seems genuinely untrusting and confused by Trent’s presence. Trent is preparing a traditional Christmas dinner in the hopes of breaking the ice with his long-term colleague Potter, who shows no interest in the festivities, let alone a jolly good chat. This is our first clue - two guys that have lived together for five years haven’t yet had a proper heart to heart? That just seems odd.
Trent goes out of his way trying to get Potter to open up; the conversational draught between them is starting to get to him. With nothing but the boundless snow surrounding them, Potter finds it hard to conjure up the inspiration for conversational topics, asking Trent, “What do you want to talk about?” Finally Trent finds the opportunity to get to know more about Potter and the circumstances that brought him to the cabin: “Why are you here? No one ends up here without things going to total shit for them out there.” You can tell by Potter’s bewildered expression and his defensive responses that Trent has finally touched up on a sore point. But Potter is not yet ready to share; instead he turns the tables, asking Trent about how he talked himself into trouble in a roundabout way. Trent describes himself as having been a type of guru, at which point the viewer is bracing himself for the explanation to follow, knowing full well that Brooker’s idea of a guru will be nothing far from twisted and scary.
This episode is rightly called a “special” in that its pace and revelations move a lot slower than in previous episodes. Trent lets Potter in on what he did to land in the isolated cabin. Trent acted like a bit of a Hitch character, only he used avant-garde technology to help his “gawko” friends into the pants of non-suspecting women at Christmas office parties. With the use of his implanted Zed-Eyes, Trent watches his awkward friend Harry get ready to finally crash an office party through a live stream. Trent has all the information he needs to give Harry the confidence to play the game by checking the online profiles of the people at the party. Trent is nothing but a voice in Harry’s ear, guiding him and talking him through every stage of entering the party, choosing his love-interest and finally chatting her up.
Harry ends up in a private corner of the party with Jennifer, who turns out to be a bit of a social recluse. Trent urges Harry to win her over with “outsider talk”, seeing as she’s obviously responding to having found a kindred spirit in Harry. As she slips off to the bathroom, he shares his doubts with Trent: He feels uncomfortable with the situation and feels as though he is cheating, knowing that if it weren’t for Trent he never would have worked up the courage to approach Jennifer. Overwhelmed by it all he insists “it’s a bit of a nightmare having you, all of you, in my head, watching us, telling me what to do.” Overhearing the conversation Jennifer assumes Harry is having a conversation with himself and the voices in his head. Now, you’d think Jennifer might be worried about Harry and his imaginary friends, but it’s actually quite the opposite; she seems rather excited by the idea of spending the night with Harry & co.
Potter’s first response to Trent’s story is to ask, “Did you watch? When they went back to hers and got up to whatever they got up to...did you carry on watching through his eyes?.” Trent is offended by the question but as he continues his story we see that he did in fact continue the live stream – him and at least five other guys eagerly awaiting a flash of boobs. Trent and his weird club were expecting a sexy show but what they got instead was a scene of horror unfolding right before their eyes. Instead of coming to Harry’s rescue, they shut down their system and wipe any evidence of the footage. As Trent makes his way downstairs to get rid of a trashcan full of possible links to his online dating guru-ship, he accidentally wakes up his wife. Unable to come up with any valid excuse, Trent tells the truth causing his wife to lose it and block him. Only this isn’t Facebook; this is real life: “It drives you crazy. Once they hit that button, that's it, you're locked out. End of conversation. You can't hear or speak to them. They can't hear or speak to you. Every time you look at them, there's just this...anonymous shape.”
But that’s not all there is to Trent’s story. His former job consisted of breaking-in “Cookies”. The Cookie is a widget that is surgically implanted into a person’s brain, “shadowing, soaking up the way this particular mind works.” The extracted Cookies are then used to perform tasks based on the client’s already existing knowledge, preferences and professions. It all seems rather impressive and practical when no further thought is given to the widget as anything other than an object. However, as it turns out, the Cookie is perfectly aware of the happenings and still feels as though it is a breathing, human being with emotions and thoughts. Their natural reaction upon “awakening” as a Cookie is to panic, protest and plead the unapologetic Matthew to put them back inside their own bodies. This is when Matthew slowly starts the psychological torture necessary to get his clients’ copies to perform. The Cookie is reluctant to play slave to the real versions of themselves, despite Matthew’s arguing that it would just be easier to comply.
Matthew has control over their perceived time. This means that he can fast-forward time, making the Cookie feel as though they have been trapped in the all white-control room for months on end. After six months of being stuck in the control room with nothing to do and no one to talk to, the Cookie will literally beg to do the work, allowing the actual client to enjoy a care-free, programmed life. From within the control room, the Cookie operates every machine in the clients’ house and keeps track of their schedules. Still behaving like real people with given bodies, you can see that Cookies are affected by their imprisoned lives and can read the sorrow on their faces as they listen to all the events the real versions of themselves are attending. Potter is disgusted by Trent’s former profession, calling it “slavery” and “barbaric”, seeing as the Cookie believes itself to be a real person. Trent is surprised by Potter’s empathy, calling him a “good man”. Potter doesn’t seem comfortable with this description of himself and after a bit of gentle probing from Trent’s side, he finally opens up and recounts the events that landed him in the cabin.
Knowing Brooker and his technological, anti-humanitarian premonitions, we should have figured how Potter’s story ties in here. Perhaps it was the hopes of a happy ending in celebration of the merry season that coaxed us into believing that maybe, just maybe, we had seen the worst of it and maybe, just maybe, Brooker was going to let us embrace the New Year without nightmarish visions of a robotic future. Don’t worry; the Christmas season turns the best of us into fools brainwashed by advertising and happy endings. But not Charlie Brooker; he’s prepping us for White Christmases to come.