The song of the summer is a fake pop star's jam
I can’t get the fake song from fake pop star Ashley O “I’m on a Roll” out of my head.
It’s from the apparently least-liked episode of the latest season of Black Mirror. I am here to defend it as a brilliant commentary on post feminist consumerism. Pop starlets are some of the most fascinating cultural phenomenon of our time.
The other great thing is that it is a cover of “Head Like a Hole” by Nine Inch Nails. Most twenty-somethings watching Black Mirror today don’t have the cultural memory for that song, if they know it at all.
In this age of internet lists, there seems to be a pressing need to put all the Black Mirror episodes in some sort of rank order. Let’s just enjoy them for that they are. The anthology format is something I would love to see more of- just like some stories are better as short stories than as novels.
The other great episode from the season- “Smithereens” had one of the best parts of the series. Tech CEO Topher Grace (when did Topher Grace become an amazing actor?) explaining to a social media user who tells him that he is evil for making his social addictive, and he responds:
It wasn't supposed to be like this. Our whole platform, I swear to God. It was like, it was one thing when I started it and then it just I don't know, it just became this whole other fucking thing. I mean, it got there by degrees, you know, they said "Bill, you gotta keep optimizing, you gotta keep people engaged. Until it was more like a crack pipe. It was like some kind of fucking Vegas casino where And we'd sealed off all the fucking doors. They've got a department All they do is tweak it like that on purpose. They've got dopamine targets and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I started it. There's nothing I can do to fucking stop it. I'm like some kind of fucking bullshit front-man now.
I’m not advocating, like some, that social media is the downfall for society. People forget the good it has done for marginalized groups. However, the idea that the people behind it have created something that they themselves can’t stop- those are the kind of chills that I love getting from Black Mirror.