Black Mirror has in the past been a schlocky work of hack B.S. And I'm not too hopeful that this season will be any better. It has mostly played to a bandwagon jumping, non-thinking person's understanding of technology and its effect on our lives. And it regularly misrepresents technology as it exists. Often the most "profound" points it tries to make depends on technology working incorrectly or on technologies that don't (and probably can't) exist so it can jam its ham-fist into the egos of tech-illiterate culture makers.

Also, you can stop iOS from auto-correct "fuck" by creating a contact in your address book for you good friend "Fuck Fucking Fucker Fucked."

Back to seriousness, techno-pessimism is a played out, ignorant, and morally-bankrupt family of speculative fiction.

“...but if a Black Mirror episode doesn’t contain a moment of technology-related dread, does it deserve the label?”

Which explains hordes of Black Mirror watchers searching for the “real” message in “San Junipero.” Technology just can’t be your friend!!1!

@1: I’m sorry Charlie Brooker rejected all of the scripts you submitted, but if you actually believe “technology working incorrectly” was the basis of many episodes, then there’s little question as to whether you really understood what he’s trying to do.

Anyone editing the Stranger these days? First sentence in post: "what if phones but too much."

3: I suspect that was intentionally written like that to be "cutely" awkward.

1: Sour grapes?

@4 Possibly, but that's what years of over-hyped, dumb-downed sci-fi masquerading as "deep" will do to a person.

Well no, Charlie won’t be put up in the pantheon with Borges, Beckett and Kafka any more than will Rod Serling. But Black Mirror is not a simplistic anti-tech jeremiad. It’s anti human vice and weakness, made worse when we fail to morally evolve to match technological development.