Podcast joint host Hoho as he discusses the rimting Netflix original series Black Mirror. Now Here he is broadcasting from the mobile studio. Welcome to Black Mirror Podcast and as always, I'm your host, ho Ho. So Hey, I was doing I hope you're doing good. I really do. Today we are revisiting season three, episode six, entitled Hated in the Nation. But before we go into that, I have got an update that I think is absolutely
amazing. And I know I'm probably behind the times on this, considering this is May May, but season six is due to release next month, in June of twenty twenty three, so I am super excited. Now I'm still going to complete the revisited Okay, I have a couple episodes in season four one, two, three, a few episodes in season four that I'm wanting
to cover. Of course, we have the interactive film bandersnatch I'm going to be revisiting, and then it looks like one episode in season five and then we'll be getting into season six and there are five episodes in that one. I'll tell you what I'm excited about that, I really am. I do have the titles right here in front of we have Episode one, Joan is Awful to Locke Henry, three Beyond the Sea, four Mazor Day, and then five Demon seventy nine. Who that one sounds who? Yeah, doesn't
it even seventy nine? But anyway, you know, there's I got. I got high hopes for season six. I really do, you know, because you know from what I heard of the onset whenever they did decide to go ahead and do a sixth season, is that they really upped the production value from my understanding, quite a bit. So you know, the whether it be cast, whether it be whatever. I have no idea. I don't know what this is going to translate to. I really don't, but
either way, I'm excited to see what happens. Is that on it is on? Okay, okay, good, So I'm excited. I really am this the five episodes, which I think is actually I don't know, that's kind of what I was expecting. Well, I was kind of expecting six, But anyway, doesn't matter. So let's go ahead and get into this
episode. Now. It really was a toss up between which one I would is going to do, you know, Men against Fire and Hated in the Nation, But to be perfectly honest with you, I settled on hated in the nation because of just the state of things right now. Okay, because with the lockdowns and with us being forced into you know, the only type of interaction that we get was basically through digital, through social media whatnot. It just it seemed right to me to talk about this episode versus men against
Fire. I mean, it really did. Now before we get into you know, before we go any farther, you know, definitely spoiler alert if you have not watched this episode, I highly recommend it. I really do. It's a great episode, and this one really well. Okay, let's put it this way. Okay, Now, I'm not that old, because I don't like to think that I am. You know, it's actually amazing because the older you get, the older old becomes, you know what I mean. You know, I mean when I was a kid, you know,
twenty was old, thirty was ancient. Now I'm forty, and it's like I thinks so bad, you know, I mean, granted, my body talks to me. You know, I can't do the same things that I used to did. Pain is different sometimes it constant. You know, you really discover that, you know, maybe I shouldn't have done that whenever I was younger. You know, you feel the stupidity of your youth as
you get older, you really do. But my point is, you know, in my day, you know, before the digital era, you know, you talk back to somebody, there were consequences, real world consequences to you running your mouth, to you saying something that you see shouldn't say, you know, I mean, yeah, I joked that it would be fun to lip off to you know, Mike Tyson. But in reality, oh, he'd punch me. It would hurt. And but at least I can say I lipped off to Mike Tyson. But in the digital age, you
can do those kind of things without having those real world consequences. And that's one of the things that they explore in this episode. You know, we called him back in the day, you know, like you know, telephone tough guys. You know people that would talk so tough on the telephone, but then face to face, they're like a different person, aren't they.
You know, I'm a truck driver. We have radio rambos again, you know, they're talking big and bad on the radio, But yet you see him in a truck stop and sometimes you can recognize who they are, you know, by their voice. But it's it's different because now that there's and
they know there's real world consequences to them running their mouth. And whenever you're in you know, social media, whenever you're talking, you know, I mean, there's that degree of separation, isn't there, you know, because there's you know, you're speaking not to a person, but you're speaking to a name on the screen, an avatar, and you yourself are a name
on the screen. You're an avatar. We don't think about the person behind the name, the person behind the avatar, the person whom is reading this and what it could be doing to them, you know. I mean, we talk to somebody in person, we can see how the conversation firsthand is affecting them. But whenever we are talking on social media, we don't get that, you know. We keep run in our mouth and run in our mouth, not thinking about the consequences, not thinking about how this could be
affecting somebody else. And because of that, you know, we've grown disconnected with human interaction. We've grown calloused in some ways. And that's one of the things they kind of explore on this episode. So let's let's let's get into this. So what happened was, you know, through whatever, Okay, the bee population had dropped down animal population as well, you know, because they talked about animals that has gone extinct. But you know, the
bee population is something that we really really need. I mean, if we if we run out of bees, if if all the bees die, then we are truly in a very very bad place, you know, because then the pollination that happens and everything else that the bees do, well it's no longer going to be done. Plant life is going to die. And since our existence is attached to their existence, well we jeopardize our own existence too.
Boy, howdy do we ever? So we need bees? And is what they do through technology nanotechnology I am assuming, is they build these little robotic bees in order to combat the loss of the bee population, so that this way they can do the pollination that the bees are no longer there to do, to save humanity, to save plant life, the whole you know, nine yards. Now, I don't know if bees actually gone extinct or not, I don't know, but they build these robotic bees in order to
fill in the gap. Now, in of course, in government fashion, you know, the government sees this as an opportunity because you know, these robotic bees, you know, my yes, this is a something that is necessary, something that people would pay top dollar for. However, considering how
dire this situation was, they didn't want to wait for that. And so whether it was the company that was designing these bees and producing these bees went to the government for assistance or whether the government went to them to seize an opportunity, we don't know. It doesn't talk about that in this episode, but what it does talk about is that the government, through this relationship with this corporation that was producing these bees and developing this technology, they seen an
opportunity, and it was an opportunity for surveillance. These bees, you know, having cameras on them and whatnot, they can track every individual facial recognition software. They can link the bees cameras to the database that the government has on everybody and linking profiles and phones and everything else. They can keep track of in real time everybody everywhere, in typical government fashion, because of course, we need to do this. What if something happens, we need to
do this now. I don't generally mix politics with this show. I don't generally do that. But you know, a famous person once said that if you sacrifice freedom for security, you will lose both and deserve neither. And this is a warning for just that, a possible consequence for allowing anybody to have too much power. So there's my sorry, I hit, I'm sorry, I hit the microphone I got I got my finner caught on the camera anyway, anyway, you know. But that's as far as I'm going to
go into the political aspect of it. Okay, we'll leave that for you know, the Ho Ho show, of course. Now is where this starts to get interesting. Is well, just like any computer, just like any type of you know, cloud based whatever, something that is not hardline wired, that is not air gapped between the system, something that you you know, don't have to physically be present in order to access the system, it's
vulnerable to attack. And that's just what happened. Somebody hacked into and gained control of all these bees, thousands of them, enough to cover the entire continent of where this took place, which was Great Britain. That doesn't matter, it's not really relevant to the story, but that's where this took place, Great Britain. Now, the guy who did this did this for what
he believed was a good reason. You know, he did this because I believe it was like a friend of his whom was getting attacked on social media. She you know, it put her in such a mental state that she committed suicide, you know, just the random attacks from people who didn't know her, people that we're you know, taking advantage of the situation of not having any consequences to their actions. And he was upset about this. He truly was upset. Now you can justify his actions or not. You know,
it doesn't really matter. And I'm not condoning this type of thing, don't get me wrong. But you know, as a society, we need to keep in mind that these people that we're talking to that we are you know, that we are pointing these attacks at there's somebody behind the avatar. It has an effect. We need to be aware of this. We need to stop hating each other. We need to stop doing nothing more than tolerating
each other. You know, in my day, you know, my mother taught me, if you don't have something nice to say, then keep a freaking mouth shut. Don't say anything at all. Why do you feel like you got to give your two cents to somebody. Don't be mindful of your actions, be mindful of your words. Just be mindful. Be better. So he was taking his anger out on social media the people whom he felt were responsible for his friends or wives or who whomever it was, their their
death, and so something ended up happening. It was a hashtag kill a person. I don't know exactly what the command was. I don't. I don't remember what the hashtag was. I don't. I don't recall. You know, hashtags is something that I really don't use in social media. It's it's kind of I don't know how to use them. I know that they can do some wonderful, amazing things. I know it can, you know, help you search things, and that there's relevance to it, and you
know it can. It's it's fun, you know, But I myself, I don't go there. I don't. I don't do that. It goes beyond me, you know, I just I just don't. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. I just don't. I'm still kind of ignorant with some things. Whenever it comes to how to use social media. I think that's pretty apparent. Whenever you check out my you know the social media places
where I'm at, but it's neither here nor there. So a hashtag kill somebody ended up happening, and they, you know, the people that were using this hashtag were people that were you know, they had grievances towards somebody. You know, they had grievances towards an individual they had you know that
they didn't like what they were doing. And what you see happen very early off in you know, the episode, was somebody died and looked like on the surface it was a suicide, but you come to find out what happened was one of these little robotic bees had crawled into the ear canalisius individual, went right into their brain through the pain receptors and just threw them into a tizzy, making them feel more pained than they have ever felt in their entire
life. And in order to escape the pain, this individual ended up breaking a bottle and cutting her own throat. Somebody else had passed away because of this hashtag kill somebody, and during an MRI or the thing you know,
because it is metal, it burst out of the person's head. That's whenever they realized what was going on, and they had tied it to this hashtag on social media because these per these people that were dying were people whom the hashtag said kill them, and that's who the Bees were going after, and so they tried everything they can do to put a stop to it. And so that's whenever you come to find out just how much control that the government
was using the surveillance aspect of it. They shut it down, But there was something else that was going on behind the scenes, because they figured out that that back door went both ways. They yes, the government can use the facial recognition and track people, but the program that they were hacking into, they will they could also hack into the government records and find out who somebody was, attach a face to the communication device that they had, the
telephone using the IMEI number. And what was going on was every single person who was using this hashtag kill somebody, the program was saving that person's information. And when the government decided to shut this whole entire thing down, the Bees went after everybody who used the hashtag kill somebody. Even though by the time this was going on, the you know, the word was out, people knew that by using this hashtag kills somebody, somebody was going to die.
By then, they already knew this. They already knew that there was a real world consequence to what was going on, and still they didn't care. Still they were using this hashtag kill somebody as if they were insulated from what was going on because to them, yeah, there may be a person on the other side of that. But you know, all right, I'm gonna be honest with you, Okay, I don't get and I understand that some people do. I don't. I don't get emotionally attached to people I
don't know. You know, I hear that, you know, an actor passed away for whatever reason. It doesn't really matter. I mean, it doesn't affect me emotionally. I didn't oh this individual. Yes, it may be tragic. Yes, it may raise awareness in some way, shape or form to help combat against whatever happened, you know, whether it be through you know, one means or another, it doesn't really matter. But you know, my point is, it doesn't affect me. This person wasn't part
of my life. I watched them through a television I seen what was going on in their lives through you know, social media, through what have you. I don't know these persons, these people directly. It doesn't affect me in the end, it doesn't change my life. I mean, yeah, this person may be dead, that doesn't mean I can no longer watch movies. That just means that he's no longer going to be present in them. It doesn't change my life. It doesn't affect me. It doesn't matter to
me, not in an emotional or even a spiritual level. And I think that had a lot to do with why people were so eager to use this hashtag kill somebody, because they didn't know him, and in their mind, this person had done something, something terrible that they felt this person needed to die so that this way they can no longer do it. And one of the people that they used a hashtag kill somebody, and after they already knew
the consequences that could happen, was the prime minister of their government. This person must die. And that's whenever the prime minister demanded that this be shut down, that these bees be deactivated, and you know it was you know, but by then they were like, oh, this could be bad, this could be bad, you know if we you know, because then they noticed the file that had names in imei numbers that was attached to a face
and an address and everything else that of everybody that used a hashtag. And they were like, oh, holy crap, there's a possibility that if we shut these things down that that will activate the bees to do this you know, this this command and it could send the bees after everybody that has used a hashtag kills somebody. But they didn't care. You know, this government
official was like, doesn't matter to me. I have to say the Prime minister were shutting these things down, and they did, and at first they thought, hey, no problems, no issues, everything worked fine, and then they quickly realized, oh boy, who these bees win after everybody that is used a hashtag kills somebody. It doesn't give an indication as to a number as far as how many people died, but it was a lot. Let's just put it that way. It was a lot. The person who
did this finally was you know, brought to justice. We don't know how. It doesn't really say that. All it really tells us is that, yeah, he was found. But there you go. That's the conclusion of the Hated in a Nation And why I felt this episode was so impactful and meaningful because you know, with the covids, with with living in the digital age, where we live so much of our lives on social media, we have that degree of separation that easily provides us the insulation from the consequences of
our own actions or our own words that we say. We don't identify these names and pictures as people. We just don't, which allows us to just be ugly to people. You know, before social media, before smartphones, before all of that, there were real world consequences to our actions. Nowadays,
we don't really see that. Nowadays, we don't have that. Nowadays, it's almost like people would prefer to text or message or tweet somebody that to actually communicate, even on the phone through a call using your voice, let alone talk and face to face. It's like we are withdrawing ourselves from life, aren't we, you know? I mean, how many of us experience going you know, you maybe a family dinner, maybe going out to a restaurant. How much time do you spend on your phone surfing social media?
How you know? Do you take a picture of your food and the look where I'm at and tag somebody in it you know, or wish you were here or whatever? Why Why do you wish they were there? Because you know, even though we are more connected than we have ever been, we are more alone than what we've ever been to. You know, even though, yeah, even though it's brought us or given us a level of
connection with people we've never had. You know, we spend way too much time on our phone, not living our life, but living on social media. Has that damaged us in a way? Now, don't get me wrong, people, I'm not you know, allowing people away out from the responsibility of their actions, Like I'm blaming social media and I'm not blaming a person or an individual. Don't get me wrong. Bad behavior is bad behavior. You can blame whoever you want to. It doesn't matter. You're still responsible
for what you do. I'm not blaming. But isn't life about balance? You know? I mean, isn't it about balance? That I mean? Shouldn't we find some type of harmony between living a life here versus living a life out there? Shouldn't we find that balance? Shouldn't we not sacrifice one for the other. Shouldn't we be more concerned with not only our emotional and
mental health, but other people's as well? You know, we weep and mourn for people that we don't even know we weep and mourn for those whom you know, something happens to. But we have a chance to have those interactions with people. Let's take them more often, you know, Let's be better. Let's not mourn the would it could have shood us and be better. Didn't know what we should do. I think we should. I love
Black Mirror, I really do. It's an awesome series. An awesome show explores so many aspects of human life and interactions, and you know, how we interact with technology, how we interact with ourselves, and how we interact with ourselves through technology. Black Mirror is awesome. I can't wait to get
into series at six. So, yes, it is going to be a little while before we get into season six, but that'll allow everybody to you know, watch it, you know, and have fun with it, get your own opinions, your own ideas about what's going on before I actually talk about him here. So the guys awesome episode. Highly recommend watching it. The next one I do is going to be I think it's Uss Callister. Yes, Uss Callister Season four, episode one. I'm looking forward to that
one, all right, y'a, always have yourself a great one. I'll see you the next one. Thank you for listening to the Black Mirror podcast. If you would like to join the conversation, you can comment on this episode a spreaker dot com or go to the hohoshow dot com, forward, slash form, and the discussion board for this s