‘You are just a performance of stuff that he performed without thinking, and it isn’t enough’
In Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror he focuses on the - albeit excessive – foreboding future of social media and its affect on the real world. Be right back presents a mourning widow trying to overcome her grief by using imitating software to talk to her late husband through the back catalogue of everything he ever posted on to the internet.
In this future, software is able to imitate voices and idiosyncrasies and even goes as far as to create a clone to house all of the data.
Both uncomfortable and interesting to watch Be right back raises questions of just how much of our information we store on the internet and how much of this is true to our personalities and personas.
Nowadays it is basically impossible to not have a virtual identity, with social media and the use of ‘blogging’ an essential part of social entertainment and an effective way to communicate and share with friends and like minded people. However, with the opportunity to never have to meet any of these people in the flesh it can become very easy to alter your online persona to match a more ‘ideal’ depiction of yourself.
Is this really you or are you just writing an elaborate first person fiction?
