Black Mirror is your screen when it is shut off. It's the phantom ring. It's the feeling your phone is an electronic extension of you, that happens to be smarter. Black Mirror is recording your memory, so you can play it back for others. It's the ranking, on a scale of 1-5 stars, how your barista treated you this morning, what your friend's latte looks like on Instagram, and how yesterday that homeless man looked at you funny. Black Mirror is the president forced to fuck a pig on national television. It's where people ride videogame bikes to keep the lights on, gain points, and one lucky day become pop icons, or porn stars. Black Mirror is a digital copy of you that makes your toast just the way you like it: your own personal slave trapped inside a tiny plastic egg. It's a divorce where your spouse blocks their image and voice from you for the rest of their lives. It's where criminals forget their crimes by force, so they may be continually tortured for the amusement of others. Black Mirror is bringing back clones of loved ones replicated through social media posts. It's using VR to make those with bad genetics look like monsters, so it's easier to exterminate them. It's a VR survival horror game that uses your memories against you. It's a cartoon character with a big blue cock becoming a politician and a global brand. It's a teenager who's been caught masturbating on camera and now has to rob a bank to stop the leak. It's hundreds of thousands of robotic bees being hacked to kill, with excruciating pain, hundreds of thousands of internet trolls. Black Mirror is two digitally immortal women finding love together after physical death.

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Black Mirror is beyond a warning: it's a reality. Look into the screen long enough, it looks into you; you will hear its phantom laugh, you will obey its commands. For what would the world be without the dark side of technology—"Less than human," it texts back.