297
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
297 points (99.0% liked)
PC Master Race
22469 readers
663 users here now
A community for PC Master Race.
Rules:
- No bigotry: Including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
- Be respectful. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- No NSFW content.
- No Ads / Spamming.
- Be thoughtful and helpful: especially when new beginners have questions.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Every day we veer closer to that Black Mirror episode.
I've lost hearing young due to a health condition. The sales model for hearing aids is depressingly close to the Black Mirror episode with Rashida Jones.
The hearing aid costs 15 per month on "basic", rising through eight different tiers, to "platinum plus" at 120 per month. The hardware doesn't change, only the software. So if you want to be able to hear nature sounds, that's an extra 10 per month. An extra 20 to hear conversations in the car. It's 50 if you want to be able to go to a concert, and so on.
The hearing aid itself is capable of doing all of that, all the time, but the functionality is just switched off.
The term is 4 years and then it becomes obsolete and receives no further updates; you have to get a new one.
This is in the UK.
Capitalism strikes again. In a just society, the people who devise these extractive schemes would be in prison.
Whoever they are, I doubt they like themselves very much.
So they should be disliking themselves from prison
Ha! Yes they should
What the fuck. Is this real?
It is. They tend to hide this until the hard sell, but here's a little bit of info that I could find: https://www.bootshearingcare.com/hearing-aids/hearing-aid-prices/
There's more info that's only revealed after your second hearing test, when they put the "platinum plus" software driven device on your ears, then reveal the pricing in a handily confusing leaflet. It's similar at Specsavers where I went after, thinking "is this real? Surely they're not all like this"
"Which black mirror episode?"
"Yes."
Bright future ahead. Robot dogs will hunt you down and cut you to pieces. Before you die, your brain is scanned, and the copy will be tortured as long as the machine has power.
What’s the point of that, like are the people enemies of the state or something for ‘wrong think’?
Eternal torture never made sense to me, in any context
Well that’s black mirror. It’s clearly meant to be disturbing. Doesn’t have to make sense to be messed up.
Right, but specifically what did the person do in that episode? I’m just curious how it was “justified” by whoever was doling it out
I stopped watching black mirror cus it made me feel terrible. Some episodes were pretty good but it’s too heavy for me
Yeah, it's one of those works of art that aim to make you uneasy. Gotta say, they nailed it. It's a horrible show in more ways than I dare to count.
Here are the relevant episodes where digital minds get tortured.
S2E4 White Christmas: A human mind is copied to a computer that runs home automation systems. The copy is essentially coerced into slavery. When the copy refuses run the automation system perfectly, it is tortured with sensory deprivation over an extended period of time. So, basically slavery, customer satisfaction and quarterly profits are the "justification" here.
S4E1 USS Callister: A guy with some serious issues loves to larp in a digital world with copies of other people. His idea of fun involves abusing the copied minds. It's sort of like mental torture for the copies. He is bullied in real life, and this is his way of getting back to the people he hates. Just plain old revenge transformed into mental abuse, if you can call that a "justification". Hey, I never said the reasons were good.
S4E6 black museum: A museum has a copy of a human mind stuck in a toy. This counts as psychological abuse as the mind is unable to act like a normal human in such a restrictive body. You can also get to electrocute a copy of a murderer's mind, which is just literal torture. Sadistic people pay for it. In other words, money "justifies" torture, again. Actually, money justifies just about anything on this show. On the other hand, they are torturing a convicted murderer so... Oh, but the murderer could be innocent, but we don't really know so... This series just doesn't give you an easy way out.
There are also other episodes that feature copied minds, but they don't involve blatant torture. However, that doesn't make those episodes any less awful, because the writers as sick as they are creative.
The white Christmas one was a guy who had his mind copied and his copy was being interrogated to get details of the murder he did. Turned out to be a heat-of-the-moment crime-of-passion deal where he truly regrets the murder. They decide to leave his copy running for a few hundred thousand simulated years or something "for a Xmas treat".
Of yeah, the ending did involve some sort of psychological torture. Totally missed that one. In that case, a human committed a crime and a copied mind gets to pay for it too. Messed up “justice”…
Oh dude that jogs my memory, if the USS McAllister episode is the Star Trek esque MMO RPG, I liked that it actually had an optimistic ending
Otherwise yeah those other ones sound rough.
Strangely, some episodes actually have an optimistic ending. Maybe kinda bitter sweet, but still.
Anything even remotely positive suddenly feels very good in this context where the baseline is a total nightmare. When you think a character has hit rock bottom, Black Mirror shows you how things can always get 10x worse. What you thought was bad, was just a warm up lap.