In the full length episode, "Be Right Back", the main female protagonist has an unexpected loss: her boyfriend Ash dies in a car wreck. During the wake, a friend introduces her to a coping mechanism that she used to get over her loved one. Martha ignores her, but Sara signs her up for it anyway. The application uses Ash’s social media, emails, and videos to create a virtual Ash.
At first, Martha is enraged by the fact that Sara would do such a thing, but takes her advice anyway after learning that she is pregnant. She soon finds out that the virtual Ash says the same things as Human Ash would. She talks to Virtual Ash nearly everyday, until she cracks her screen at the doctor’s office. Virtual Ash tells about the next level of the program: a synthetic human body.
Here is where the problem comes in. Virtual Ash is based off of social media posts and videos that Human Ash created. Virtual Ash acts differently from Human Ash, and Martha fails to notice this, because of the fact that it is programmed on social media. It does not react the same as Ash would because it does not have Ash’s direct thoughts. If something crazy, for example, Martha asking him to jump off a cliff, Ash would have made a funny joke online about how he would actually do it, but in reality would tremble in his feet and beg for his life.
Social media Ash and reality Ash are two different cases. Social media has no input on how someone is actually feeling or thinking. When Human Ash said that he liked the cheesy song, he did not post it anywhere, so Virtual Ash had a different intake on the song.
Social media videos only last for so long, and only capture a little bit of a person’s personality. It doesn’t necessarily show what they would do in a situation of an emotional girlfriend who is on the brink of crazy. Virtual Ash developed his feelings from whatever Human Ash posted, and whatever emotion Martha wants him to experience. The application did not have the information on those since they were what Human Ash felt offline.
This confused Martha to the point where she locked him in an attic and only allowed her daughter to see him on certain days like her birthday. Social media cannot depict who you actually are because it will never portray your feelings and thoughts as if it were you.
2 comments:
When discussing your "online self" vs. "true self," I feel theres a fine line between the two. Most people like to say that the way they portray themselves on their social media accounts is really them but, you have to ask yourself is it really? Many people would agree there are certain things they wouldn't want to post because they are worried about what people would say about them. I think there are distinct differences between the two.
I do agree that a person's "online self" can only be tiny snippets of their life. In people's posts they can either let out their true feelings or lie about certain subjects. If a robot gathered all the information from these posts, some people would not notice the flaws but others who are close to the person the robot was mimicking could tell that that is not how the actual person would react.
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