Published on: Young STAR, 2020
Is 2020 an elaborate Black Mirror episode? In this conspiracy theory, I will.
When you ask my friends to describe me, the word “gamer” will never cross the conversation. However, for some reason, a friend gifted me Sims 4 through Steam. She even added in the Cats and Dogs downloadable content (DLC).
Throughout quarantine, I’ve been playing Sims mobile religiously. So when I was given the opportunity to level-up to the latest desktop version (for free!), why would I say no? After installing it, I entered the virtual world, made a sim that looked like me, and made my roommate my celebrity crush.
As I finished decorating my cute house, I watched the sims live their day-to-day life. I watched them get hungry, pee, and sleep. I felt like God overlooking His creations. At that moment, it hit me. “What if I’m a sim? What if we’re all sims?”
I know that it sounds ridiculous, but honestly, with the horrific events happening in 2020, is it that crazy? If we can go back in time and tell our 2019 selves that a pandemic would hit, ABS-CBN would get shut down, and Kobe Bryant would die in a helicopter accident by next year, they would’ve laughed. The concept itself sounds like an awful plot for an apocalypse movie.
Most of us have seen the Netflix show Black Mirror; some episodes feel like complete fiction. Meanwhile, other episodes feel like they are slowly becoming real. Take ‘Nosedive’ (Season 3, Episode 1) as an example. In this episode, everybody is so obsessed with their ratings that it shapes their real-life interactions and impacts their socioeconomic status.
The plot already sounds like what’s happening with social media right now. We can see the essence of ‘Nosedive’ translating into our reality through the value of likes we get from social media. We’re now living in a world in which the more followers you have on your accounts, the more advertisers you’ll attract — which leads to more money. Nowadays, you don’t have to put so much elbow grease in your work to be a socialite. Some people could be easily obsessed with their social media status that they could value this more than making real-life connections.
A particular episode I want to discuss is ‘Playtest’ (Season 3, Episode 2). In this episode, a guy tries an augmented reality (AR) video game wherein he explores a haunted house and gets basic jumpscares. However, the Black Mirror twist is that as the game progresses, the horrors dig deep into his fears and become all too real. His friend unexpectedly appears and tries to kill him, he starts to lose his memories, and all of this while he tries to escape the AR experience.
The ‘Playtest’ episode is what replays in mind whenever I think of the idea that this year could be a simulation all this time. What if, at some point, the government medicated us or convinced us to play a VR game. Then, the events that have happened this year were all made to trigger us; to test out what our reactions would be. Once we’re in that “Play” mode, we’d completely forget the process we’ve undergone.
The simulation experience could be made by the government to prepare us for the worst-case scenarios. Imagine it as a highly-devised fire/earthquake drill. They were probably like, “Let’s start the simulation with a volcanic eruption! A pandemic sounds great; we haven’t had that before. How would that go? Let’s put everybody in quarantine for a whole year.” It could also be a psychological program where doctors ask, “How long can we put her in isolation until she breaks?” Then, after the simulation has finished, they gather the data of the events and take it under consideration. In real life, they make changes to avoid the mishaps that have happened in virtual reality. It’s messed up but could be somewhat useful.
The government can also root the simulation to modern-age natural selection. As dark as it is, a lot of people have passed away this year. What if the simulation tests the process of elimination? Who will survive the ridiculous events the game will throw? Like the Capitol Arena from The Hunger Games, are there Gamemakers that give us challenges whenever the simulation’s plot grows dull?
2020, so far, has been a hell of a year. Having so much time in my hands has led me to think if all of this is even real? Even Black Mirror’s creator Charlie Brooker didn’t want to release the show’s sixth season this year due to the current events. According to an interview, he basically said that the world doesn’t need dystopian narratives right now.
As much as I want this year to be a messed-up game, it’s not. No matter how grim situations are right now, they are real. Wildfires and climate change are real. People losing jobs and growing poorer are real. Most importantly, the virus is real. There are hundreds of people dying from it. No conspiracy theory about living in a simulation can prove otherwise.
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