Black Mirror: 10 Times It Creepily Predicted The Future
2. Society Run By Social Rating
The Episode: Based upon an idea of Brooker's, Park and Recreation's Rashida Jones and Michael Schur wrote Nosedive - an episode set in a society where your out-of-five-star social media rating determines not just your social standing but your entire livelihood (job, accommodation, ETC). The result is that everyone is eager to please, in a desperate bid to get a high rating from everyone they meet.
How It Came True: As revealed in a high-level government document released back in September, China is planning to create a "social credit" system, to encourage a "harmonious socialist society."
By 2020, they hope to enroll every Chinese citizen in a vast database that compiles governmental and fiscal information to determine a single ranking for each individual, intended to determine the person's overall trustworthiness. They are testing the waters with eight similar pilot projects. One, titled Baihe, is currently the country's biggest matchmaking service and has started pairing people up based on their credit ratings.
Brooker has been public about his dismay at another of his ideas coming true, stating that China's new system is "incredibly sinister."