Black Mirror (Part 3)

Playtest

I'm a bit more thankful for this episode now than when I watched it, and that's because of this video, shown above. The featurette for "Playtest" gives a little insight into the creator's thought process, especially for this unique episode from Season 3. 

"Playtest" follows Cooper, an American travelling across the world to escape his humdrum life at home. When he lands himself in England, he meets a girl (Sonja) who gets him to open up. Cooper isn't just travelling, he's running away from home. He lives at home with his mother still, as he spent the past several years taking care of his aging father, who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Cooper never connected with his mother well, so when his father passed away, he had to get out of the house and rediscover himself. We discover that his mother has called him consistently over his journey, worried about her son. He ignores her, deciding that he'll face her in person when he returns home.

Cooper runs out of money, and is out of a way to get himself back home. He tells Sonja that he's been using an app to find odd jobs everywhere he's traveled in order to scrape together cash for each leg of his journey. He sees an add to become a play tester for a video game company in the area, offering enough money to get him home. Sonja tells him that if he can get some footage of their latest project, that she (as a tech journalist) would be able to get him even more money.

The CEO of the game company is a bit of a horror aficionado, and the latest in virtual reality technology has allowed him to create the ultimate horror experience. Cooper uses his phone in a brief moment alone to capture a picture of the technology that's been installed in the back of his head. He fears he's been caught, when his phone rings. The true test, following the brief experience with a virtual gopher shown in the video above, is to spend time in an old mansion to face the virtually created fears in a game. The device implanted in the back of his neck allows the game creators to see what makes Cooper tick, and use it to scare him.

The first steps are relatively harmless. Lights flicker in the house, the portrait above the mantle changes. A spider scuttles across the floor as we learn Cooper is an arachnophobe. He confronts his high school bully, and then a hideous conglomeration of his high school bully and a giant spider. Cooper is consistently reminded that his hallucinations aren't real, but the fears he's being forced to face are getting more and more real. Sonja bursts in to warn him, but is it really Sonja? She attacks him, and he swears that he can feel pain as she does so. He begs to be let out, only to discover that he's being tricked into submission, that the company is trying to see how far fear can push a person.

Leaving the resolution a mystery for this post, you're going to want to see it. Well, "want" is a strong word, but I can tell you that it is easily the most intense episode of this show that I have seen. "Playtest" shows us that we can blur the line between reality and virtual reality a little too easily, and makes us question what reality even is. If our brains can be fooled into thinking things are real, like giant spiders and crazed attackers, then how can we trust that anything at all is real? How do I know I'm even typing this blog post right now?

...okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but just writing about this episode is going to keep me up tonight as I'm trying to sleep. The Anthropocene's forcing me to think about what I know is real, and I'm not sure that I like it. Humans have control over their own realities now. Virtual reality and augmented reality are becoming more and more popular (just look at the phenomenon of Pokemon Go). Even some physical conditions such as colorblindness make us think about what our reality is compared to someone whose eyes are wired differently. Technology can provide us with a great escape, yes, but at what cost?