This article first appeared in the Sunday edition of Malta Today 

I know I’m a little late to the party but I’ve recently started watching Black Mirror, a British TV anthology series filled with biting, often dark, satire by the brilliant writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker who turns his focus on the downside of our technology-filled lives. It was first broadcast in the UK in 2011, but last year came to international attention when Netflix showed interest and made the entire anthology available, while commissioning another season.

Watching it gives you the chills because the future which Brooker portrays in each episode (a different story and different cast each time) is not that far off. A future where social media and reality TV dictate our every action, private lives are on public display and people are one step removed from being robots who passively absorb whatever visuals and stimulants are fed to them by an insatiable, engorged media machine. The episodes are not easy to watch, and can be incredibly disturbing, leaving you mulling over the unpalatable truths which Brooker has so precisely homed in on, showing how the human mind and free will can be so very easily manipulated. But are we really that far off from this near future? Even now, I often find myself deliberately turning away and switching off from things on my newsfeed when it swarms with videos and ‘news’ which are there purely to act as clickbait. Headlines which say one thing only to find the story actually means another, media outlets which contradict each other at every turn until we do not know who or what to believe any more. The assault on our senses as we are promised a sexy, scintillating video or one which “warns” you against graphic, brutal, violent images (knowing full well that gruesome visuals often hold a morbid fascination for those inclined).

Narcissists willingly share every little minutiae about their everyday lives so when checking a FB profile you can learn more about someone than anything they may have told you themselves, even after years of knowing them. And the information which is enthusiastically provided to the world by complete strangers about their private lives never ceases to amaze me. It is quite possible to piece together someone’s entire life story purely by what they share themselves – do people realise this? Yes, they must do, and many simply don’t care (until they find themselves unexpectedly scrutinized and their photos lifted, to be used by the unscrupulous).

CCTV cameras are everywhere, Smartphones are whipped out at the ready at the first sign of a commotion, and videos are uploaded within seconds, snatched up by hungry-for-stories newsrooms which sometimes cannot be bothered to actually go out and look for stories themselves.

Take this week, for example, with that video clip of two teenage girls coming to blows at MCAST. What was the point of this video being shared, and being treated like a legitimate news story by news portals which should know better, such as Newsbook (that’s right, the one run by the Church’s media group)? All the story did was stir up the unjustified prejudice which exists against MCAST (a college which, for some reason, is sneered and wrongly labelled as the University’s inferior, low-rent cousin). It is highly unfair to tarnish the entire college because two teenagers got into a scuffle; there was absolutely no sound reason I can think of to do so. Yet people were sharing it, with gloating pleasure, throwing out words like ‘ħamalli’” with abandon. And what can we say about the person who stood there and filmed the whole thing? And then going further by uploading it? Or those standing passively by watching the fight? The less said the better, I should think.

Also this week, we had the first case of the circulation of revenge porn where the perpetrator was charged under the new law which came into effect this year. Now as much as I find the idea of revenge porn unacceptable (after all intimate photos shared between two people are meant to remain private and it is despicable for them be shown to third parties), there has to come a point when we all have to take ownership and responsibility for our own actions. Are there really people that naive out there who believe that a nude photo of themselves is “safe” and won’t be seen by anyone except for whom it was intended? It doesn’t even need to be forwarded through What’s App or Messenger. All a man (or woman) has to do is simply click on an image and pass his/her Smartphone to a friend or acquaintance and they too would have seen the photo. Now multiply that by 200 photos (according to media reports) which the woman in question sent to a man with whom she had been chatting online for the past two years. 200 photos is quite an arsenal; that’s quite a portfolio of photos for someone who, according to the report, declined the man’s sexual advances. So while she did not want a relationship with him, she was very happy to send him naked photos of herself. What this woman imagined would happen next is anyone’s guess. Did she really think that she could just continue stringing him along, teasing him with photos and there would be no consequences? Again, I am in no way justifying his actions (apart from threatening blackmail, the man looked her up on Facebook and sent one of the photos to her son) but the whole context of this story has to be taken into consideration. My advice to women and girls (especially) is that even if you are in a relationship you should always ask yourself: what would happen if the relationship broke down and your former boyfriend or husband shared an intimate photo of you with others. Isn’t it just plain old common sense not to have these type of photos floating around on someone’s phone or PC in the first place?

Whatever this women’s motives were, whether she was just enjoying the titillation of having a man other than her husband desiring her sexually, or whether she just wanted to see how far she could go without having to actually embark on a full-on affair, she was, let’s face it, playing with fire. The “kick” which some people get out of sharing naked selfies or recording themselves while having sex may see like just a bit of fun between consenting adults when all is going smoothly. But human nature has its dark side, and people can get pretty mean and ugly when they think they have been thwarted.

And if the day comes, as Charlie Brooker paints it in one of his episodes, where our past is stored digitally and can be reviewed and re-seen over and over again, there will be no escaping our transgressions or the way we have hurt others, because everything is recorded forever. We will be doomed to rewind and re-live it and there is no way of deleting it completely because it is still stored out there, somewhere, by someone else. Does that future sound too far-fetched to be true, or is that future already happening now?