Programmed For Violence
A chilling reminder that the real threat was never the tech, it was us all along.
Model wearing Apple’s new mixed-reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro. This device is capable of offering immersive experiences, dialing between full VR (completely immersed in a virtual space) and AR (overlaying content on your real-world room) by controlling everything with your eyes, hands and voice, without the need for any physical controls. Image courtesy of Apple. Available via Vogue. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
Back in the day, whenever we thought about a robot apocalypse, we’d picture the machines gaining consciousness and rising up against humanity. We expected a far away future in which a war was waged between humans and androids, but what ended up happening is something much more sinister.
When Black Mirror premiered in 2011, it was chilling. By 2019, it was prophetic. Each episode exaggerated a social or technological fear: surveillance, grief tech, social clout, AI, cruelty as entertainment, and held it under a microscope. People dismissed it as dystopian fantasy. But now? We’re living the beta versions of every single one. Not in some sci-fi universe. Here, in real life. And the worst part? We still like to pretend it’s fiction.
In "Nosedive," your social score dictates your job, apartment, even your friends. China’s social credit system now does exactly that. In "Be Right Back," AI mimics a dead loved one using their social media history. Today, companies offer chatbot grief companions, and Alexa can now speak in a deceased person’s voice. Scam calls using AI voice clones are skyrocketing. In "Hated in the Nation," robotic bees meant to save nature are hijacked to murder citizens. Meanwhile, drone warfare is not only real, it’s normalized in actuality. Wars in Gaza and Ukraine now involve remote, AI-assisted drone strikes that kill civilians with surgical precision. We became the danger instead of .
We like to think we’re the ones calling the shots. We design the tools, we write the code, we press the buttons. But the truth? The more tech advances, the more it reflects our worst instincts. These systems are doing exactly what they were built to do: exploit attention, bias, and impulse.
Just look at how people interact with AI in daily life. Platforms like ChatGPT are often treated like emotional punching bags. Behind the safety of anonymity, users unleash rudeness, entitlement, and cruelty in ways they’d never speak to a real person. It reveals what people are capable of when they think no one’s watching. No consequence, no empathy, just unchecked ego.
Charlie Booker, the creator of the show, even said in an interview with Vogue: “The technology is never the culprit in our stories. The technology is just allowing people to do terrible things to themselves or others.”
Tech is designed to exploit attention, bias, and impulse. Governments and corporations aren’t afraid of AI, they're racing to use it for predictive policing, surveillance, and warfare. The robot apocalypse was never about machines waking up. It was about us using them to carry out harm while pretending they act on their own.
Emotionally, we’ve flatlined. In Black Mirror, people are numbed by screens, desensitized to violence, and detached from meaning. Sound familiar? We scroll past footage of war crimes and cry over AI-generated dogs. We binge content about trauma while disassociating from our own. The line between real and fake is blurred, and honestly, we don't even care anymore, as long as it’s engaging.
Black Mirror captured the present in disguise. It was a warning that we ignored, showing us the reality of humanity’s endless cruelty and greed. We kept building, buying, uploading, sharing, rating, swiping. We laughed at the satire while walking straight into it. If we still think Black Mirror is just a show, we’re proving the show’s entire point. The robots didn’t need to rise up to cause harm because we did it for them.
We’re not waiting for the future anymore, we’re living in it. And it looks a hell of a lot like Black Mirror.
