Recap

Nosedive demonstrates what it’s like to deviate from the status quo (but with explicit numbered ratings). Lacie Pound is a low 4-point something who’s striving to reach 4.5 to climb the social ladder which will enable her to afford a new luxury apartment. Unfortunately, she’s stuck. Her social circle isn’t big enough or high-ly rated enough to increase her ratings as quickly as she would like, so she tries reaching out to a childhood friend who’s in the upper 4s.
This actually works out because her friend’s own ratings consultant tells her having a lower rated friend as her bridesmaid could play well for her ratings, too, kind of like that thing where politicians shake hands with people they would never actually interact with to appear more human. Unfortunately, things don’t go according to plan as Lacy spirals out of control.

I found this episode especially compelling. I grew up in Okinawa but spent my formative years in the cornfields of Ohio which had the ideological spectrum of Baptist to Methodist, and I currently live in Seattle which has the ideological spectrum of progressives to socialists. So from laying hands in prayer huddles and congregational reading with monotone inflections to name dropping Duwamish land acknowledgements in casual conversation and aggressively sharing pronouns with anyone with even slightly androgynous hair, not signalling the expected cues for any subculture can be an alienating experience, especially from someone unfamiliar with the accepted etiquette.

Lacey runs into this when she accepts a smoothie from Ches.

Showing kindness to Ches results in Lacy receiving many low ratings from her coworkers. And this mirrors so much of the tribalism that runs rampant today.

Discussion question

What are some other examples of knee jerk reactions or conditioned behavior?