It was a classic episode because it was a straight fucks with your head and make you think about new scenarios of how human interactions can be complicated by new technology.

It was Hella uncomfortable to watch with my wife which I think is the point.

The fact is I found it completely relatable for a man in a 10+ year marriage to a beautiful woman feeling old, tired and not completely happy. And then have your boy who never settled down showing you pictures of his latest conquest. That shit had me looking up who the writer was to make sure it was Chalie Booker and not somebody I know living it.

And then me and my brother was just talking about that friend who we use to play video games with that was way over the top with his oversexualize shit talking that made everyone uncomfortable while playing Madden ("I'm about to bend you over and give it to you" "brah, chill").

The show had us doing all sorts of theorizing. My theory is that Karl is indeed gay and repressed his love for his boy and really setup the whole scenario to make a run at his boy. Watch the first scene again when they played 11 years ago. He gave him the game. He made the first move on him. He said he loved him. Doesn't matter he said the kiss didn't do anything for him, Dany said it didn't first.

I think the Dany character wasn't gay though. From his perspective he was always making love to a woman. He was frustrated though (catch him staring at that girls crack) because he was older, less in shape and was wide open for some strange...even if his boy was controlling the other avatar.

The episode left us with all sorts of questions:

1. Was it cheating? Would it have been better if the other character was controlled by a computer? By a female gamer? Was the wife able to live with it because it was his boy and not some strange woman?

2. Was Karl truly gay? Or was he just gender fluid and in love with Danny?

3. What does Gender men when you can pick any body you want? Including Polar Bear?

4. Was the wife actually f*cking other people or did she just like being picked up at bars by random guys? Were they both into their own form of virtual play?


As I would imagine, the folks most "offended" by this episode are gamers. It could be interpreted as suggesting some homoeroticism underlying gaming.

It's funny the way that gamers have criticized the episode have been with the very narrow view that type of off-script play would be impossible. I think Nodima said it here and presumably someone paid this guy to make the same argument here:

https://www.thewrap.com/why-the-striking-vipers-black-mirror-episode-video-game-makes-no-sense-street-fighter/

That seems like a narrow view. It's new technology and as we already see with Porn and VR, sex will drive adoption and new use cases.

If anything is unbelievable, it's not that people would find ways to have sex in video games but rather everyone wouldn't know that's how people are using the game. If this sort of sex were possible in VR games, it would be widespread as soon as it is figured out and there would be facebook posts telling women to watch there man while playing Striking Vipers X.

I don't think it was implied that Dany and Karl were the first to discover sex in the game, but Dany's wife didn't show any suspicion that what Dany could be up to was not necessarily an IRL affair but an online affair.

Anyway, I thought it was a really good episode because it had a brother thinking hard about what the technology says about the people who are using it and it's uncomfortable to think about. That's Black Mirror at its best.

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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"