Black Mirror Season 7: Netflix Show Tries To Trick Some Poor Schlub Into Committing Murder

Netflix's original programming is some of the best content out there, but an upcoming reality special called The Push looks bizarre at best and disturbing at worst.

TAccording to host Derren Brown, a mentalist and illusionist (who, in the words of his website, has become "synonymous with the art of psychological manipulation"), the show is about "how readily we hand over authorship of our lives everyday.

A group of 70 highly orchestrated actors will put a poor guy named Chris in a situation wherein he feels murder is his only option.

The main question: "Can social compliance be used to make someone push a living, breathing human being to their death?"

Full story here.

This seems like a terrible idea for some pretty obvious reasons. First one being, anybody seen that show Black Mirror? Yeah, you know: that show that gives me really fucked up dreams every time I watch before bed? That’s this. So easy to see an episode go down like this, if there hasn’t been one already: we follow some poor schlub as he slowly gets put into a corner where his only way out is to kill someone. Only, right at the end he finds out it’s all a tv show. What the fuck. That’s super fucked up.

Also, I’ll say it: not a terribly original idea. Like, I don’t know who this Derren Brown guy thinks he is- but testing whether you can put someone in desperate enough circumstances to commit murder? Uhhh duh bro. Obviously someone would do that. People do that every day. I debate that every day. This isn’t fucking rocket science that’s going to change the way we look at the world. I think we figured this out a while ago when we made all those people shock all of those other people with electricity. I don’t know; I’m not a scientist. All I know is: I looked at the description for this show, thought it was crazy for one minute, and then immediately realized that it was stupid. Some people are obviously going to commit fake murder, and others aren’t. All you’re doing here is exposing the people who could be pressured into horrific crimes and those that can’t. Is it terrible to do that? Definitely, but at the same time the bar is set pretty low for reality tv. The point is, don’t parade this around as some extreme psychological study when it’s really just a fucking sham.

SUCKS to be the person who gets roped into murdering someone, only to find out 1: they’re not actually dead, and 2: now everybody’s going to recognize you as someone who would be peer pressured into killing. Talk about terrible looks. From the looks of it they picked the absolute WORST person to be their unaware maybe-killer. This guy just has the absolute least ideal complexion for hiding any blushing, sweating, fearful hives, etc. So be it, I’ll give this show a shoutout for casting, but that’s it. I'd rather watch the Real Housewives Of New York reenact the Titanic in the Colombian Ocean anytime. I think I may hate the shit out of Derren Brown.