The Orville [SPOILERS WITHIN]

Go to hell.

I have a feeling this will come in handy quite often in the Red Room:

Both of you settle down.

That was my first thought as well.

Still, The Orville is way better than I ever expected it to be.

I'm really digging it, despite it's flaws.

Interesting episode.

This is probably the first episode to not feel ripped off from a Star Trek. Of course there was no social media back then.

Well I guess it kind of reminds me of Wesley getting in trouble for crushing those stupid flowers in 'Justice' but this was better.

Haven't seen Black Mirror yet so can't comment on that.

The girl they met on the planet was cute.

BBC/Netflix version of 'The Twilight Zone.' Unfortunately, it seems that the creator of the show has decided to focus more on social medias' ills than anything else, in many of the episodes, so it gets to be a bit dull in the later seasons. There are some absolute gems in all the seasons, however, and the commentary on society is particularly biting at times.

Like everyone else, with the latest episode, I immediately thought of Black Mirror. However, both shows handled things differently. Also, the "what if Facebook likes applied to all of life?" theme is very socially relevant, and we'll probably see more of it.

However, there is an aspect of such systems that both Black Mirror and The Orville failed to touch on. In both shows, it seemed like anyone can rate anyone else, for any reason, at any time. In such a system, there would be reciprocal upvoting and retaliatory downvoting. If ratings determine social standing, it would almost certainly be expected to to immediately give an upvote after receiving one from someone else, because it would be impolite not to, and impoliteness results in downvotes.

There's a scene in The Orville where someone bumps into another, and caused him to spill his coffee. The guy who wasn't paying attention was downvoted, and the situation was over. That outcome was not realistic. In reality, the one person would apologize, the other would say "it's okay, shit happens," the first person would offer to buy the other guy a new coffee, and they'd upvote each other. Or, the guy would downvote the other guy for bumping into him, and then the first guy would downvote because the other guy was being unreasonable. That might lead to both of them arguing and pressing downvotes as fast as they can, while passersby start downvoting both of them for being asses in public.

If there was some kind of lockout to prevent reciprocal voting, this would almost certainly result in preemptive voting. Bump into someone and make them spill their coffee? Downvote them immediately so they can't downvote you. Stupid asshole shouldn't have had coffee in public if he didn't want it spilled anyway.

And what if votes are weighted based on one's overall rating? My point is, all of this is stupid and society should put itself out of its misery before this becomes reality.

Yes, but again,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

, i.e. "Too late!"

And rightfully so. I would argue that in the short time its existed, social media's cons far outweigh any pros. (Sure you can keep in touch with friends, but do you honestly give a shit about what they ate for breakfast or some stupid selfie they posted from a beach somewhere?!?)

Anyway, that's a topic for the Red Room.

Been meaning to check out Black Mirror but I haven’t just yet, so I found this ep to be a great update on another Sci-fi trope and great commentary of the ills of social media. I thought this episode was really fun and entertaining.

And yes, John is an idiot!

oh I got the point, it's just that in such an actual scenario making a point wouldn't have been the aim. Just seemed like the script was too far from that.

Although, i will give them points for swaying popular opinion with a bot - that WAS a sly gag.

No. You didn't get the point. It's clear by your comment that they should have just straight up hacked the voting.

yes, because if this were somehow an actual event and not a fictional drama the captain would not have said "well we COULD just hack their computers but then none of y'all would learn an important life lesson" - he'd have just done the obvious most efficient thing. I recognize that this does not make for good entertaining drama, but the fact that the shortcut was so obvious mildly interfered with suspension of disbelief, therefore, not a great episode IMO

Note the "opinion" part there - it's not necessary for you to belabor this for 14 responses trying to prove you are right.

I agree. If you look at the end sequence, the script seems to think that the point was teaching 1 person that downvoting is bad.

Besides, such a mob rule would either be too chaotic to be swayed by a few quick additions to the stream, or controllable and firmly under the control of a professional set of bots that made that interference impossible. Both in saving Lamarr this way and in celebrating the conversion of 1 citizen, the show avoids dealing with the real extent of the problem depicted. As dumb as the Wesley's trespassing episode was, at least it didn't try to make us think there was a way within the system to fix its dangers.

Under orders to not make a bigger mess than things already are. No telling what hacking would do or if it could be done easily enough that it wouldn't get spotted. You may have to have a badge number with each vote. Generate a lot of fake votes and not only are you interfering more than the Admiral wants you too you are also putting your guy at a bigger risk. Hacking a situation like this might end in automatic brain cleaning.

Best thing to do is try and influence the voting. Which is what they did and it worked.

Whatever.

Who the fuck are you, the person who doesn't know how to shut the fuck up and goes on a dozen or more posts in a row on any given topic, have any business telling someone else that they don't need to post?

Fuck you, you piece of shit. You're really one of the worst people on this board. Arrogant, condescending, scumbag of a person. Just like you've always been going all the way back to TrekBBS.

You may have switched genders but you still suck as a human being. That hasn't changed.

Warned.

No call for that in here.

Plenty of call for it.

I'm kinda with Zombie on this. We all learned in 2016 that tricking voters with fake news is easier and more effective than rigging voting totals.

As for the Orville crew not "fixing" the alien society, that's not their job. It's not like with the generational ship where a small group of spacefaring people briefly lost their way, this is an entire pre-warp civilization evolving naturally.

Perhaps that is true (we don't actually have a completely electronic voting system being hacked by a far superior alien computer technology to compare ease and effectiveness), but again, that effect of those fake news was either chaotic or under control. We don't know which was true yet, but in each scenario, alien interference would be either extremely unlikely to work or definitely doomed to fail.

I agree, but doesn't the final scene imply that things got better, or that there is at least hope for improvement, because this 1 person with her utterly unique experience changed her voting behaviour?

Makes sense... at least as much as mirror Spock subverting the entire Terran Empire...

I thought the final scene was more of a "here's what you, the viewer at home, should do about this real 21st century problem."

If so, that's even worse. Not clicking doesn't make the problem go away.

Well, no. He was an extremely intelligent individual with long-held political aspirations and an all-powerful weapon commanding a starship, and a new and developed philosophy to sell. She sells lattes and is now generally unhappy with how things are done.

That was Michael Piller's DS9 era take on the Mirror Universe. In the original "Mirror, Mirror" all mirror Spock says is "I shall consider it".

Maybe she finds a way to convince others through writing a story based on her experience on the ship?

She could totally become a "truth" blogger. Simply pointing out that the majority is wrong about some verifiable facts could be enough to undermine the whole system.

IOW-Prime Universe Canon

Within the theme of a single character's encounter changing a society; Edith Keeler, Henry Starling, the couple of times Picard revealed the Enterprise and/or its crew (let alone the time Ryker boned Lilith)...

If she did that wouldn't she risk getting massive numbers of "down votes"? It is obvious the society operates on using staggering amounts of social pressure to ensure conformity. I would imagine challenging the social conventions would be very risky. And she above most would know just how dangerous that is based on how she saw Lamar treated and the fates of the two earlier researchers. Not to mention working in an establishment that refused to serve those above a certain level of down votes.

Something occurs to me, I would say that based on what we see in the episode once people accumulate enough "down votes" that they lose the ability to vote. Because obviously the woman with more than 500,000 down votes whom she refuses to serve is angry and upset yet she makes no effort to "down vote" the waitress.

Implied not verified.