section_path: Cultural impact/Comparisons to reality
section_name: Comparisons to reality
paragraph_text: Comparisons to reality
  
  Brooker has often been described by commentators as prescient in his scripts for Black Mirror. In 2015, G. Clay Whitaker of The Daily Beast called the show a Magic 8 Ball. The first episode, "The National Anthem", features the UK prime minister blackmailed into having sexual intercourse with a pig. Four years later, the Daily Mail published allegations that the then-prime minister David Cameron had placed a "private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig as an initiation rite at university. Brooker later said that after hearing the news, he "did genuinely for a moment wonder if reality was a simulation, whether it exists only to trick me".
  
  In a 2013 episode called "The Waldo Moment", the animated cartoon Waldo places second in a UK by-election. The 2017–2021 US presidency of the media personality Donald Trump and the Ukrainian presidency of the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 onwards were compared by journalists to the political platform of Waldo. Brooker described Trump as "an anti-politics candidate who's raucous and defensive" and "offers nothing", like Waldo. Adrian Karatnycky of Politico stated that as with Waldo, Zelenskyy had few clear policy positions prior to his election.
  
  The 2016 episode "Nosedive" presents a society in which citizens rate interactions with each other from one to five stars and receive an overall rating that largely determines their socioeconomic status. This has been compared to China's Social Credit System, where local governments collect data on citizens to assign them an overall score. Example data points include publicly criticising the government, defaulting on a loan or having high-rated friends. Like the system in "Nosedive", a low score can limit a person's access to transport. "Be Right Back" shows an artificial intelligence technology designed to mimic a deceased loved one. Chatbots with similar functionality and personalisation have been compared to this premise, as has a 2022 announcement that a future Amazon Alexa feature will imitate voices of dead loved ones. "Shut Up and Dance" is about a man who is blackmailed after footage of him masturbating is recorded through his webcam. Computer viruses can allow for covert recording through an unsuspecting person's webcam, and similar real-life blackmail has been reported.
  
  More minor facets of episodes have also been seen as prescient. Ten days after "Crocodile" depicted a self-driving pizza delivery van, Toyota and Pizza Hut presented plans for a driverless pizza delivery vehicle at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. "Fifteen Million Merits" features a talent show with a virtual animated audience based on Britain's Got Talent. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Britain's Got Talent had a virtual audience, which had an aesthetic resembling that of "Fifteen Million Merits". Other real-life technologies have been described as progress towards those seen in Black Mirror, such as the motion capture animation of Waldo in "The Waldo Moment", the augmented reality military system from "Men Against Fire" and the artificial bees in "Hated in the Nation".
  
  Brooker has often been described by commentators as prescient in his scripts for Black Mirror. In 2015, G. Clay Whitaker of The Daily Beast called the show a Magic 8 Ball. The first episode, "The National Anthem", features the UK prime minister blackmailed into having sexual intercourse with a pig. Four years later, the Daily Mail published allegations that the then-prime minister David Cameron had placed a "private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig as an initiation rite at university. Brooker later said that after hearing the news, he "did genuinely for a moment wonder if reality was a simulation, whether it exists only to trick me".
  
  In a 2013 episode called "The Waldo Moment", the animated cartoon Waldo places second in a UK by-election. The 2017–2021 US presidency of the media personality Donald Trump and the Ukrainian presidency of the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 onwards were compared by journalists to the political platform of Waldo. Brooker described Trump as "an anti-politics candidate who's raucous and defensive" and "offers nothing", like Waldo. Adrian Karatnycky of Politico stated that as with Waldo, Zelenskyy had few clear policy positions prior to his election.
  
  The 2016 episode "Nosedive" presents a society in which citizens rate interactions with each other from one to five stars and receive an overall rating that largely determines their socioeconomic status. This has been compared to China's Social Credit System, where local governments collect data on citizens to assign them an overall score. Example data points include publicly criticising the government, defaulting on a loan or having high-rated friends. Like the system in "Nosedive", a low score can limit a person's access to transport. "Be Right Back" shows an artificial intelligence technology designed to mimic a deceased loved one. Chatbots with similar functionality and personalisation have been compared to this premise, as has a 2022 announcement that a future Amazon Alexa feature will imitate voices of dead loved ones. "Shut Up and Dance" is about a man who is blackmailed after footage of him masturbating is recorded through his webcam. Computer viruses can allow for covert recording through an unsuspecting person's webcam, and similar real-life blackmail has been reported.
  
  More minor facets of episodes have also been seen as prescient. Ten days after "Crocodile" depicted a self-driving pizza delivery van, Toyota and Pizza Hut presented plans for a driverless pizza delivery vehicle at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. "Fifteen Million Merits" features a talent show with a virtual animated audience based on Britain's Got Talent. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Britain's Got Talent had a virtual audience, which had an aesthetic resembling that of "Fifteen Million Merits". Other real-life technologies have been described as progress towards those seen in Black Mirror, such as the motion capture animation of Waldo in "The Waldo Moment", the augmented reality military system from "Men Against Fire" and the artificial bees in "Hated in the Nation".