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10K Posts Tv Club: Joan is Awful (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-07 08:44:44
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

This week, Hussein and Phoebe have watched the recent Black Mirror episode 'Joan is Awful', and have some thoughts.

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PHOEBE ALERT
Can't get enough Phoebe? Want some Milo in the mix too? Check out their new limited series about Rome Here!

And while you're clicking links, check out Phoebe's Substack Here!

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

Comments

Cat Mara

“Joan is Awful” felt to me like something that could have been much better with a bit more polish, but everyone involved was so enamored of Salma Hayek doing a “Being John Malkovich” turn of a celebrity playing a ridiculous version of themselves that they went and shot the first draft

Nemo

I'm glad Phoebe brought up the contract law thing because even though that isn't really the point of the episode it definitely bugged me. Even if it didn't meet the standard of unconscionability in this bizarro-world, no lawyer would say "there's absolutely nothing we can do" in that scenario! On the plot questions you get into in the second half, I think most of them do actually make sense within the fiction, but the fiction has absolutely zero interest in the HUGE questions it raises about free will and determinism. Basically: the Quamputer is so advanced that it can simulate entire universes, including consciousness (which is why simulation Annie Murphy and everyone she knows can think and feel); but also for whatever reason limited to replicating what has already happened in the base-level 'real' universe. So rather than NPCs programmed to follow scripts, the simulated characters we follow for most of the episode are functionally 'real' people. The Quamputer however apparently exists in some sense outside/across those universes, such that destroying it one universe destroys it in all universes (I don't know how that would actually work, but the tech in the episode is essentially magic, so whatever). Real Joan is friends with Real Annie Murphy because they went through the exact same storyline in the real world as Murphy-Joan and Selma Hayek did in the simulation. *Except* that the various simulations, who are textually established to be conscious human beings (or close enough), are incredibly blasé about the idea that all their actions are pre-determined by the actions of another universe! As is so often the case in scifi, a much more interesting idea - your existence is entirely deterministic and any free will you experience is just a vibe - is tossed out in passing, while a much less interesting idea (what if AI, but too much) pulls focus. sorry for the wall of text!