 In this video, we're going to be breaking down my personal favorite episode from Black Mirror Season 5, which is Smithereens. What is up everybody? This is Chris from The Rewired Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, what I like to do is take different topics from movies, TV shows, the YouTube community, and try to see what lessons we can take from them. So if you're into that stuff, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. I am doing multiple episode breakdowns of Black Mirror, pulling out different topics from each of the three episodes. I know if you're like me, you were disappointed it was only three episodes. But there's so much we can learn from them, alright? And follow me over on Instagram and Twitter at The Rewired Soul. Sometimes the YouTube notification system sucks. So if you're following me over on Instagram and Twitter, you'll know when brand new videos go up about Black Mirror or other topics, alright? But yeah, in my opinion. In my humble opinion, this was the best Black Mirror episode. It felt the most like Black Mirror compared to the other two. Alright, but anyways, let's do a quick recap of the episode and talk about what lessons we can pull from it as well as the ending, alright? So in this episode, we're kept guessing a lot. It follows a character by the name of Christopher. Great name. That's my name too. Anyways, he is like a Black Mirror's version of an Uber driver or a Lyft driver. And he is parking outside of the headquarters in England for Smithereens, okay? And we learned that this is a social media app and he asks whoever gets into his car, like if they work for them. The first young woman does not. The next one is an intern. So he ends up kidnapping this intern, alright? And we don't know much about what is happening. We know that Christopher went to a support group and it seems like it was for grief and loss. We know that he is having flashbacks of what looks like a car accident. We hear little tips that, you know, maybe it involved like a drunk driver. So a lot of this episode, we're guessing like what happened? What happened to this guy that's making him do this? Because he seems pretty nice and he's sorry for what he's doing. He doesn't seem like a crazed kidnapper trying to just extort Smithereens for money. So, as he is in the car with the intern who he kidnapped and he's making his demands, the one thing he wants to do is talk to Billy Bauer. Billy Bauer, played by Tofer Grace, he wants to talk to him and he is like the head dude who started Smithereens and we don't know why, right? A lot of the, you know, the hostage negotiator, the police, the FBI, they're wondering why he wants to talk to him. They assume that it's some kind of like money grab or something like that and they believe that, you know, Christopher is going to kill the intern no matter what. So anyways, they finally get ahold of Billy Bauer. He is on a silent retreat and meditation is a main theme in this episode. I'm going to talk about that pretty soon. So finally, when Christopher gets on the phone with Billy Bauer, he explains what happened. And basically what happened was Christopher and his fiancee, they were driving back from a trip and his fiancee was sleeping. Christopher got a notification on his phone from the Smithereens app. He checked it, boom, he hits a dude. The dude was a drunk driver. The drunk driver dies. His fiancee dies, but all the blame went to the drunk driver. So Christopher has been holding on to all this guilt because he checked his phone and that's what led to it, all right? But he's talking to Billy Bauer and he just wanted to explain to him like what this app is doing, all right? And the episode ends with a gunshot and a bunch of people getting notifications and everything like that. But we're not 1,000% sure what happened, all right? But anyways, I want to talk about the main theme of this episode. So this is something that is really actually going on. And I'm glad Black Mirror talked about this because I have mentioned it so, so, so many times on my channel. And here's the thing, I am not somebody who is against social media. I'm not somebody who is against technology. I love technology. I've been a technology nerd since I was a child, all right? Like I was building computers as a kid, video game nerd, computer nerd, like just love technology. So I heard one of my meditation teachers say this a while back and I think it's a perfect analogy for technology. So technology, social media, all these things that are inundating our lives today, they're like a knife, all right? And if you put that knife into the hands of like an amazing chef, it's a tool and this chef can do amazing things with that tool. But if that chef or somebody less skilled with that tool is using it, they might slice a finger off. And that's kind of how technology is. So my goal with my channel when talking about this topic is just to just inform you guys and just create awareness. Awareness is the best thing. So during the episode, we see Christopher and he's like grabbing lunch. And you can see like he's just going crazy for everybody who's on their phones and getting notifications and all that, right? Because he sees now that we know that this was part of the reason or the main reason why he got into that car wreck, it drives him nuts. How many other people might be affected by this? So when he's talking to Billy Bauer, he's letting him know that Billy Bauer, he kind of just vents out about how this was not what the app was supposed to be. But then he talks about how they have people at their company who are designing the app in that way. And they're trying to create notifications and different features in the app that release dopamine. So for those of you who don't know what dopamine is, dopamine is a pleasure neurotransmitter in your brain. All right. This is what trains our habits. This is what trains addiction. All right. Because the brain is always trying to seek things that makes it feel good. And what they've actually discovered is that when you get notifications, likes, comments, shares, any type of engagement on social media, your brain shoots off little fires of dopamine. Okay. So what can happen is social media can become very addictive. And this is like not just a black mirror episode. Like social media companies literally have people who are there trying to figure out ways to make dopamine fire off in your brain to keep you on their apps longer. All right. Like this is some crazy conspiracy theory. So the next main theme of this that I thought was interesting because we saw both Christopher as well as Billy Bauer and their experience with meditation. So Christopher, you see him meditating in his car quite a bit. Like when he is not, you know, driving somebody, he's meditating. And then Billy Bauer, he was on a silent retreat. Now, if you're somebody who has developed some kind of addiction to your phone, the best thing you can do is meditate. All right. And meditation is more about frequency rather than duration. All right. So like, for example, myself, I've been meditating for years now. Maximum, I usually meditate for five to 10 minutes. Okay. But one of my meditation teachers, he taught me like the goal isn't to meditate as long as possible. The goal is to have little bits of mindfulness as much as possible throughout the day because what you're doing is you're actually training your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for something very important, which is impulse control. All right. It's also responsible for things like emotional regulation and all of that. All right. But the more you meditate, the more you're training your brain to be mindful and you can notice, you can notice when you're getting hooked on something. All right. A great book. If, if you're noticing that social media is becoming a problem in your life, if you're checking your phone while you're driving and things like that, an excellent book is called digital minimalism by Cal Newport. I read that book a month or two ago. Excellent book. I'll link it down in the description below. But anyways, through my own mindfulness practice, I've noticed like when I'm driving, like I usually have my phone like on the passenger seat because I play Spotify listening to my music and all of that. But once that phone is plugged in to charge or it's hooked up to Bluetooth, I really don't have a reason to touch that phone while I'm driving. Like I got steering wheel controls and everything like that. But because of my mindfulness, because of being present and being aware, I noticed when I'm coming to a stoplight, my brain wants to move my arm over to that phone to check it. All right. And just noticing that, I could stop myself. I could pause and be like, whoa, I didn't even realize that was happening because a lot of us are just on autopilot. The second thing that I would highly suggest, if you notice that this is becoming a problem, there's actually something I learned from the book, digital minimalism. I have pretty much all of my notifications turned off. Like every social media app on my phone, I have notifications turned off. The only notifications that I personally get are calls and text messages. And this is basically because of friends, family members. I have a son, got to make sure if something happens at school or if he gets sick or whatever, people can get a hold of me. But as far as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and all that, no notifications go off on my phone. In fact, when I did kind of a social media detox a month or two ago, I deleted all of my social media apps as I took a break. And I gradually reinstalled them because I'm a social media influencer. I'm a YouTuber. I need these apps that are part of my job. And the one app I have not reinstalled yet is Facebook. All right, I just haven't reinstalled it yet. It's not necessary for my work, so I don't use it. Like I have a Facebook page for the rewired soul, but I hardly ever use it. But my primary outlets are YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. You know what I mean? So that is something that I still don't have on my phone. But as far as the other apps, I try to use them as minimally as possible. The last suggestion I'll give you that is another suggestion from that book, is that if you feel like you're developing an addiction to these apps on your phone, try to do what you can to limit yourself to using them on your computer or on your laptop, all right? Like when we break the habit of using these apps on our phone all the time and only use them on our computer, it starts to lessen that time. And we're not training our brain to constantly check our phone for these things, all right? But anyways, like I said, I have nothing against technology. Just be smart about your technology, how you're using it. But if you're recognizing that it is a problem and you're wasting a ton of time or you're impulsively checking your phone while doing things like driving, like it's time to work on this and look into this, all right? But anyways, I will be making more videos with different topics from these three episodes because there's so much to discuss. So if you liked this video, make sure you give it a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe and turn that notification bell on. And like I said, make sure you're following me on social media because I try to tweet or do a little Instagram story whenever I put new videos up, all right? But anyways, I want to send out a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And if you want to support what I'm doing here and get access to some other perks and benefits, get your name in the end credits and all that jazz, click or tap on that Patreon icon right there, all right? Thanks again so, so much for watching. I'll see you next time.