YMMV / Black Mirror: Shut Up and Dance

Black Mirror YMMVSeries ThreeNosedive — Playtest — Shut Up and Dance — San Junipero — Men Against Fire — Hated in the Nation

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • A lot of Kenny's actions are ripe for this, but noticeably his suicide attempt at the end of the episode. Can he truly not live with himself now that he's admitted to someone else that he's a pedophile who viewed child pornography, or is it another attempt to evade responsibility and a more painful death at the hands of the (stronger) man he's up against?
  • The motivation of the trolls is also up for interpretation. Are they truly disgusted with the actions of the people they're blackmailing and torturing them as a form of punishment, or are they simply doing it to amuse themselves?
  • Did the trolls send Kenny an unloaded gun so that no innocent people would get hurt, implying that Even Evil Has Standards, or did they not want Kenny to have the opportunity to off himself to relieve himself of the blackmailing as well as avoid making themselves accessory to murder if he did use it? It could even be that they just couldn't get ammo due to the UK's famously strict gun laws.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The basic premise of the episode is based on a real phishing scam in which the victim is sent an email stating that their computer was hacked to take a video of both them masturbating to pornography and the pornography they were masturbating to. The victim is then asked to pay a large sum of money in Bitcoin to an address consisting of random numbers and letters, under threat of the incriminating video being sent to all their contacts. In case you weren't aware, it's simply a bluff meant to steal money from the unsuspecting victim. Some variants of the email are additionally made up to appear as if they were sent from the victim's own email, sometimes including their password in the message to make the bluff more believable.
  • Don't immediately think that hackers can't activate your webcam without you knowing. It is fully possible even with the highest of cyber security; to counteract this threat, just obscure its vision when not in use (with a piece of tape, a webcam cover, or maybe a blue tack for example). These hacks are usually achieved by downloading malware in advance (either just before the scam or at some point in the past). You can minimise the risk by routinely performing antivirus and anti-malware scans, turning off your webcam in your privacy settings when not in use, and proofreading any email you receive.
• Awesome Moments: A very small one only seen in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, but the news website that reported the CEO's leaked racist comments also has a story that Prime Minister Michael Callow divorced his wife. Considering how she treated him with disgust and disdain for an utterly humiliating and dehumanizing act he had no control or choice over, with him essentially getting raped in public, to hear that he divorced her is pretty nice. Now that his toxic marriage is over, Mike can possibly find someone who actually loves him, appreciates his sacrifice and understands the pain he went through. That's the very least that he deserves.
• Awesome Music: Radiohead's "Exit Music (For a Film)" is famously played over the ending.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The blackmailers exposing the crimes of each of their victims, even if they do what they're demanded? Cruel. The fact that they send trollfaces to each of them? Hilarious.
• Fan Nickname: Black Mirror fans that also watched Game of Thrones have a tendency to call Hector "Bronn", after one of the television roles Jerome Flynn is better known for.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • What seemed like an establishing character moment to make Kenny sweet and likable — giving a little girl a toy — becomes chilling after his crime is revealed.
  • After Wikileaks revealed in 2017 that the CIA has the ability to spy on virtually anyone with a webcam or GPS even when they are apparently switched off, this episode hits a bit closer to home.
  • The thought of being spied on and getting caught in a compromising position through your everyday tech devices is already enough Paranoia Fuel on its own, but this one particular email scam that's been on the rise since 2018 basically rings Kenny's experience word-for-word. Thankfully, in real life this scam is almost always a bluff.
• It Was His Sled: Being one of the most widely discussed episodes in the series, most people know the twist that Kenny is a pedophile.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Hector the adulterer. Cheating on your wife with a 20-something prostitute is something terrible, no questions asked, but it's nowhere near as bad as masturbating to child porn, he outright admits there was no excuse for what he did, he does genuinely love his kids, and there are moments where he helps Kenny deal with their predicament. There's a much stronger argument to be made that he doesn't deserve the humiliating ordeal than Kenny, though at least he likely won't be arrested for his infidelity.
  • 19-year old Kenny also has to go through a lot of shit, all for having a wank that happened to be caught on camera. Of course, once you figure out exactly what he was masturbating to, he loses a lot of his sympathy. Still, in the vein of "White Bear", the audience has to ask itself if it's all even deserved in the end. Kenny's attempted suicide with the pistol implies he at least feels shame and remorse over his pedophilic urges, so make of that what you will.
• Karmic Overkill: A number of viewers believe that the ordeal Kenny goes through is too much even for the crime he committed, which pales in comparison to the many atrocities committed by other villains in the series such as genocide and outright child murder.
• Narm Charm: The hackers sending their victims a trollface meme after they reveal all of the latters' dirty laundry regardless of doing what they've been told could come off as being rather behind-the-times in modern meme culture, but its outdatedness instead almost enhances the impact. It's as if the blackmailers are saying, "You're so pathetic that you deserve nothing more than an ancient meme face to epitomize your fate."
• Realism-Induced Horror: Unlike many other episodes, absolutely everything that occurs here can easily happen in Real Life.
• Squick: Kenny keeps child pornography stored on his hard drive and regularly masturbates to it. Yuck.
• Tear Jerker: Despite the revelation that Kenny was masturbating to child pornography, it's hard not to feel sorry for him, especially with the way things end.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Even by Black Mirror standards, this episode really cranks up the misery, particularly the ending where all the information is leaked anyway, meaning everyone suffered for nothing, and we find out that our "hero" is actually a paedophile trying to keep it a secret.
• The Woobie: Kenny's family and Hector's wife after both of their crimes are revealed.