Quality Matters More than Quantity: Relationship Trends in the Age of Social

Media Analysis

Colson Liu

Department of Communication: Elmhurst University

Comm-114-006: Interpersonal Communication

Professor Mohammed

December 8, 2023
 Abstract

This paper explores how interpersonal relationships have evolved in the new age of social media.

What matters most is quality over quantity of relationships but the impact of social media has

turned relationships into a specific simulation which confuses many. We use an episode of Black

Mirror to exemplify this simulation and confusion. The following three communication theories

are main aspects of this point of quality over quality and are illustrated in the Black Mirror

episode: Social Network Currency, Intimacy currency and Valued Social Identities. In my

summary paragraph, I tie the three communication theories into the larger point and I do raise the

question of how one should define quality of relationships.

 People in today’s climate build relationships differently than they did generations ago. In

the past since there were no phones or technology and everyone lived in the same vicinity for

most of their lives, it took time to build relationships. In the past, people focused their attention

and effort on the people in their lives that they really cared about and really mattered in part

because building relationships required a lot of investment in developing your friend circle. Now

that social media is available and information is easier to come by these days whether true or

untrue, it makes choosing who you hang out with more efficient in someway with users

sometimes picking who they associate with on image based communication apps having the goal

in mind to build their network farther and boost their reputation for whomever checks out their

profile. One negative result of this impact of social media is that people are increasingly

confused and often times are more interested in quantity of relationships not quality of

relationships.

As they showed in the Black Mirror Episode: Nosedive; we like to think of people as a

system of machines. History has played out seeing humans have ideals on how others should

work and how the top men can use this labor to benefit the institutions of the world. But in

Nosedive they use this concept by showing a world looking almost like a social media

simulation, where people are given a rating from 1 to 5 stars based on how they portray

themselves and their image of character within the simulation. The main character Lacie is a

woman in this world rated at about 4.2 stars and is trying to jump that rating up so she can get a

discount on a brand new apartment only allowing tenants with 4.5 or more stars. As she tries to

climb to a higher rating she goes and visits a social media consultant who tells her she must
associate with higher rated people so she can boost her status online. She ends up posting on her

page a picture of a childhood doll she and her friend Naomi made to help boost her ratings as

Naomi has a 4.8 star rating. Naomi likes the photo with the click of a button and Lacie then is

rated high enough to be invited to Naomi’s wedding as the main speaker and her maid of honor.

Now normally, Lacie’s childhood best friend would have invited Lacie because of the bond and

the history they share together, but due to the world that they live in it is all about the ratings.

When Lacie gets invited to the wedding her flight gets canceled and she goes on to berate the

attendant staff which causes her rating to drop significantly. As she complained more and more

to the staff they put her on “double damage” meaning in the world they live in Lacie’s rating

would drop by a full point for the entire day. She then goes on to rent a car to try to get to the

wedding but since her rating was dropped she had to settle for an older car that they gave her

which died within an hour. She drags her suitcase and the rest of her belongings down the

highway until a dusty truck with an old woman comes by and gives her another chance to get to

the reception. Susan (the woman in the truck) was a woman similar to Lacie who wanted to

constantly boost her ratings in hopes of making a better life in this world where image is

everything. Lacie tells Susan about her situation and what she’s been through and Susan said that

“You remind me of me” inferring that Susan’s big goal was to be accepted by everyone in her

community and to be well loved by those closest to her and those from the farthest distance. She

wanted everyone to be okay with who she was trying to portray. Then Susan goes on to tell Lacie

about her husband who had pancreatic cancer and was terminally ill. Susan said this whole

ordeal changed her and the way she thought since the hospital that he went to announced a new

experimental procedure that could possibly cure him. Her husband had a high rating but was very

well liked but someone had a higher rating in the world and took her husband's spot for surgery.
Susan after that said she stopped caring about the ratings and what people thought about her as

we can interpret as the audience that because her husband got passed up for surgery due to his

rating online not being high enough she feels that the ideals and principles of the world that they

lived in killed him essentially and she refuses to live that way. Lacie listens to the older woman

but doesn’t change her focus on pleasing everyone and worrying about her ratings. In time, the

truck driving woman drops off Lacie and she goes on her way. Since Lacie had no other way of

getting to the wedding she asked to hitch a ride with a bunch of people who said they were going

to a convention around where the wedding was being held. They definitely looked different and

Lacie realized she was going to have to act like she was one of them in order to get a ride out to

the wedding. Lacie grows tired of the people in the van and knows that she can’t keep pretending

that she knew where they were up too. During the middle of the car ride Lacie also receives a

text from Naomi telling Lacie that she was no longer invited to the wedding because her score

was so low with Naomi worrying if Lacie’s low rating will give Naomi a low rating due to the

association. Lacie leaves the van and tells the people that are in it that “she has no idea what they

are doing or where they are going”. The climax scene in the episode has Lacie crashing the

wedding and then going crazy and embarrassing herself in front of Naomi and the entire wedding

party. Naomi gets arrested and ends up in an empty jail cell yelling at another inmate and they

insult each other as the camera goes dark. Initially, it seems like a conclusion one could

mistakenly draw from the Black Mirror episode is that the process of trying to keep and maintain

a perfect image is completely impossible and exhausting so you shouldn’t care about what you

do or say and not worry about what people think of you. However, at the end of the episode Laci

has gotten there where she doesn’t care what she says or what people thinks and she is still alone

and miserable. A better conclusion of the episode is that quality of relationships matter and you
should focus your effort on the relationships that really matter like in the case of Naomi it is with

her brother and in the cash of the woman truck driver it is that woman spending time with her

husband. Yes, it takes too much time and effort to please everyone but the opposite of trying to

please no one is also bad.

West and Tuner defined communication as the following: “a social process in which

individuals employ symbols to establish and interpret meaning in their environment.” They then

identified five key terms: social, process, symbols, meaning and environment. Black Mirror :

Nosedive has each of these five key terms in the episode. The interaction between people was

social where people interacted with intentions and motivations. There was a process that was

ongoing and unending of communication and interacting between the characters like Lacie and

others. There were clearly symbols throughout the episode with words, conversation, ratings and

images. There was meaning that was interpreted and taken from the words and then lessons

learned at the end such as when Lacie realized that Naomi’s earlier comments as being best

friends was untrue. Lastly, there was clearly an environment that was like a simulation set in the

future where ratings drove social interaction and behavior.

The three communication theories reinforce that quality matters over quality and this is

illustrated in the Black Mirror episode. The three communication theories are the following:

Social Network Currency, Intimacy currency and Valued Social Identities.

Social Network Currency

In the book Reflect And Relate: An Introduction To Interpersonal Communication Social

Network Currency is used to describe a person who aligns themselves with a support circle that

has substantial influence. The episode of Black Mirror: Nosedive shows that quality of social

network influencers matter and just because the person has a large social network doesn’t mean
that you should invest effort into that person. What really matters is finding someone quality in

your life that influences people that you care about not influencing random quantity of people

that you don’t care about. For example, we see loads of celebrities create relationships this way

and using platforms like Instagram and Twitter (now known as X) to establish and maintain these

relationships with the goal of having the best image and the most quality status. This is true in

the movie episode Black Mirror: Nosedive as Lacie, Naomi, and everyone in the Nosedive world

wants to be around the best looking support circle, not necessarily the one that would be the best

for them. Lacie tries to impress Naomi who is a strong social influencer of a large network and

Lacie tries to use Naomi to build her relationship and brand in this social network group. My

personal thought is that social relationships do matter from a work and personal standpoint and

you need to grow and nurture those social networks but you don’t need to build a social network

of people that you don’t care about. The key in building these social networks faster and

stronger is to develop relationships with these strong influencers. We value these people because

they could potentially help you meet employers who might offer you a job, they can make you

look better or acceptable to prospective romantic partners, or even garner invitations to exclusive

parties.

Intimacy Currency

Intimacy Currency is acquired when you share a close bond with someone that no one or a very

few people have with that person. A good example of how this relationship concept is used is if

you are struggling with something and your best friend comes over to help you when they have

nothing to gain and they say, “I’m helping you with this because you are my best friend”, even if

they don’t feel like doing it or they don’t have enough time. The relationship would matter so

much that nothing else would matter except helping that person in need. Like I had mentioned
with Social Network Currency, some people build relationships because they either want

something from that person, or they can boost up each other's status, and so on. These

relationships are built because of the prominence that they have achieved and not because they

care about each other and want the best for each other. Nosedive The Episode dives (no pun

intended) into both of these concepts at different points in the film. The first part of the film is

pretty stiff with a lot of passive aggressiveness to where it feels like every conversation Lacie has

at the beginning is only to be done just so she can boost her ratings and everyone else that wants

to boost their ratings. So it gets very cookie cutter. Then I think it was when first she lost her

mind at the airport but really when Susan the truck driver picked her up that there became a

turning point in the film to where they touched more on Intimacy Currency and specifically the

friendship that Lacie and Naomi had all the way back since they were children. We do not hear

much about their friendship up until that point until Naomi canceled on her which made Lacie

rethink her stance on life in general. Lacie began to realize that Naomi said she was her best

friend but the reality is they lacked an intimate relationship and because of that they were not

truly best friends. As soon as Lacie lost her rating then Naomi dumped her as the Maid of

Honor and disinvited her from her wedding which shows that they were not really best friends

and they lacked that intimate relationship.

Value Social Identities

Your Value Social Identity looks at the aspects of your public self that you deem the most

important in defining who you are. These aspects include our families, friends, or anyone in our

lives that we think very highly of and we dream that these aspects of our lives support us, respect

us, and fulfill us no matter what. In the episode of Black Mirror : Nosedive, society doesn’t

really distinguish between groups and identities that matter versus ones that don’t matter. Your
social rating is impacted by everyone no matter how important they are to you. A person that

you meet on the street can impact your rating even if you meet them for the first time. Even

worse the ratings of people who are popular and have large social networks have an outsized

impact on the rating of others. In real life, the value of your relationships are tied to your social

identity. You should care more about relationships with family members or at work which are

people that you interact more frequently with and people whose actions can have a bigger impact

on your life. Once again, it is not quantity that matters which seems to be the thinking of

society in the Black Mirror episode, rather it is the quality that matters in the real world and the

people you should care about are the ones that play an important role in your Social Identity.

As the episode of Black Mirror: Nosedive wraps up Lacie is alone in a jail cell yelling at some

random stranger in another jail cell. She had a falling out with her brother and she lost her

supposed best friend and seems very alone and depressed. She has been focused on pleasing

everyone and focused on quantity of relationships not the quality. The episode wraps in

messages from the three communication theories of social network currency, intimacy currency

and value social networks to reinforce the main point that quality of relationships matter more

than quantity of relationships. Social networks are weak and not strong unless you build strong

relationships with people that help you create a social network of people that matter to you and

you care about. A social network that you don’t care about is weak and not helpful. Intimate

currency makes for better and stronger relationships. Having lots of superficial relationships or

having a best friend that you don’t share an intimate relationship with is not good and will

ultimately fall apart. And, valued social networks are much more important than building a

social network with people that you don’t care about or people that you don’t value.
It is interesting to refer back to an important quote from the ratings performance consultant that

Lacie hired. At 13:17 mark in the episode the performance coach says you should focus on

impressing and building relationships with “quality people” but he he then define quality people

as influencers of people with the largest social networks. This advice turns out in the end to be

bad advice and leads to Lacie’s life unwinding. The episode of Black Mirror: Nosedive doesn’t

really ever tell you what a quality relationship should really be. Is a quality relationship only

with people that you like and care about like family or friends or is a quality relationship with

someone at work that you don’t like but you need to keep a relationship with to help your job.

My belief is that quality relationships are really with people you like and you care about. With

Lacie it is her relationship with her Brother and with the truck driving woman it was with her and

her husband. Of course you need to be professional at work and perform but you should really

focus your efforts on building great and meaningful relationships with the people you like and

care for.
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Nosedive (Black Mirror) - Wikipedia