Overheard somewhere. The most famous urban legends

 We all know them - unbelievable stories, most often with a thrill, yet containing a grain of truth. City legends have been with us for a long time and we can find them in every metropolis. Where do they come from and why do we still believe in them?

Everyone knows the legend of the Wawel dragon and the stuffed sheep. But who has heard the legend of the mathematicians' bench?  And about Aurelia, who was wanted all over town? Let's start with the definition of "modern legend". For me, these are places, stories, and people from the recent past - so legendary that some people already know about them, but so young that they have not yet managed to become the feathers of mainstream popularity. Krakow is not only the city of the Kings of Poland. It is also a place where a few geniuses, bums, and freaks lived, and such a mix of personalities sooner or later has to produce different stories and legends.

Truth or Legend?

Let's start with the fact that, as humans, we love stories. In the past, we used to gather around the fire to hear the stories told by the wisest of our tribesmen. Today, we satisfy this need by watching online series and… passing on urban legends. Why? Mythologist Joseph Campbell once stated that we need other people's stories to put our lives in perspective. They are interesting, exciting, and usually contain a grain of truth. This means that, at least in theory, we can become part of them.

Due to these features, urban legends spread among people at a rapid pace. Over time, many of them begin to live their own lives and evolve. Probably most of us remember the story of the Black Volga, a car used by alleged kidnappers in Poland. After 1989, the Volga was replaced by a black BMW, and child kidnappers were replaced by kidney hunters, and so on…. Incredibly many stories have also been written about shoes hanging on high-voltage power lines. What started out as a mere prank, some have even interpreted as a symbol of some sect.

Once upon a time, people were threatened by the Black Volga. Over time, it became a black ambulance. There were rumors of poisoned chewing gum or candy ...

It's really hard to say when the urban legend was born. It is said that this term was coined in 1968 by the American folklorist Richard Dorson. But such stories existed much earlier. It all started at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s. At that time, the then Polish authorities spread a rumor about the Colorado potato beetle dropped onto Polish fields from American planes. At that time, however, this case was not treated as an urban legend.

- For two years, the fight against the Colorado potato beetle has been carried out in Poland, which the American intelligence transferred to our territory to destroy potato fields and cause supply difficulties - it was written in a secret letter sent by the Ministry of Public Security to the heads of provincial and district Public Security Offices. - In 1951, more than 26,000 Colorado beetle outbreaks were found, i.e. twice as many as last year. The Colorado beetle spreads to new provinces and counties. Failure to master the Colorado beetle will result in huge losses for the country. Fighting the Colorado beetle is possible. However, it requires a serious mobilization of the population and the apparatus of private and communal National Councils.

She has traveled to every major city in Poland since the 1960s. Sometimes she had white tires, sometimes she had curtains in the windows. At the wheel were communists, SB officers, Jews, Nazis, and nuns. Blood was drained from kidnapped children (for wealthy Germans suffering from leukemia), and sometimes their organs were excised. The legend returned at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, only this time the hero was a black BMW with horns in place of the side mirrors, personally driven by Satan (in a less extreme version by Russian mafias). The latest versions seat a refugee who pulls babies out of a pram.

Przemysław Semczuk searched for the source of the story for the book "Black Volga. A criminal history of the People's Republic of Poland ”. Mr. and Mrs. Hencl lived at Grochowska Street in Warsaw. In April 1965, two women knocked on their door, claiming to be a distant family. Helena Hensel not only took their word for it but also entrusted her youngest daughter, three-year-old Lilianna, to the care of strangers. As expected, both women disappeared, taking the little girl with them. A witness has been found: the kidnappers boarded the Black Volga with the child. They were identified quite quickly, and Lilka was found safe and sound. One of the women wanted to have healthy offspring, and her daughter was born blind. Hence the idea of the kidnapping. However, the registration and driver data of the car were never identified, and thus the Volga gradually became a legend.

Not only the USA

The United States is a real mine of urban legends. Mainly because, overseas, captivating stories quickly find their way to the big and small screens. Everyone knows the stories about the disappearing hitchhiker or Bigfoot. Many of them were popularized by films such as "The Hitchhiker" or series such as "From the X-Files". In Great Britain, on the other hand, the story of the alleged death of Paul McCartney in 1966 is popular (since then there has been a double of Sir Paul on the stage - which people won't think of!).

If we look at the legends circulating in Polish cities, we will quickly see that we have nothing to be ashamed of in this respect. Both Warsaw, Poznań, Wrocław, Kraków, and Łódź have quite interesting stories to tell, although many of them belong to the past.

Secret communist railway

Then our compatriots started talking about the secret railway for communist notables, which was to be built under the Palace of Culture and Science. On the other hand, there was supposed to be a post-German metro station in Wrocław.

So what is an urban legend really? According to Richard Dorson, the creator of this term, these are false stories that bear the hallmarks of truth. And they roam the urbanized world.

Such a tale has the appearance of true information. Sometimes it is even disseminated by the media, and most recently by the Internet. Usually, it is created by some anonymous person. Most often a friend of a friend. And such a legend quickly becomes the subject of lively discussions of various people. Usually, it concerns health, safety. It also has a hint of mystery. Many people are anxious not to get to the truth about her.

What happiness with this light ...

One of the most popular urban legends on university campuses. Two students live together, they are friends, although they are different like fire and water - one is studying diligently, the other is partying happily. The party girl comes back late at night, she doesn't want to wake her friend up, so she goes to bed in the dark. In the morning he discovers the body of the murdered roommate and the message written in blood: "are you not glad you didn't turn on the light?" The story is well over half a century old but is still readily repeated by the fire. It is meant to be a metaphor for the dangers awaiting a young person away from home when he flows out into the uncertain waters of adulthood. And if you don't take this story literally, it even makes some sense.

A legend repeated in both the United States and Great Britain, first written in 1968. The Unchanging Base tells the story of a woman who drives a car at night, chased by another vehicle, flashing its lights and running over her path. Afraid of a driver who doesn't look trustworthy, the woman just gives the gas and finally manages to escape. In one version, she arrives at her own house, in another, she stops at a gas station and the seller invites her inside under the pretext of explaining the problem with the credit card - anyway, it turns out that there is a murderer in the back seat of the car and it is in front of him. an attempt was made to warn her. Most often, the legend plays a moralizing role: the good Samaritan chasing a woman is accurately described as an unshaven, tall, broad-shouldered, shabbily dressed person, and in this case judging by appearances turns out to be a terrible mistake. So: don't judge a book by its cover. Because look can be deceiving. 

Ghost in the City Hall

The same nickname is used to describe the mysterious figure who was to visit the Wielopolski Palace many times, i.e. the present seat of the Krakow magistrate. This time the ghost is to be a young woman secretly beheaded in the palace, who appeared at night to the residents of the building. During the renovation of the palace at the beginning of the 20th century, even the skeleton of a woman was found embedded in the wall. It was supposed to haunt for over 150 years, it was mentioned by pre-war town hall ushers. In recent years, however, the authorities of Krakow have not been visited, or at least no one has admitted having contact with this ghost.

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The last of the black figures encountered in Krakow is to be the Black Princess from the Church of St. Benedict in Krzemionki. This is Kraków's most dangerous apparition - according to legends, it attacks and strangles young men, and finally… tears off their heads. Apparently, in the nineteenth century, you could meet her in Krzemionki, where she waited for a daredevil who would love her and marry her, thanks to which she would provide her with eternal peace. Another version of the legend says that it guards the treasures hidden under the church.

Haunted house, dark forest

However, at Wawel, there are not only historical legends, but also completely modern stories eagerly researched by seekers of ghosts and paranormal phenomena. Several allegedly haunted places fall into this category, which some residents avoid like fire after dark.

The most famous was the house at ul. Kosocicka, in the area of ​​Rżąka, which is part of the Krakow district of Bieżanów-Prokocim. It stood in the place where the cemetery was supposedly located centuries ago. Its construction could not be completed - according to one story, the brothers who were building it quarreled, and finally one killed the other. The local inhabitants were afraid to show up in this area after dark, the ghosts were to chase away the workers who were renovating the nearby road. However, the vacancy was finally demolished in 2016.

Mathematicians' bench

Let's start with the mathematicians' bench. It was 1916. Hugo Steinhaus, a young scientist, was strolling around Planty Park in the evening hours. Suddenly he heard the conversation of two people from the bench next to him and he caught it from it: "Lebesgue integrals". At the time, it was supposed to be a "hardcore" concept, so Hugo was surprised that someone was even talking about THESE topics. The interlocutors were Stefan Banach - a self-taught mathematician and Otton Nikodym - a graduate of mathematics in Lviv.

As it turned out, the gentlemen regularly took walks around Krakow and discussed mathematical topics. Intrigued, Hugo Steinhaus reportedly shared with his newly met colleagues the mathematical problem he was currently working on. Imagine his surprise when Stefan Banach brought him a ready-made solution a few days later!

In 2016, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of this discussion, a monument was erected in Planty Park. Look for it near Wawel - it is one of my favorite monuments in the city. In general, I highly recommend you explore the topic of Stefan Banach. It was a real guest! He did not have a master's degree - he immediately got a doctorate and a professorship.

Missing Aurelia

In many places I came across strange A4 posters, printed on a home printer. The content of the announcement was as follows:

“A girl went missing four years ago. Since the beginning of 2008 and for the whole year, she has been renting an apartment in Salwator Tower 3a, 7th floor in Bronowice. Currently 29 years old, 168 cm tall, size 38, long, fair hair, nice, warm voice. A big reward for information.

The photo showed a woman (and it was strangely artificial and disturbing, by the way). All this made it impossible to pass by indifferently and everyone who came across the poster had to wonder "what the hell is this all about?"

After some time, the case was posted on the Internet, and Internet users conducted their investigation. It turned out that the woman in the photo is Holly Valance - an Australian actress. The likely version of the events is that Aurelka was "the oldest profession in the world" and one of the clients fell in love with her. He visited her every now and then, and finally, Aurelka disappeared. Perhaps she decided to give up her current life? Or was she fed up with a client who was too fast-paced? It's hard to feel. As he did not have a picture of Aurelia, he reworked the picture of the actress, who had to be somehow similar to his heart's chosen one.

Krakow of dragons and ghosts

Krakow is a city older than Warsaw, so city legends also have a long tradition there. The story of the Wawel Dragon from 800 years ago probably also began as an urban legend. Fans of these stories look for, for example, the so-called chakra, or place of power derived from Hindu beliefs. This legend, dating back to the 1930s, places a stone with unusual properties in one of Wawel's walls. Every year, it attracts masses of New Age pilgrims from all over the world.

From historical examples closer to us, we can mention the story of Płaszów. This area was notorious for years because during the Second World War there was a German forced labor camp. It is therefore not surprising that later on, legends about ghosts and mysterious disappearances of people began to appear in the passage under the railway tracks in Płaszów. In the face of the legend, the Krakow journalist Rafał Romanowski turned out to be skeptical - he once stated that a visit to the Krakow Employment Office was much more traumatic than walking down the Płaszów corridor.

A house at ul. Kosocicka in Rżża on the border of Kraków and Wieliczka. Local legend spoke of its former owners, brothers who had killed each other during quarrels. The abandoned house did seem to be haunted. All speculation on this subject was cut short by the demolition of the building a few years ago.

There are also urban legends in the Tri-City. Surprisingly many of them circulate around the Sopot casino, which was a hit among gamblers from all over Europe before the war. So many people lost money there that stories began circulating around the city about suicides hanging en masse in one of the alleys leading to the premises. The so-called alley of hangmen was cleared of bodies every morning by the security services. One of the unfortunates was even the brother of Joseph Stalin (who did not have a brother). Of course, this story, like many others, has been pulled from the finger.

In Wrocław, on the other hand, there are legends about underground shelters, in which the residents of Wrocław were hiding during the siege of the city by the Russians in 1945. These shelters passed the exam because Wrocław defended itself against the Soviet army even longer than Berlin. On the other hand, the imagination of the later inhabitants of the city enlarged these bunkers to the size of an underground city. There was even a rumor about a forgotten subway. It is a pity that today's Wrocław residents are still waiting for a real metro. Or maybe someday this legend will at least come true?

Krakow ghettos

 Krakow - the city that never sleeps - is what the inhabitants call the place where they lead their peaceful and monotonous lives every day. Now questions for you: Maybe you live in Krakow? Have you visited Krakow?

So let me tell you a story that should encourage you to come to this place, especially if you have a strong will, character, and a strong psyche. After arriving in Krakow, you should start looking for Miodowa Street or, possibly, Plac Bohaterów Getta, as these streets contain old tenement houses where the Jewish population was hiding during the Second World War. After some time, the Germans discovered the whereabouts of people trying to protect themselves from being sent to concentration camps. German soldiers without exception carried out the executions of everyone without exception, usually at night, so as not to cause panic among the population, at the same time saving themselves time. They quickly entered the rooms where the Jews were sleeping, put their weapons to their temples, and fired shots with a steady hand. Of course, there were quite a lot of Nazis, which made it easier for them to complete their task.

The buildings where executions were carried out are now open to the public, some apartments can even be rented, but most people who moved into one of these apartments quit very quickly ...  The former owners, who had the opportunity to stay in this place for a short period of time, could not stand it mentally. They talk about events that take place late at night, around 3:30 am, people around this hour say you can hear footsteps approaching, until finally two men talking, probably speaking German, can be heard from behind the door. Then the door to the room slowly opens, despite being locked. Some tenants are already giving up at this point, packing their bags and leaving the haunted place in a hurry. However, there are also those who are not disturbed by strange noises and the door opening. They stay in their beds, not paying attention to what has just happened, they treat it as a mere coincidence.

Unfortunately, the strange phenomena do not end there. For those who haven't quit, an unpleasant surprise awaits. They claim that cold sweat is pouring on them, their hands begin to tremble, their breathing becomes faster, and the feeling in their legs weakens. They hear as if someone is approaching their bed, the deep breath of someone standing next to them, after a while they feel cold steel pressed against their head, and at this point, they cannot do anything, cannot move or speak. They can't even close their eyes ... Then comes a shot, feel piercing pain radiating all over the body, thick blood begins to drip from the temples onto the pillow ... A moment of silence, peace, reflection, followed by a very loud woman scream and a child's cry, then everything goes silent ... The eyelids fall limply over the eyes, after which you fall asleep. People wake up in the morning with a strong headache, the morning rays of the sun shyly penetrate into a still dark room, because even the sun is afraid to look in here. This is how those who experienced it describe it.

You have just witnessed the events that took place in this place in 1939-1944. You do not have to worry about your mental health, everything will be back to normal, except for one small detail - always around 3:30 am you will hear a woman scream in your head and a baby cry, they will come back to you every night. You will feel the suffering of a young woman who was taken from her husband, child, and then her own life.

EFFECT "Déjà Vu"

 Déjà Vu is lived or imagined experiences? A phenomenon that, although it is not common, we have all experienced it in some way at some point in our lives, this strange feeling that we have already been there or that we have already had an experience, even if we know what is not.

Déjà Vu is a general term for similar experiences, such as what has already been lived, what has already been felt, and what has already been seen. Why is this happening? Nobody knows for sure. Despite the interest in this phenomenon in some scientists, it is very difficult to study because most people, when they experience it, do not have electrodes attached to monitor brain activity.

Various surveys have been carried out and approximately 60% of the respondents admitted having felt it in the past. Déjà vécu is what people usually talk about. It is a feeling that we witness, say or see, we have experienced it before. Research has shown that it is more common in young people between the ages of 15 and 25 because their minds are still vulnerable to any changes in their environment.

It is fundamentally characterized by the fact that the experience that is considered lived usually contains a large number of details in common with the memory to which it relates. Dejà senti: Unlike déjà vècu, this process is only a mental process. This means that it does not have any cognitive characteristics, nor does it usually relate to the memory of the person who is going through it.

It can also be said that it can be a feeling that brings satisfaction from remembering something that has been forgotten for a long time. Visited Déjà: This can be translated as "something already visited", meaning that the process relates to knowing something completely new to the person. That is, when a place or something new is known, there is no reason to know it.

Some explanations for this are dreams, out-of-body travel, and reincarnation. When it comes to a more skeptical analysis, it is said that it is likely that knowing a place beforehand can trigger this feeling. Most researchers say that this phenomenon is a memory-based experience, so the memory centers in the brain are responsible for it.

The temporal lobes are the main factors responsible for preserving long-term memory of both events and events. Certain areas of the medial temporal lobes are also very important in detecting and recognizing intimacy, as opposed to the detailed recall of specific events. Detecting familiarity is said to depend on entorhinal cortex function, while detailed recall is related to the hippocampus.

Unfortunately, the randomness of déjà vu experiences in healthy individuals makes it difficult to investigate this phenomenon empirically, since any research on the subject depends on the subjective information of the people involved. This means that getting to the root of the cause of déjà vu depends on the perception of each person, which makes it very difficult to understand this strange and mysterious event.

But as with many phenomena that we still cannot understand, there are various theories about the origin of déjà vu. Why does déjà vu occur? There are many theories about the causes of déjà vu. These range from paranormal phenomena such as saying they come from past life memories, through prophetic dreams, and even alien abductions.

Some interpret this experience as evidence of a parallel universe. According to physicist Michio Kaku, quantum physics shows that there is a possibility that déjà vu is caused by the ability of the human brain to "wander between universes." Michio explains these "parallel universes" by comparing them to radio waves. We cannot see them, but there are hundreds, even thousands, that fill our space.

However, according to the laws of gravity, a radio can only be tuned to one station at a time. In the same way, our mind is tuning into one frequency of reality, and when that reality seems too familiar to be new, it may mean that we are "vibrating in accord" with a parallel universe. Another paranormal theory confirms that déjà vu is generated by our spirit and not by our brain's memory. It would be like a hazy memory or a forgotten dream.

Therefore, it is believed that this can only make sense if it comes from a spiritual ether. Apparently, this experience is how our spirit roots us in the present and lets us know that this is where we are destined in time and space. It is like a little reminder of awareness.

Some researchers have suggested that déjà vu occurs because of a mismatch in-memory systems that generate a detailed but incorrect memory of a new sensory experience. This means that déjà vu is triggered by a mismatch between sensory input and memory. Information bypasses our short-term memory and goes directly to our long-term memory, causing a mismatch between sensory stimuli (hearing, sight, touch) and working memory.

It makes the new experience feel familiar, even if the experience isn't strong enough to be real. Another theory suggests that familiarity-sensing neuromorphic activation occurs without activation of the hippocampal recall system. This brings us to a sense of appreciation, but without specific details.

It has also been observed that déjà vu is the reaction of the brain's memory systems to the known experience. This experience is known to be innovative, but with many recognizable elements, albeit in a slightly different setting. For example, a meeting in a bar or restaurant far from our place of residence, but with the same or very similar decor to the one that we regularly go to in our city.

It has also been observed that a subset of epilepsy patients experience persistent déjà vu at the onset of a seizure, which is when the seizures begin in the medial temporal lobe. This gave scientists some major clues for an empirical study of déjà vu. Seizures appear to be caused by changes in the electrical activity of neurons in focal areas of the brain.

This dysfunctional neural activity can spread throughout the brain, much like the shock waves generated by an earthquake. Regions of the brain where this electrical activation may occur include the medial temporal lobes. The electrical disturbance of this nervous system generates a déjà vu aura (a kind of warning) against epilepsy. On the other hand, déjà vu may also be before an epileptic seizure, it can be quite long-lasting and is not a fleeting feeling as it is in people who do not have seizures.

"Black Mirror" is more than a dystopian serial

 The series "Black Mirror" is a phenomenon - each episode weaves a different (always worryingly probable) scenario about the near future, redistributing the plot, setting, and even characters. Direct references to other episodes appear somewhere in the margins, in the form of props or symbols smuggled into individual frames.

The creators reduce them to the role of winks to the most determined viewers who try to decipher the only correct chronology of events and then prove their point in lengthy analyzes and fan compilations on YouTube. The actual relationship between the episodes is rather loose; only the theme of the turbulent relationship between man and technology can be considered unquestionably common.

Brooker himself admits that he was inspired by the Twilight Zone - an American production by Rod Sterling from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which drew on the tradition of SF, thriller, and horror, smuggling controversial, political content in a fantastic guise. The Black Mirror, like the Twilight Zone in the past, offers "separate, closed stories penetrating the collective fears of viewers", while the lion's share of the episodes does not offer any consolation after the painful screening, but only multiply subsequent bitter punch lines.

The spiral of hopelessness is helped by the form of the anthology itself (also known from Tales of Unexpected or On the Other Side), which leaves no time for a proper adaptation to the story being told, or for taking a distance from it, instead, it throws the viewer into a different reality, regularly tearing my already shattered nerves. You can argue whether we are dealing here with five seasons and one interactive episode, or rather with twenty-three separate films; anyway, the inability to return to tame faces and problems consistently upsets and intensifies the dystopian message of individual episodes and the entire production.

The very fact that the Black Mirror is a classic dystopia - science-fiction, black, and at the same time a critical vision of the future - is beyond dispute; the designs of subsequent worlds, apart from the two exceptions proving the rule, are extremely pessimistic, and basically, all episodes deal with "negative consequences of current phenomena of reality". The series does not point out the errors of the concept of utopia (which makes it difficult to call it an anti-utopia), nor does it simply predict tragedies that are yet to come (although Brooker has been a dangerous prophet in the media for a long time); Instead, it focuses on defending the values that are collapsing in the real world right now, which does not inspire joyful expectation of the development of the situation. Some episodes are so deeply rooted in the current reality that they could be played out even this afternoon; others consider current dilemmas, taking on as-yet non-existent technologies.

The extensive catalog of opportunities, pitfalls, and dangers associated with the galloping development of civilization and unstoppable digitization is the main driving force behind the plot (s) of Black Mirror. Technology appears "almost ubiquitous and is a key iconographic theme"; the heroes do not part with their gadgets either during work or after hours. The fantastic nature of some inventions - for example, nanochips that stimulate the senses or copied consciousness enchanted in toys - does not diminish the realism of the problems they cause, and we have a lot of them here: the crisis of an alienated, weakened subject, mutilated interpersonal relationships, a deceptive marriage between the real and the virtual, or finally - carelessly crossing natural limitations and losing the essence of humanity somewhere along the way.

The source of all this suffering is precisely the technology and more specifically the irresponsible, unreasonable, and sensible way of using it. There is nothing revealing about it - Zbigniew Lenkiewicz, the author of a book on philosophy in science fiction, wrote in the 1980s about "being unprepared to use technology", which "makes the world a new apocalypse". In Brooker's series, technology acts as a catalyst for negative motivation and behavior; it takes the worst out of people and at times even strips them of their humanity, weakening their sensitivity and fueling their lowest instincts. A rough lesson in ethics casts a shadow on the characters' lives, effectively eliminating the chance for solace, let alone a happy ending.

The threat from technology is an eagerly picked up plot, which in pop culture usually manifests itself as a literal rebellion of machines with bloodshed in the package. The motifs known from Blade Runner or Terminator have their source in narratives about Golem and the Frankenstein monster, which researchers treat as pioneering androids. There is no point in looking for vengeance-seeking robots in Black Mirror; only the episode of Metalhead, a black and white raisin in a post-apocalyptic atmosphere, spins fantasy in this taste, which in the context of the entire series looks like a visual and genre experiment.

The very title of the series refers to the ubiquitous Orwellian screens - monitors, smartphones, and plasma displays, whose smooth surfaces fill public and private spaces, crawling into the streets and slipping into handbags or pockets. Unlike Lacan, the mirror screens of Brooker's series do not allow for self-indulgence; instead, they thwart self-identification and plunge heroes into an identity crisis. The reflection in them is always darkened and distorted, and in the opening sequence, to make matters worse, it is crossed by a symbolic crack.

In Black Mirror, the very essence of humanity blurs with the characters' self; A subject entangled in a nuanced, toxic relationship with the object finally falls into a crisis from which it is impossible to get out in one piece. The key themes present in the series - digital spectacles and media dependency systems, and finally VR and the issue of mind transfer - serve as a pretext for asking about the agency of human-associated with technology; Brooker needs dystopia to confront the viewer with the progressive loss of control.

The protagonists of Black Mirror, like all postmodern people, rely largely on broadly understood prostheses - you can "attach any otherness" to them, from seals, lenses, and transplanted organs to nano implants and clever chips. Incorporated prostheses and a whole galaxy of electronic gadgets present a sea of ​​possibilities for them; however, they will not hesitate to demand something in return. This twisted relationship of subject and object forms the core around which several episodes have been built (The Whole Truth About You, People Against Fire, Arkangel, Crocodile, Black Museum), in the remaining episodes, it plays at least a significant role.

First, let's take the story of Liam (The Whole Truth About You), whose skull has a grain in it - a chip that records everything that meets the eye 24/7. Recorded memories can then be dumped on the screen and made available to viewers. In general, the new technology makes a lot of sense, because it supplements imperfect memory, disseminates knowledge, and improves the work of security services. Tragedies can be easily prevented (security does not clutter your pockets, only lazily scrolls through the last recordings of a suspected delinquent), and the looped screening of your own mistakes and successes paves the way for a better version of yourself.

The seed offers a substitute for omniscience and the full power over memory, but it does not bring relief; it silently destroys privacy, fuels distrust, and takes space for innocent lies. In a world where an argument and a lawsuit are won in seconds, that is enough to disillusionment. When Liam obsessively suspects his wife of a side jump, the seed gives him irrefutable evidence. For him, the victory of the dispute means a real loss - he ruins the marriage and takes his daughter away from him, and the looped session of the stolen memories of betrayal destroys him from the inside. In the final, drastic scene, the man cuts his own grain, and with it, he deprives himself of the reminiscences of a lost relationship.

Liam is a cyborg with an insight into his own and other people's memories, but a poignantly human cyborg who, apart from the implant, has a full package of human weaknesses and weaknesses. He is guided by "digitally recorded memories that obscure his own", which - as Grzegorz Wójcik rightly notices - brings to mind Paul Virilio's vision machine. By perfecting memory, the seed takes away one imperfection from the heroes, but at the same time stimulates another: obsessive control over another human being. We follow a twin version of this story in Arkangel, in which a concerned mother places her three-year-old daughter with an implant with a tracking option and a clever censorship filter - it imposes a sensory block on violence, dog barking, and any indecent or stressful stimulus.

When a woman loses control over the antics of a rebellious teenager, she abuses the acquired power. The expectation of full disclosure leads to the collapse of the protagonists' accounts and causes harm so great that there is nothing to save. Playing with perception is also the main theme of People Against Fire. There, superiors upload an interface to the soldiers, which makes them perceive their enemies as mutated, monstrous "cockroaches". Optical illusion effectively eliminates the hesitation when pulling the trigger - which is not visible, the heart does not regret it.

Of course, there are more fatal prostheses in Black Mirror: in Crocodile, the senses are extended by a reliable surveillance device that winds up the spiral of murder; The revolutionary diagnostic equipment from the Black Museum also contributes to the bloodshed. The pattern is relatively simple - augmenting the body stimulates minds and perceptions but doesn't leave them unscathed; the human element influences the non-human element and vice versa, the prosthesis also injects its three cents. In this close (too close?) Meeting, both sides transform each other in an "unpredictable" way.

In Black Mirror, objects turn out to be more efficient than people, delude with the promise of extending control, and as a result, they take over the reins themselves, redefine their identity and deprive the characters of any power over their emotions. The technocratic litany of losses is thus opened by enslavement, alienation of the subject, and a painful crisis of agency. As in dystopia, powerless resistance remains the prerogative of individuals who long for imperfection and autonomy; the community surrounded by screens remains blind to the problem.

While dangerous implants that constantly record reality or put cognitive filters on it are still relatively distant fantasies taken out of the realm of fantasy, gloomy stories about being entangled in the digital media system, and especially in social media, already sound suspiciously familiar. Brooker tries to trace how our media presence affects social practices. And so - we spend the episode Head to Neck in a world where each interaction is scored on a scale from 1 to 5. The viewer mainly follows the struggles of Lacie, who is desperately trying to raise her ranking from 4.2 to 4.5 (only then will she get the discount she needs and can afford an apartment in a prestigious district, and in the background and in the background there is a swarm of characters stuck to smartphones...

The very picture itself - which should not surprise anyone - makes you think about who we are and where we are going. In a hypocritical reality ruled by the media, everyone wants to be beautiful, liked, and rich, and because the rating system decides who is beautiful, liked, and rich, deeper interpersonal relations are replaced by superficial contacts with a theatrical smile. In one of the scenes, Lacie goes to a cafe and immediately posts a relevant post on the web. Although the food tastes like paper, an Instagram photo of a cappuccino with a sweet cookie quickly scores top marks. The truth does not matter, but the price is a studied image that paves the way to a good reputation.

Individuals breaking out of this system face a brutal push beyond the social margin, which ultimately happens to Lacie herself. Due to a series of unlucky events, the heroine fails to shine at her friend's wedding with a rating of 4.8, which would allow her to raise her status; instead, the woman goes berserk and ruins the candy wedding, thereby destroying her chances of a decent scoring. He finds the lost freedom only behind bars, where he happily throws meat around with a fellow prisoner.

It is one of the many episodes that implement the concept of Debord's play - interpersonal relations are here mediated by images that take precedence over reality and set the "new, dominant model of social life". Their spectacularity deludes, alienates, and deprives us of the ability to reflect, and since social media is a place where the spectacle takes place virtually all the time, the result is an extreme alienation of the subject surrounded by images. The protagonists of Black Mirror, and most likely its viewers, prepare this fate at their own request when they engage in the digital culture of exposure and voyeurism.

The mechanisms governing digital media, with continuous monitoring of activity and organizing a 24/7 spectacle, are the apple of Brooker's eye. Already in the first episode - the National Anthem - the checkered prime minister tries to save the life of a British princess by forcing himself to have sex with a pig. In keeping with the wishes of the performer-kidnapper, expressed - of course - in the YouTube video, the act of zoophilia flies live on TV, and it all ends up in vain. The released princess wanders the empty street for half an hour before the broadcast, but no one pays attention to her, because everyone is waiting in front of the receivers; after all, only the spectacle matters.

Particularly intriguing is the issue of public (self) judgment, which appears in the episodes of White Bear, Shut Up, and Dance or Hated. The first, the spooky Truman Show 2.0, tells the story of a murderer trapped in an amusement park. Victoria wakes up every morning brainwashed out and, to the delight of people recording her, she experiences a lot of psychological torture. After a whole day of struggle, she goes on stage, where she learns that the horror that happens to her is an eye for eye retaliation; since she was recording the agony of a helpless child with her phone, she would now be the main attraction in the park of justice. The performance is unmasked only to start over the next day; A woman's pain, although real, is mediated by the viewers' smartphones, which reduces her to an unreal source of entertainment.

The protagonist Shut Up and Dance is recorded by a webcam as he masturbates to child pornography; the hackers blackmail him into a series of crimes and then pass the material over to the police anyway. In The Hateful, we observe a private rebellion against spoiled humanity - an anonymous avenger uses murderous nanotechnologies and the hashtag #DeathTo to lynch the winners of an online hate plebiscite, after which he targets hundreds of thousands of authors of hate comments. As in the episode with the British Prime Minister, audiences follow the show on the digital stage, either with flushed faces or in a quiet, free of agency consent; the viewers of the Black Mirror can do little more.

Brooker multiplies successive realities in which the media are "not a boon, but an oppressor" the heroes of public performances know that they are being watched, but have no idea who (and at what moment) is looking at them. Big Brother is awake, so you still have to be careful - since the observer is anonymous, visibility can be constant, and this enforces discipline and establishes a power relationship.

Panoptic threads, present in most of the episodes cited, resonate particularly strongly in 15 million - a model dystopia based on the order of a talent show. Characters in gray uniforms, who have clearly not heard about the action "Log out to life", live alone in cubist boxes with walls made of screens. They spend their days riding stationary bikes and constantly staring at the monitor - this way they earn points for which they can buy food or turn off annoying advertisements, and at the same time generate the energy needed to run the system, which neatly closes the circle of piled up simulacra.

The rhythm of the day is not determined by nature, but the software (the waking up is announced by the rising sun on the screen), and there are not many alternatives for playing games, watching silly programs, and following the adventures of your own avatars. Moreover, from primitive, including erotic content, you cannot simply look away; appropriate punishments await the crooks and rebels in a panoptic prison. Life takes place in the virtual world and becomes "determined by the type of information and the aggressive rhetoric of the media", the order is determined by constant observation (straight from Orwell's 1984) and the caste nature of society (borrowed from Huxley's Brave New World).

If you want to jump to a higher level of gameplay and fight for the media fame of the elite, you have to take part in a TV talent competition, and first, leave a crazy sum of points to even get to the casting. When Bing, a lone rebel, finally arrives in front of the jury, he gives a heartbreaking monologue about the heartlessness of the system and intends to end up on stage with himself. It does not make a big impression on the media propaganda machine; on the contrary, she turns the gesture of resistance to her advantage and offers Bing her own show, allowing her to regularly vent her frustrations and threaten viewers with the empty threat of suicide.

Ironically? Yet how! Not only does the boy have to finally love Big Brother, but also the entire anti-media manifesto is created (and remains) within the criticized medium. Behind Black Mirror is Endemol, a third-party television content producer that spits more than 15,000 hours of entertainment material annually and is responsible for popular talent and reality shows, including Big Brother.

In this light, the approval of the Brooker project appears to be the cynical chuckle of an unchallenged system that graciously agrees to give Bing a separate bandwidth. Beyond the medium - and beyond the media spectacle - there is no escape. In Black Mirror, the agency is a privilege that entails abuses; whoever has the media at their fingertips has the power, and technology can serve as a tool for surveillance and discipline of individuals and masses under surveillance.