Black Mirror warned us. We didn't listen. A growing number of its dystopian predictions have quietly become part of everyday life. This is the tracker.
Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror has served as a dark oracle of technological progress since 2011. What was once speculative fiction is now increasingly documented reality. Below, we categorize every major prediction by how close it has come to fruition — and the real-world evidence behind each one.
These episodes depicted scenarios that now exist in some form in the real world. The future arrived ahead of schedule.
A world where every human interaction is rated on a five-star scale, determining your access to housing, transport, and social standing. Your score is your life.
China's Social Credit System assigns citizens scores affecting loan access, travel rights, and even dating prospects. Meanwhile, Uber/Airbnb ratings determine if drivers and guests can use the platform. Instagram follower counts gate real economic opportunities. We rate and are rated, constantly.
A crude, animated bear character created by a comedian becomes a political candidate — and wins. Entertainment replaces substance. Outrage replaces policy.
Donald Trump went from reality TV host to US President. Volodymyr Zelensky played a fictional president on TV before being elected as the real one. Italy elected comedian Beppe Grillo's party. The line between entertainment and governance is gone.
A man driven to the edge by his social media addiction takes drastic action. The tech company knows more about him than any government. The CEO can pull anyone's data in seconds.
Meta, Google, and TikTok harvest unfathomable amounts of personal data. The Facebook Files (2021) revealed the company knew Instagram harmed teen mental health and did nothing. The average person checks their phone 96 times per day. Distracted driving from phone use kills thousands annually.
After her boyfriend dies, a woman uses a service that scrapes his social media and messages to create an AI chatbot that talks, sounds, and eventually looks like him.
Multiple startups (HereAfter AI, StoryFile, Eternos) now offer AI chatbots trained on deceased loved ones' data. In 2024, a Chinese AI company offered to create digital clones of the dead using voice samples and chat logs. Amazon's Alexa demoed speaking in a dead grandmother's voice. The grief tech industry is booming.
People pedal exercise bikes all day to earn "merits" — a digital currency needed for everything. The only escape is through a talent show, where authentic emotion is co-opted and repackaged as content.
The creator economy forces people to produce endless content to survive. TikTok creators earn fractions of pennies per view. Amazon warehouse workers are tracked by AI that measures every second. Genuine protest is absorbed and sold back as marketing. Rebellion is merch.
These scenarios are partially here. The technology exists, the behavior patterns match — we're just a few steps away from the full episode.
A mother implants a chip in her daughter that allows her to track her location, see through her eyes, censor disturbing imagery, and monitor her vitals in real time.
GPS tracking apps like Life360 are used by millions of parents. Apple AirTags are used to track children. Parental monitoring software logs every keystroke and website. We haven't implanted the chip yet — but the surveillance is already in their pocket.
An algorithm pairs people and assigns each relationship an expiration date. It runs thousands of simulations of your love life to find your "ultimate compatible match." You have no choice in the matter.
Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble algorithms already decide who you see and don't see. Hinge's AI claims to learn your "type" better than you know it. AI dating coaches analyze your conversations and suggest responses. The simulation isn't running yet — but the algorithm already decides.
A hashtag game called #DeathTo lets people vote on who they hate most. The person with the most votes each day is killed by weaponized robotic bees. Online hatred has lethal, real-world consequences.
Cancel culture routinely destroys careers and lives through coordinated online campaigns. Swatting has led to real deaths. Doxxing exposes home addresses to angry mobs. South Korea has seen multiple celebrity suicides linked directly to online harassment campaigns. The bees aren't real — but the mob is.
An ordinary woman discovers that a streaming platform has used her data to generate a TV show about her life in real time, starring a deepfake Salma Hayek. She agreed to it — in the terms of service.
AI can already generate photorealistic video of anyone from a few photos. OpenAI's Sora and similar tools create convincing video from text prompts. Deepfakes of celebrities flood the internet. Most users never read the ToS that grants companies sweeping rights to their data. The Streamberry app is closer than we think.
The foundational technology exists. Active development is underway. These episodes are no longer science fiction — they're engineering problems.
Everyone has a "grain" implanted behind their ear that records everything they see and hear. You can replay any memory on a screen, rewind conversations, and zoom into details you missed.
Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses record video and take photos hands-free. Humane's AI Pin and the Rewind Pendant record and transcribe everything you hear. Microsoft's Recall feature for Windows was designed to screenshot everything you do on your PC. The "grain" is being built — piece by piece.
Soldiers use neural implants that overlay augmented reality on the battlefield. The implant makes enemy combatants appear as monstrous "roaches" — making it psychologically effortless to kill them. The soldiers don't know they're murdering civilians.
The US Army's IVAS (Integrated Visual Augmentation System) is a combat AR headset built by Microsoft. Israel's "Lavender" AI system reportedly generated automated kill lists in Gaza. Drone operators already kill from screens thousands of miles away, experiencing targets as pixelated abstractions. The dehumanization is already engineered.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, survivors are hunted by tireless autonomous robotic "dogs." The machines never stop, never tire, and never show mercy. Brooker confirmed the episode was directly inspired by Boston Dynamics videos.
Boston Dynamics' Spot robot can now open doors, navigate obstacles, and operate autonomously. The US, China, and Russia are all developing autonomous weapons systems. In 2021, a UN report documented the first known case of an autonomous drone hunting and attacking humans without orders. The robot dogs are no longer fiction.
Technology extracts a digital copy of your consciousness — a "cookie" — that is fully sentient. These copies are enslaved as personal assistants, tortured into compliance, and can be "blocked" from perceiving other humans in the real world.
Neuralink has implanted brain-computer interfaces in human patients. AI systems are becoming increasingly agentic and autonomous. "Digital twin" technology creates virtual replicas of people and systems. The philosophical debate about AI consciousness is no longer theoretical — it's an engineering question with a timeline.
Three years after Nosedive was conceptualized, China begins building exactly what the episode described.
The Waldo Moment's premise — entertainment consuming politics — becomes headline news worldwide.
Frances Haugen reveals Instagram knowingly harms teens. Smithereens' tech dystopia is confirmed by the company itself.
A Turkish-made Kargu-2 drone reportedly hunted and attacked a human target without operator command in Libya.
Multiple commercial services launch to create conversational AI clones of deceased people. Be Right Back becomes a product.
White Christmas's "cookies" — digital brain interfaces — move from fiction to FDA-approved human trials.
The Entire History of You's "grain" is now a Windows feature. Every screen, every action, stored and searchable.
OpenAI's Sora, Google's Veo, and others produce photorealistic video from text. Joan Is Awful's real-time AI shows are technically possible.