At the end, she is placed in a room with the handful of other people without online presences. When she goes to see Fred at a bar, he doesn’t recognise her without an avatar to validate her existence. In order to remove herself from the internet, Carrie goes to what looks like a bank branch to declare social media bankruptcy. In fact, it’s one particularly good sketch about leaving Facebook which launched my theory that Portlandia tackles these issues better than anyone else. But it’s obvious that Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein are tech fans at heart. So many anti-technology diatribes miss the mark because their authors are clearly late-adopting haters. I was stunned when I realised that the series’ greatest strength comes from its disturbingly on-point takedowns of technology, each delivered like a crisp smack of an iPad to the back of our Instagram-addled heads. I expected to find some greater takeaway about artisanal culture or the evolution of urbanism. The series’ fifth season finished airing last week on IFC ( full episodes are on YouTube), and I went down a P-hole, rewatching every episode all the way back to 2011. For the most scathing commentary on the high-tech world we’ve designed for ourselves, you have to watch Portlandia. But the best critique of technology in today’s culture is not this science fiction import. UK series Black Mirror is being lauded as the first show that really tells the truth about our dystopian tech destiny.
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