Virtual Identities of the USS Callister

Virtual communities are a way to connect and form relationships with others of a shared interest. They defy cultural and spatial boundaries to form a new way to participate and engage with advanced technology and media.

Black Mirror’s episode “USS Callister” explores the development of a virtual community and the consequences associated with the perceived ethical and relational responsibilities that develop in the virtual world throughout the episode.

Christine Hine (2008), an early researcher of virtual ethnography, describes the following:

“People In virtual communities use words on screens to exchange pleasantries and argue, engage In Intellectual discourse, conduct commerce, exchange knowledge, share emotional support, make plans, brainstorm, gossip, feud, fall in love, find friends and lose them, play games, flirt, create a little high art and a lot of idle talk. People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind” (p.5).

It is this principle that “people in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind” that implies that there are shared responsibilities in the virtual and physical worlds.

Robert Daly, the CTO of the tech-entertainment company Callister, manipulates a virtual world that he helped develop in order to create a community that he is a member of, Space Fleet. Daly shows his participation in this community in the physical world through his display of figurines and posters, collection of DVDs, and knowledge of the show. He recreates his physical world through the game in order to create a virtual replication of the show he loves and the people that he interacts with. This recreation is a creation of a fantasy world, in which “the roleplaying elements of these environments imply a significant separation between the virtual and the real; however, these often get blurred in fantasy game worlds as well” (Boyd, 2014, p. 42).

Boyd (2014) states, “I was going online to escape the so-called real world. I felt ostracized and misunderstood at school, but online I could portray myself as the person that I wanted to be. I took on fictitious identities in an effort to figure out who I was” (p. 37).

USS Callister allows Daly to do just the same. He uses the virtual world to create an identity opposite of his in the real world. An identity that is abrasive, controlling, and in power. By stealing the DNA and creating exact virtual clones of the people that he works with, Daly is able to keep elements of the virtual and physical world the same.

But this comes with ethical and relational consequences. Although it is a virtual world, Daly manipulates the characters of his games and uses unethical tactics to show his control.

1. He kills Walton’s son in front of his face by throwing him into space.

2. He is able to force Cole to suffocate without end

3. And he removes their ability to go to the bathroom, a basic human function.

This is just to name a few.

Despite the virtuality of these characters, they do have true identities. They can feel, understand emotion, and make decisions for themselves. They are virtual clones of existing people with personalities and memories. The virtuality of them does not make their identity fake. The only identity in the episode that is fabricated, is Daly’s. It does not reflect his physical being the same way the other characters do.

They deserve to be treated ethically, whether they are true identities or not. The virtual world is place to explore identity, but it is not a place to manipulate and hurt others. It is not invisible to everyone in the real world and there are consequences for those that use virtual communities to take advantage. And that is especially true for Daly at the end of the episode.