By Niylah Hardy
The Netflix movie CTRL depicts an influencer couple, Nella and Joe, that showcase their lives on the internet to the world around them. They go all around the world, go on dates, and give the fans what they want. Soon enough, they break up due to Joe getting a job and cheating on her with another woman from that job. That’s when Nella gets on an AI app to help her cope and delete the memories of Joe and her. She then starts having a serious addiction to the app. She’s on the app every day, letting it control her decisions: what she does, and what she needs to do to prove she can live without Joe. But the whole time she thinks the app she is working with is good. The app is stealing her data and using her for information about Joe. They make Nella the star of the app to manipulate her into getting the information they need. She is warned by her ex-boyfriend and her family, but she doesn’t listen to them. By now, this app has stolen her data to get to her boyfriend. This is found out by the CEO and Joe disappears. Nella finds out what the app is actually about and the secrets they hide. She tries to discard the app and finds out that they have been using the faces of people who tried to expose them as the face of their app.
In society nowadays, a lot of people use AI. This movie is visual proof about how the internet works. The more and more people popularitize technology and its use, the more it’s going to get worse. The internet is going to manipulate users into being obsessed with tech until the internet has a lot of information about a person. In the movie it breaks down how that happens. The internet lures Joe and Nella into vlogging their daily lives until they both are only amused with the internet. They forget how real life works. When something goes wrong, Nella goes straight to the internet because she didn’t know what to do. The reason why things happened in the movie is because the main characters allowed the internet to steal their data and control their lives and happiness. They gave AI the information it needed to take control of the world, and advertise their company through people who they knew were going to fall for their trick.
That’s why it’s important in the real world not to believe and fall for what’s seen on Google, Wikipedia, Safari, news sources, Tiktok, and Instagram. Such apps could steal data and possibly give that data to other people within the internet, perhaps on the dark web. CTRL paints the picture of what goes wrong when humans allow technology to make them lose control over what they created. The movie is a reflection on how the use of technology shapes identities, and impacts the safety of humans.
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