Reviews in Pop Culture: Majority Rule in The Orville

Okay, so just as a preamble, sure, yes, there aren’t necessarily reviews in this as much as there are ratings, but they blend together enough that I can write about this show, can’t I? I can’t hear whether or not you’re agreeing, so I’ll just continue.

We here at Review Party Dot Com know the value of a review. It’s the sharing of someone’s experience with a product or service, offering insight and detail, hopefully informing us of the best way to spend our time and money. Ratings, while less detailed, do give a gut-reaction-level review of a product or establishment. Maybe you can’t be bothered to write why you loved or hated a place, or maybe you just want to quickly boost or bomb it. Either way, in the aggregate, ratings are still useful.

Except when we start rating each other.

There’s a reason Hot or Not doesn’t exist anymore, and a similar reason that Rate My Professor doesn’t let you add a little chili pepper to your teachers’ profiles anymore. That gets yucky, that gets creepy, that gets scary, and that can get dangerous, for one reason or another. And that brings us to social media and likes and the seventh episode of the first season of The Orville, Majority Rule.

What’s it All About?

Well, I’m not going to spoil the whole episode, but our intrepid, interstellar travelers find themselves on an Earth-like planet that governs itself more or less by mob rule, or as the wiki states, “absolute unstructured democracy.”

So what does THAT mean?

Everyone wears a badge displaying their up and down votes, and everyone gets to poke everyone either up or down, if they were friendly, if they’re kinda cute, or if they’re totally rude. Your counts act as a sort of class system, as too many downvotes will keep people from interacting with you. Enough downvotes constitutes a crime against the state, and too many past that will end in irrevocable punishment.

A “Master Feed” is displayed to all people, akin to television, and they all vote on what they record, post to the feed, and see. Again and again and again.

Sounds a little familiar, sounds a little scary.

I’d recommend watching it, learning a little from it, and recommending it to someone you think is a little too online.