Black Mirror’s Subscription to Survival: The Horrors of Extractive Capitalism in ‘Common People’

How Much Is a Life Worth at the Lowest Subscription Tier?

[contains spoilers of Season 7, Episode 1]

In Common People, the first episode of Black Mirror season 7, we meet Amanda (Rashida Jones) and Mike (Chris O’Dowd), a working-class couple living a quiet, ordinary life until Amanda is diagnosed with a brain tumor. The hospital offers Mike a "solution": a startup called Rivermind can clone Amanda’s brain, upload it to a server, and stream her consciousness back into her body.

It’s the future of life support but with a catch.

It runs on a subscription.

The cost? $300 a month for the Common plan. The cheapest tier. The only one they can afford.

Amanda wakes, but she’s altered. She needs more sleep. Her cognitive function is degraded. Worst of all, she begins unconsciously spouting contextually relevant ads throughout the day—her body now a billboard to fund its own existence.

New Rivermind tiers roll out, promising better memory, less fatigue, and ad-free experiences but the costs rise with them. Desperate to improve Amanda’s quality of life, Mike begins moonlighting on a grotesque livestreaming platform called DumDummies, where viewers pay to watch people hurt themselves. The only way to fund Amanda’s survival is to fracture his own humanity and dignity in the process.

They lose their jobs. Amanda sleeps more. The ads keep coming. The Lux tier promises near-godlike vitality, but they can only afford short booster packs. Their life becomes an endless cycle of trade-offs: money for consciousness, shame for survival.

Eventually, Amanda makes a decision. She tells Mike she’s ready to go and asks him to do it when she’s not "here," meaning when she’s unconscious and cycling through ads. He waits until she enters ad mode. Then he smothers her.

She dies softly, reciting product copy as her husband ends the contract neither of them ever wanted to sign.

It sounds dystopian. But if you’ve ever fought with your insurance company, worked gig jobs to survive, or felt priced out of your own body, you’ve already lived some version of this.

When Life and Labor Are Dictated by Algorithms

What looks like science fiction is already coded into the systems that govern our lives.

A recent MIT Technology Review article outlines just how normalized this reality has become. Uber drivers like Dora Manriquez accept rides that don’t pay enough to cover gas—because rejecting too many affects their "driver score," which determines everything from bonuses to basic access. No one knows exactly how the score is calculated, but failure to meet invisible thresholds can lead to deactivation.

Amazon may be the clearest real-world mirror of Common People’s logic. A 2024 Senate investigation, reported by Business Insider, revealed that Amazon warehouse workers have faced nearly twice the injury rate of their counterparts for seven consecutive years, driven by punishing quotas and algorithmically enforced speed. These systems are built to maximize output, not wellbeing.

And when those workers break? They're discarded. The Guardian documented how injured Amazon employees have been forced to turn to GoFundMe to cover their medical bills and survive because the company responsible for their injuries offers no meaningful support. Care is privatized. The cost is passed on to the worker. Pain becomes a personal responsibility.

This isn’t just about speed or surveillance. It’s about extraction.

It’s about pushing human beings beyond their limits to meet the demands of machines and then blaming them for the collapse. Jennifer Bates, an Amazon warehouse worker who testified before Congress, described irregular breaks, algorithmic quotas, and constant emotional and physical exhaustion. “We’re not robots,” she said. But the system treats them otherwise—until they break, and are replaced.

This is the Common tier of labor. The tier where safety is a premium feature, and dignity is a luxury you pay for, if you can.

Common People Isn’t Dystopia. It’s Documentary.

Beneath the sci-fi plot and sleek visuals, Common People is a precise rendering of the systems we already inhabit: the healthcare complex, the gig economy, the monetization of identity.

We already live in tiers.

Insurance premiums. Deductibles that must be cleared for access to care. Mental health services locked behind high-cost plans.

Amanda’s “Common” plan isn’t fiction. It’s a mirror held up to our real-world insurance logic of tiered, opaque care that punishes those with the least. A 2022 NIH-funded systematic review found that patients on narrow-network health plans often face limited provider access, higher out-of-pocket costs, and delayed or avoided care. It’s not that help isn’t available, it’s that care has been placed on a pricing ladder. Those at the bottom must climb with less strength, less time, and fewer options.

Specialists? Out of network. Timely care? Delayed. If you want better care, faster response, deeper healing — you’ll need the upgraded plan. Otherwise, you’ll sleep longer, wait harder, suffer quietly. The study called it “patient steering,” but let’s call it what it is: financial gatekeeping. When Amanda speaks in ads during her unconscious cycles, it's a metaphor of being poor inside a system designed for profit, not recovery.

A systematic review by Mazurenko et al. (2022) from the NIH highlights the complexities of narrow and tiered healthcare networks (linked below). While these models can reduce costs, they often do so at the expense of patient access and autonomy. The study underscores that patients, especially those with chronic conditions, may face significant barriers to care, echoing the dystopian realities depicted in Common People.

And Mike, he’s not a metaphor. He’s a mirror. His desperation gig—the physical pain, the psychological toll, the trade of dignity for survival isn’t fiction. It’s echoed in the influencer economy, in OnlyFans performers, in warehouse workers forced to livestream for supplemental income. The platform might be different. The economics are the same.

Closing Reflection

Common People isn’t science fiction, it’s a case study of the lives we are already living within the system. The subscription model is just a metaphor for the tiers we already live under: basic, premium, god-mode. Whether in healthcare, labor, or attention, the rules are the same. Those with less pay more. For slower care. For lower safety. For the right to exist without broadcasting an ad.

Amanda’s glitching body, whispering product slogans in her sleep, is a present reality. If you’ve ever traded your time, health, or peace for a deductible you couldn’t meet or a quota you couldn’t question, you already know the cost.

References:

1. Uber Driver Score and Algorithmic Management

MIT Technology Review. “Your Boss Is Watching.” LinkedIn, 2025, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/your-boss-watching-mit-technology-review-abbte.Reddit+2LinkedIn+2LinkedIn+2

2. Amazon Warehouse Injury Rates

“Amazon Warehouse Workers Get Injured During Prime Day: Senate Report.” Business Insider, 2024, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-workers-get-injured-during-prime-day-senate-report-2024-7.Business Insider

3. Amazon Workers Turning to GoFundMe

Sainato, Michael. “‘It’s Been Hell’: Injured Amazon Workers Turn to GoFundMe to Pay Bills.” The Guardian, 25 June 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/25/injured-amazon-warehouse-workers-gofundme.HR Grapevine+6The Guardian+6Business & Human Rights Resource Centre+6

4. Amazon's Surveillance and Union Suppression

Sainato, Michael. “‘You Feel Like You're in Prison’: Workers Claim Amazon's Surveillance Violates Labor Law.” The Guardian, 21 May 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/21/amazon-surveillance-lawsuit-union.The Guardian

5. Jennifer Bates' Congressional Testimony

Bates, Jennifer. “Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.” United States Senate, 17 Mar. 2021, https://www.budget.senate.gov/download/jennifer-bates-testimony.

6. NIH Review: “The Impact of Narrow and Tiered Networks on Costs, Access, Quality, and Patient Steering”

Mazurenko, Olena, et al. “The Impact of Narrow and Tiered Networks on Costs, Access, Quality, and Patient Steering: A Systematic Review.” Medical Care Research and Review, vol. 79, no. 5, 2022, pp. 607–617. https://profiles.musc.edu/display/8776836/.