Ethan McKinty

December 14, 2023

Computers 10

USS Calister Writeup

This episode of the Black Mirror was dedicated on Sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is when

you feel bad or someone even if you haven’t been through that experience before, but you still

feel terrible. Sympathy is a great trait to have for your friends or just people in general because

everybody goes through different experiences in their life, we need to notice that and help each

other out. An example in this episode is when Robert Daily is treated horribly at his workplace

and they want us to feel bad for him, it wants us to hope Robert is treated with respect and

stuff changes, but this isn’t the case when we learn more about him. This brings us to empathy.

Empathy is when you know the emotions of people and you can sense when something is

wrong. However, it showed us is this episode that empathy isn’t always a good thing. Robert

wants to use people in a virtual game for the littlest things they do wrong, Robert wants to treat

the people not well in the game and doesn’t like them in real life, its an example of empathy. If

you show empathy towards someone, its not always a bad thing, because you can relate to

people and possibly help them through a situation, however it doesn’t show us that is this

episode, it shows us how empathy isn’t always a good thing. We need to be careful when we

use empathy in words, sometimes it can harm another person if you use the wrong words. I do

have an example of empathy, but it’s a good example. When my friend lost an important family

member, I can relate to this because I also lost an important family member, so I was able to
help him through a tough time in his life. In conclusion, sympathy is a wonderful thing to have

for each other, I think the world needs more sympathy for each other, meanwhile empathy

could be risky, but if you do it right, if can really help someone.