In another indication that Back Mirror isn't just a sci-fi anthology series and instead a glimpse into our actual future, China is extending its "social credit" system to block accused wrongdoers from traveling on trains and planes.

The social credit program has been around since 2014, and has been steadily expanding. According to Wired:

In 2014, the State Council, China’s governing cabinet, publicly called for the establishment of a nationwide tracking system to rate the reputations of individuals, businesses, and even government officials. The aim is for every Chinese citizen to be trailed by a file compiling data from public and private sources by 2020, and for those files to be searchable by fingerprints and other biometric characteristics. The State Council calls it a “credit system that covers the whole society.”

Doing volunteer work, donating blood, and recycling can all boost one’s social credit score, while incurring debt or criticizing the government can render you blacklisted, unable to buy property, take out loans, and now, engage in some forms of mass travel.

It’s all eerily similar to Black Mirror’s third-season episode "Nosedive," which imagined a world controlled by such a system. It even featured a scene in which star Bryce Dallas Howard is ejected from an airport for having too low a social score to secure a seat on a flight.

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Thank god we have Black Mirror to cushion our continued march towards global dystopia.

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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