It's good writing, and an interesting and important topic.
(From the title, though, I figured this would be about the weird dilemma where our media libraries tend not to have a fair distribution of what makes for a five-star rating.
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On your actual take, I think you may be conflating psychological tendencies that have always been there with more recent forms of (inadvertent or deliberate) abuse thereof.
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Originally Posted by kscherer
So, this begs the question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the likes of Hollywood dream up the idea and China has been quick to jump aboard? Or, did word leak out that China was working on such a program and some quick-thinking writer ran with the idea for his or her own glory?
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Not to dump on those writers, but as you said yourself, it feels a bit like "a social media system taken to its logical conclusion". China and Hollywood could easily have come up with this independently, just with different thoughts on how problematic this might be.
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Originally Posted by kscherer
Are human beings becoming so fixated on what their neighbor had for breakfast that we are no longer able to truly think for ourselves, to be real, to look to our inner desire to surround ourselves with true, loyal friends who will bend over backwards for us at the drop of a hat?
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I would like to see some research on whether millennials and gen Z are more prone to depending on external validation, or whether that is merely a perception. Surely "I want to be just like that movie celebrity!" in general isn't that recent a phenomenon; I definitely saw it in the 90s.
To a point, an "influencer" is just today's version of Marilyn Monroe.
Gen Z wants to be like that YouTube beauty queen (sponsored by L'Oréal), sure, but also, average teen kid of gen Z wants to be more like (perceived to be) highly popular teen kid from the same class. Who in turn may or may not actually feel that popular, and certainly has problems of their own. Unhealthy body images, unrealistic desires, uncertainty about your goals and future… none of that is new (nor are "phony-photoshopped models"), and I'm not sure it has actually gotten worse.
Also, corporations have been abusing this dynamic ever since Coca-Cola taught us Santa Claus wears red and white. As has the government.
A social credit system, though. I guess if they existed today, the GDR and their Stasi would love that. Don't just have wives telling the state about their husband's activities. Also rate their behavior on a scale from one to five! Wonderful.