


































DLR Journal


147

ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes second episode of the popular dystopian sci-fi show Black Mirror, “Fifteen 

Million Merits,” as a utopia for the capitalists that are in charge of the commune in which the 

episode’s characters live.  Through comparisons to American company towns and an analysis of 

the psychology that these capitalists employ, I come to the conclusion that, while a dystopia for the 

citizens that the episode follows, this society is a utopia for those in charge.  Furthermore, I posit 

that, even though the community we see is set far in the future and seems very removed from our 

own world, it may not be as far away as we may like to think.

Pay-to-Play: The Utopia
 for Capitalists in Black Mirror's 

"Fifteen Million Merits"
By Jacob Garrett



148

GARRETT

 In 2018, a major controversy in the world of video games was that of microtransactions.  In 

such popular games as Fortnite and Star Wars Battlefront II, users were able to use real-world 

currency to purchase items and advantages in-game.  Some of those items were simply cosmetic 

in nature, such as camouflage for guns and unique outfits for characters, but others granted richer 

players an advantage over their competition, essentially boiling the stakes of these games down to 

whomever had the most money rather than whomever had the greatest amount of skill.  The latter 

issue often came in the form of “loot boxes,” slot machines in which players would stand a randomized 

chance of gaining everything from a few units of in-game currency to new weapons and abilities that 

would ordinarily take a long time to unlock.  The problem of loot boxes became clear in games like 

Star Wars Battlefront II and Call of Duty: Black Ops III, in which some players who had very little 

experience and a great deal of money to spend were granted powerful advantages over people that 

had invested a great deal of time into trying to unlock weapons and abilities the old-fashioned way. 

Players aren’t forced to purchase anything in the game, but they stand the chance of being left at 

a disadvantage if they don’t.  Even though there was a massive backlash against this practice from 

gamers in late 2017 and into 2018, it has not met much prolonged resistance beyond the cases that the 

media focused on: “Very few players like the microtransaction system but a large majority think its 

ok as long as the upgrades are just cosmetic” (Anderton).  While some of the worst offenders in this 

controversy backtracked and removed microtransactions from their games (or just confined them to 

cosmetic items), for better or worse, microtransactions are here to stay.

 Microtransactions don’t currently affect anyone who doesn’t play video games (or who doesn’t 

have children that play them), but what would happen if this concept were applied to our lives in 

general?  This idea of microtransactions becoming a part of daily life is taken to the extreme in 

“Fifteen Million Merits,” the second episode of British writer Charlie Brooker’s dystopian science 

fiction series Black Mirror.  In this episode, the characters are trapped in some sort of commune in 

which they are constantly surrounded by screens built into the walls of their rooms and hallways.  The 

residents of the commune are made to spend long hours at exercise bikes during the day, ostensibly 

to provide power to the commune (though the use of these bikes is never shown), earning a virtual 

currency called “merits” as they pedal.  These merits are required for everything from purchasing food

 



149

GARRETT

 in the commissary and skipping ads that pop up on the omnipresent screens to getting toothpaste 

to brush their teeth in the morning.  There are only two ways for people to escape the bikes: they 

can either become a member of the commune’s oft-mocked janitorial staff, or they can enter a talent 

contest known as Hot Shot, an X Factor-esque talent show in which the contestants could win the 

opportunity to host own programs (if they’re well-received) or be cast in the commune’s constantly 

advertised pornography channel, WraithBabes.

 The society in which the characters of “Fifteen Million Merits” live is a monotonous hell 

plagued by constant stimulation, whether they want it or not: if they close their eyes during an 

advertisement that they didn’t skip, the screens turn red and tell them to resume watching while 

emitting high-frequency whines that grow more painful the longer that the individual refrains 

from opening their eyes.  While it may be a horrible existence for the residents of the commune, 

this society is a prime example of a capitalist utopia.  Brooker, who co-wrote the episode with his 

wife, Konnie Huq, confirms this: “There was something that appealed to me about the idea of an 

incredibly reductive…version of capitalism, with the whole of society peddling desperately on…

bikes for some coins to spend” (Brooker 32).  Everything that takes place within the commune is 

based upon a system of labor and exchange of currency: those who feed their labor into the system 

by riding the exercise bikes are rewarded with merits, which they get to spend within the system for 

both necessities and luxuries.  If anyone is not on the bikes, then they are set to work doing other 

tasks that benefit the commune’s economy, either cleaning up the messes of the bikers or producing 

entertainment for the residents.  This same entertainment creates even more spending within the 

commune’s economy: the residents have to either pay for the programming itself or shell out merits to 

skip advertisements.

 The setup of this community resembles the American “company towns” that emerged during 

the Industrial Revolution.  Established by different companies across the United States as living 

spaces for their workers that would allow them to stay close to work and buy company products, these 

company towns would sometimes emerge as pleasant places to live, such as in Hershey, Pennsylvania, 

where workers were provided with “well-planned avenues that were lined with rows of shade trees,” 

“homes with spacious lawns, surrounded with shrubbery and flowers,” and working utilities, 



150

GARRETT

telephone lines, and a post office (Coyle).  Often, however, these towns would be quite unpleasant, if 

not downright awful.  According to author and journalist Michele Hirsch,

 During the boom in textile, coal, steel and other industries, [workers] often earned what’s

 called scrip instead of real money: a kind of credit they couldn’t spend anywhere but the

 company store, where prices were often higher than elsewhere.  Companies in these places

 often required that workers live in barebones company housing and send their kids to

 company-built schools, where the boss’s perspective was king. (Hirsch)

 One of the most famous examples of these substandard company towns was Pullman, Illinois, 

founded by the industrialist George Pullman in 1880.  Pullman “attempted to create a model company 

town that focused not only on design and planning but the regulation of public behavior . . .   Creating 

a model town that would protect the interests of capitalists and alleviate concerns of working class 

uprisings was likely one of the most powerful motivations for Pullman’s visionary community” (Baxter 

653-654).  Even though there had been utopian experiments in the United States before, many of 

them had been unpalatable to middle- and upper-class Americans either because they were based 

upon socialist principles (like New Harmony, Indiana) or a religion other than Protestant Christianity 

(such as the Mormons’ attempts at utopia in both the east and the west).  Pullman’s community 

specifically appealed to this demographic because while “most utopian communities were established 

with the goals of eliminating the social structures that informed an increasingly corporate, capitalist 

industrial system,” Pullman’s explicit goal was to perfect these structures (Baxter 654-655).

 Pullman’s utopia, which is now a neighborhood of Chicago, was originally fairly isolated from 

the rest of the world, the only major connection to Chicago being a passenger railway.  There were 

myriad amenities in the city: markets, theaters, libraries, parks, banks, and a non-denominational 

church—which could be rented out by anyone—were available for all to use (Baxter 655-656).  The 

catch, however, was that the skilled workers and executive personnel were given better homes and 

better locations, living much closer to all of these perks of the town and the eyes of visitors, while the 

unskilled workers were relegated to the fringes of the city (Baxter 656).  The services that the town 

provided also came with the caveat that everything was regulated by Pullman and his company: liquor 

stores were illegal, the books in the library were chosen according to Pullman's discretion, and the 



151

GARRETT

company was always the one to arrange which performances were allowed to take place in the theater 

(Baxter 656).  To keep the town profitable, Pullman set very high rents to both compete with those 

of Chicago and to fold the town’s costs into the workers’ bills (Baxter 656).  Everyone in the town 

was technically working for the good of the community, but at great personal cost to themselves.  

This system was tolerated for fourteen years, but the company eventually overstepped its bounds: 

“Pullman lowered wages in 1894 in the wake of an economic depression, but refused to lower rents 

and other charges at the same time.  Workers rose up, leading to a strike and boycott that eventually 

involved as many as 250,000 workers in 27 states, resulting in up to 30 deaths, millions of dollars lost 

and months of disrupted rail traffic” (Hirsch).  The government eventually sent troops in to break up 

the strike, effectively ending the capitalist experiment.  Pullman’s utopia failed because he refused to 

take into consideration the needs of his lower-class workers; he didn’t realize that it wasn’t a utopia 

for everyone and paid the price for his ignorance.

 Despite being set over a century in the future, the world of “Fifteen Million Merits” is incredibly 

similar to communities like Pullman’s.  Just like the workers in company towns were only paid with 

scrip that was good at the local store, the merits that the people in Black Mirror are paid with are (as 

far as the viewer can tell) only good for purchasing items within the commune itself.  Furthermore, 

everything is regulated and priced; even the smallest drop of toothpaste squeezed out of a dispenser 

or a pump of soap after going to the bathroom will cost you merits in this world.  The products that 

they serve to the workers for merits are also marked up in cost, just like the items that would be for 

sale in company towns.  While there are no outside prices to compare the merit totals to, when the 

main character, Bing Madsen, is getting lunch early in the episode, a woman who rides a bike near 

his helps him to get an apple out of the vending machine in the commissary.  When she pulls it out 

of the machine, she says, “Almost the only real thing in there, and even that’s grown in a petri dish” 

(“Fifteen Million Merits” 00:05:48-00:05:50).  If that’s the case—if the food that is being sold in the 

commissary really is grown from petri dishes—then that means that it was likely produced at very 

little cost to those that run the commune.  For Bing, meanwhile, that apple and an energy drink cost 

5,500 merits.  By creating the products that they give the residents at such low costs and charging 

them exorbitant amounts of merits, the leaders of the commune in which Bing lives are able to reap



152

GARRETT

great rewards, if not in cash, then in the energy that is ostensibly being created by the bikes.  

Furthermore, the very fact that the merits are digital rather than physical makes it that much easier 

for these people to flagrantly spend their money.  Since everything costs so much and everyone 

willingly buys into the system, the residents are forced to  ride their bikes for long hours of the day if 

they hope to keep living in relative comfort.

  Yet another way that the leaders of this community keep people sedate and compliant is by 

blurring the lines between “reality” and what is truly “real.”  While those terms may seem to mean 

the same thing, that is not the case for Bing and his coworkers.  For them, “reality” is a constructed 

existence that takes place both within and in tandem with the computer systems installed throughout 

the building.  When they use the computers for tangible rewards, they are given artificially grown 

food and opportunities to compete in contests that only codify the system further.  All other rewards 

are digital; these people are obsessed with getting new accessories (similar to “skins” from video 

games) for their avatars, even though these digital characters aren’t real and have no bearing on the 

daily functions of their lives.  Even though the products they buy both in and out of the computers 

aren’t really “real,” they are part of the reality that the leaders of this commune have carefully built to 

sustain the illusion of self-determination and choice.

 As if the exceedingly high prices and deliberate obfuscation of reality weren’t enough, the 

people living in this community are constantly reminded of the merits that they spend.  There is 

a small counter with everyone’s current merit totals at the bottom of every screen, and whenever 

anyone buys something, the total immediately drops to account for the purchase.  While this seems 

like a handy way to keep track of one’s money, almost like an ever-present banking app, the merit 

counter is, in fact, reinforcing the economy as it stands.  In an article in the Harvard Business 

Review, professors John T. Gourville and Dilip Soman provide an example of this phenomenon using 

gym memberships: if one person pays $600 up front for a year of membership, while a second person 

pays $50 a month for a year, the second person will, in fact, use the gym more.  Even though they’re 

paying the same cost for the membership, the first customer will see their “drive [to exercise] lessen as 

the pain of his $600 payment fades into the past.  [The second customer], on the other hand, will be 

steadily reminded of the cost of her membership because she makes payments every month. She will



153

GARRETT

feel the need to get her money’s worth throughout the year and will workout more regularly,” and, 

because of this, “[The second customer] will be far more likely to renew her membership when the 

year is over” (Gourville and Soman).  Just like the second customer, the people in “Fifteen Million 

Merits” are constantly “renewing their membership,” so to speak; they spend money on food, 

toothpaste, television programs, and everything else, and each time they do this, their merit counts 

fall right before their eyes.  These people, therefore, are induced to enjoy and use everything that they 

buy, giving them the idea that they are benefitting from this society and keeping them coming back for 

more.

 Despite the lack of meaning and obsession with consumption that dictate the lives of the 

people living in the commune of “Fifteen Million Merits,” these residents still believe that they are 

living in a utopia.  Many of them are shown to be happy with the lives they are given, gleefully going 

along with the lewd and disgusting programming that is shown (programming based largely upon 

sexual harassment and fat-shaming) and spending their money on outfits for their virtual avatars or 

programs to hypnotize them into having pleasant dreams or eating healthier.  They even compete to 

be the most productive in this system, with leaderboards keeping track of who has pedaled the most 

on a given day being used as “another way to reinforce the behavior…and it fosters that competitive 

spirit, makes [them] want to be the best,” factoring into the capitalist ideal of being rewarded for 

greater contributions to society and the economy (“The Psychology of Black Mirror” 00:24:35-

00:24:45).  Aside from minor complaints from various characters, there are only two instances of 

public resistance to the amorphous regime in place.  The first comes when Bing donates fifteen million 

merits, which he received from his deceased brother, to a woman he has a crush on, Abi.  Bing gives 

her this money to get her a spot on Hot Shot, hoping that she may escape the mechanical drudgery 

of everyday life if she wins.  Before she goes onstage, the crew gives her a mandatory juice box filled 

with a drink called “Cuppliance,” and she immediately feels as though “everything just went wider 

apart” (“Fifteen Million Merits” 00:30:07-00:30:08).  After she sings, the judges admit that she is a 

good singer, but say that she doesn’t have what it takes to be a stand-out contestant and urge her to 

become an actress on WraithBabes.  She initially resists, but the drug that she ingested before the 

performance makes her confused and more pliable to both the suggestions of the judges and the jeers



154

GARRETT

of the crowd watching  behind them; as Bing realizes what’s about to happen, he calls her name and 

starts to run onstage but is immediately seized by the crew and dragged away.

 Here we see society being kept in line by themselves once again; however, the root cause this 

time is not capitalist principles, but mob mentality.  During screenings of Hot Shot, the audience isn’t 

actually at the show; rather, they are viewing it in their cells or on their televisions and their avatar 

becomes part of a virtual crowd behind the judges.  This physical disconnect and anonymity allows 

the viewers to emotionally detach themselves from what they see onstage.  Even if these people have 

worked with Abi in the bike rooms, she turns into just a character on the television.  This makes it 

easier for a herd mentality to take over when the judges send people like Abi into the pornography 

industry; without an emotional connection to Abi anymore, these people are willing to follow the 

whims of the most authoritative figures on the show, those being the judges.  In creating such a 

dynamic between the powerful members of this society and the everyday workers, the leaders of this 

commune have turned the residents into their own oppressors.  As psychotherapist Michael Drane 

says, “Even though they’re all part of the system, they’re all just as screwed as she is.  They are a 

necessary tool of influence” (“The Psychology of Black Mirror” 00:56:23-00:56:33).

 When Abi agrees to become a porn star, the rage and remorse that Bing feels drives him to 

exhibit the second example of resistance to the regime in this episode.  He saves up another fifteen 

million merits and goes on the show himself, smuggling in Abi’s empty Cuppliance cup to trick the 

crew into letting him go on without having had a drink.  He starts by performing a short dance routine 

before pulling out a large shard of glass and threatening to cut his throat unless they allow him to say 

what he wants to say.  He goes on to eviscerate the judges, the system they stand for, and the way that 

all the citizens of the commune are living:

 All we know is fake fodder and buying shit! It’s how we speak to each other. How we speak to

 each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our

 dreams is a hat for our doppel. A hat doesn’t exist!  It’s not even there! We buy shit that’s not   

 even there!  Show us something real and free and beautiful, you couldn’t. It’d break us. We’re

 too numb for it. Our minds will wonder whatsoever, you dole it out in meager portions, and

  only then till its augmented and packaged and pumped through ten thousand pre-assigned 



155

GARRETT

 filters, till it’s nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride, day in, day out,

 going where? Powering what?  All tiny cells and tiny screens, and bigger cells and bigger

 screens… 

 (“Fifteen Million Merits” 00:52:56-00:53:42)

The crowd watching Hot Shot is silent until one of the judges praises Bing’s tirade as “the most 

heartfelt thing [he’s] seen on this stage since Hot Shot began and offers Bing a deal: he can get off 

the bikes if he live streams two such rants for a half hour every week for entertainment.  After some 

hesitation, Bing takes the deal.  The society in which they live even finds ways to make protests 

part of the machine: if they can’t silence a dissenter, then they convince him to prostitute his rants 

for his own profit.  Just as they do with everything else, the leaders of this society take anything 

that even approaches being real—such as Bing’s tirade—and funnel it into the reality that they 

want their workers to believe in.  Where George Pullman was ignorant of the desires of his workers 

and used force to keep them in check when his carefully regulated media didn’t work, the leaders 

of the community in “Fifteen Million Merits” instead cater to what their residents desire and use 

underhanded means such as drugs and bribes to stop anyone who isn’t lulled into a consumptive 

coma by the constant deluge of stimulation.

 All of the capitalistic elements of this society aside, it also seems as though it could be a 

spin on a socialist utopia.  Even though individuals are given the opportunity to stand out on Hot 

Shot, homogeneity is for the most part praised above all else.  All of the rooms in the complex look 

almost exactly the same; the residents all wear the same blank, gray outfits; they are all expected 

to be updating their online counterparts to supposedly express their individuality, even though 

they’re forsaking their independence from the rest of the commune in doing so; and those that do 

not conform to this society’s ideal of the perfect worker (namely, those who are not fit enough to 

be constantly riding the bikes) are shamed for their “deficiency.”  Personal possessions are also not 

allowed for those that are not given special privilege by winning their own program on Hot Shot; Abi 

is fond of making origami animals out of waste paper before she is forced into pornography, but they 

always have to be thrown out at the end of the day.  Furthermore, if the bikes are in fact powering the 

installation in which they live, then they are all implicitly working for the common good by riding



156

GARRETT

them all day long; without the power from those bikes, the entire community would cease to function

correctly.  Its barter economy shows that it can’t be an all-out communist society, but it could easily 

be a socialist one where everyone is working together for the good of the group.  As professor James 

Brennan writes in Why Not Capitalism?, however, “There is an essential asymmetry in the capitalist 

and socialist versions of utopia…  Capitalists allow socialism, but socialists forbid capitalism….A 

capitalist utopia would allow people to form communes, but a socialist utopia would forbid [one] from 

owning a factory by [themself]” (Case).  Applying this statement to “Fifteen Million Merits” shows 

that this society must be a capitalist utopia rather than a socialist one.  There are qualities of both 

capitalism and socialism in the community, but since capitalism can allow socialism but socialism 

can’t allow capitalism, that means that a capitalist utopia must be the correct designation for this 

establishment.

 The society in which Bing and Abi live, while unsettling, may still seem quite out of reach.  

Even though many of the concepts used by Brooker are part of modern society, the extent to which 

this world has gone appears to be far beyond the realm of possibility.  In daily life, however, we can 

see aspects of it creeping in.  In games with microtransactions, the companies that produce them 

are able to rake in large profits with very little effort by creating the illusion that their system is 

unavoidable if one wants to compete with other players in both the actual gameplay and the visual 

appeal of the gaming experience.  We also see this business model in luxury hotels: you have the 

base charge for the room, and you aren’t required to pay for anything else; however, if you wish to 

enjoy the services of the pool, the snacks and drinks in the room, or even the convenience of a Wi-

Fi password, you’re forced to pay more.  When this same idea is applied to somewhere in which 

residents are not able to leave by choice, such as in private, for-profit prisons, the owners of such 

complexes are able to make a fortune.

 Beyond microtransactions, there are numerous other examples of how modern society 

is already showing characteristics of Brooker’s dystopia.  Streaming services offer constant 

entertainment for those willing to pay, and customers can pay even more to bypass ads in their 

programming, just like the citizens in “Fifteen Million Merits.”  Citizens are expected to go to their 

jobs and “contribute to society” every single day, whether they enjoy their jobs or not, and often have



157

GARRETT

to pay exorbitant prices at company cafeterias quite similar to that in which Bing eats. Increasing 

numbers of people, especially children, are perfectly willing to spend real-world currency on virtual 

perks and cosmetics, things which don’t really exist and which don’t enhance one’s life in any way, 

like a new piece of armor for a character or the ability to perform a specific dance move or say a line of 

dialogue known as an “emote” to gloat after defeating an enemy. A study of 1,000 players of Fortnite 

showed that almost 70% of players had spent money on the game, and the average amount spent 

among those players was about $85 (Tassi).  The game itself, at least in its beta form, is completely 

free.

 Talent shows like The X Factor and American Idol are also dangled over our heads as ways to 

escape from day-to-day drudgery, and those that don’t make the cut for a so-called “good” job (either 

because of a lack of experience or higher education or for another reason) are relegated to positions 

such as janitorial staff and looked down upon by those who work in the same building.  Those that 

genuinely start out to criticize the institutions of modern society can end up becoming PR giants and 

becoming focused on their own popularity rather than the cause in which they may have initially 

believed.  On both social media and online gaming platforms, people are exposed to constructed 

realities everyday, with amorphous algorithms determining what they are or are not exposed to at 

any given moment.  These environments also create vicious instances of mob mentality, which in the 

worst cases have lead to suicides and accidental deaths, such as when gamers have emergency services 

to a location where they are not needed and have inadvertently caused people’s deaths.  The only 

things missing are the claustrophobic living quarters and ubiquitous wall screens, and those are both 

not out of the realm of possibility.

 Just because a place is considered a utopia by some doesn’t mean that it is indeed a perfect 

society.  Just as the Soviet Union was intended to be a communist utopia but devolved into a socialist 

dictatorship, so can a capitalist utopia begun with either the best or worst of intentions become a 

center of exploitation that uses competition and isolation to drive its residents to fuel the machine 

that controls the community, be that machine an industrial-era company or an invisible leadership, 

as is the case in “Fifteen Million Merits.”  It may be a utopia for those in charge and for those that are 

willing to submit to a life that consists of only work and meaningless entertainment, but for people



158

GARRETT

like Abi and Bing, the system is an intolerable and unstoppable behemoth that quashes any resistance 

that by manipulating them into taking jobs in self-destructive programming to escape the daily slog 

of riding the bikes.  Even though the ultra-confined society present in the second episode of Black 

Mirror may seem as though it is far from the current reality, a closer look seems to signal that it could 

arrive much sooner than one might think.  In the blink of an eye, everyone may be scrambling to earn 

their fifteen million merits.



159

GARRETT

WORKS CITED

Anderton, Kevin.  “The Ongoing Controversy of Microtransactions [Infographic].” Forbes, 7 Mar.

 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinanderton/2018/03/07/the-on-going-controversy-

 of-microtransactions-in-gaming-infographic/#235a0d3e1d9c. Accessed 16. Jan 2019.

Baxter, Jane Eva. “The Paradox of a Capitalist Utopia: Visionary Ideals and Lived Experience in the 

 Pullman Community 1880—1900.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol. 16,

      no. 4, December 2012, pp. 651-665. Springer Link, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/

      s10761-012-0196-8. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019.

Brooker, Charlie, et al. Inside Black Mirror. Crown Archetype, 2018.

Case, Spencer.  “Capitalist Utopia: A review of Why Not Capitalism? by Jason Brennan.” National

 Review, 4 Sept. 2014, https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/09/capitalist-utopia-spencer-  

 case/. Accessed 16 Jan. 2019.

Coyle, Millie Landis. “The Town.” Hershey-Derry Historical Society, 2016, http://www. org/library-  

            /hershey/96-the-town.  Accessed 19 Feb. 2019.

“Fifteen Million Merits.” Black Mirror, series 1, episode 2, Channel 4, 11 Dec. 2011. Netflix, https://  

 www.netflix.com/watch/70264858?trackId=200254291&tctx=0%2C1%2Cc280edcc-ba68-4c6

      9-98e8-b25ab5a4e2ff-94045603%2C6c1e2199-babc-4725-b868-504624ad4da7_30054600X6

 XX1547734021931%2C6c1e2199-babc-4725-b868-504624ad4da7_ROOT.

Gourville, John T. and Dilip Soman. “Pricing and the Psychology of Consumption.” Harvard Business

 Review, September 2000, https://hbr.org/2002/09/pricing-and-the-psychology-of-consumpti

 n. Accessed 18 Feb. 2019.

Hirsch, Michele Lent.  “America’s Company Towns, Then and Now.” Smithsonian.com, 4 Sept. 2015,

      https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/americas-company-towns-then-and-now-18095638

 2/.  Accessed 16 Jan. 2019.

Tassi, Paul. “Study Says 69% of ‘Fortnite’ Players Spend Money On The Game, $85 Spent On

 Average.”  Forbes, 26 June 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ insertcoin/2018/06/26/



160

GARRETT

WORKS CITED

study-says-69-of-fortnite-players-spend-money-on-the-game-85-spent-on-average/#7c54e0702060.   

 Accessed 17 Jan. 2019.

“The Psychology of Black Mirror—Episode 2: “Fifteen Million Merits.””  v, uploaded by     

Unpopular Culture Podcast, 19 Mar. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_

      continue=2&v=E5Ak0u5I2_I.


