Satire normally uses humor, exaggeration or ridicule to expose the vices that people try to conceal from others about themselves. The “satire” presented in Assassination Nation is like watching a dumpster fire explode into a raging inferno of societal catastrophe. The four high school seniors in this lurid story never really grasp how they’re caught up in this maelstrom until it’s too late.
Their self-absorbed world of selfies, sexting, silliness, and online gossip leaves them ill-prepared for the drastic consequences of a huge social media hack that exposes the slimy secrets of the whole town and leads to mob violence against them. This instantly brings to mind how the fragility of social media through a hacking incident as depicted in Assassination Nation is even more disturbing than the volatility this media creates. While the ugliness of this story is an extreme, dystopian vision gone awry, there is little doubt that our world of over-saturated “content sharing” veers more and more to the risky, salacious and sensational – and enough to explode in real-life violence when people’s double lives are wantonly exposed and they are humiliated and cancelled.
Unfortunately, for all the technological sophistication we have at hand, apparently we aren’t smart enough or resolved enough to provide the necessary security to protect such an apparently vulnerable entity as the World Wide Web and sensitive content from continuous attacks. Thus, we have these breaches which expose the seedy underbelly of social media secrets. Of course, this says nothing about the sensitive personal information exposed through hacks and data breaches that occur against hospitals or large corporations etc. and the untold damage caused by them. That, however, is another thread of conversation entirely.
In any case, it’s too easy and blatantly wrong for many to claim how “bad” social media is, to be unduly critical of social media sites for all the inflammatory and negative material continually added to these sites – which naturally becomes more volatile when exposed. The internet and social media after all, didn’t occur in a vacuum. It wasn’t foisted on us by space aliens. Social media doesn’t exist in another realm or in a void. It is a deeply flawed human creation which most of us are part and parcel of in some way.
There seems to be little doubt, though, that social media sites such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, and others appeal to the more self-destructive side of human nature, the constant craving for attention of any kind, to be titillated by sensationalism, posting inflammatory images and statements with the sole intent to antagonize others, and the mean-spiritedness which delights in the peccadilloes and misfortunes of others. All of this is done largely for the sake of getting more “likes”, “followers”, “tweets”, “re-tweets”, and so forth.
This is the world of Lily Coulson (Odessa Young) and her three best friends in Assassination Nation. The seeming frivolity of their online activities belies the danger they’re toying with – – especially since so much of their self-worth is bound up with their social media obsessions. Although it is another student at their school who causes the hacks exposing the seedy double life of the mayor, that of Lily and her friends and other residents in town, ultimately Lily unjustly gets the lion’s share of the blame for all of this and becomes the prime target of uncontrolled rage from the entire town.
It’s probably intentional and certainly apt that the setting of Assassination Nation is a town called Salem since Lily and her clique are the targets of a ghastly, present day witch-hunt. The torches-and-pitchfork rampage in suburban Salem is the culmination of everything wrong with the town where bullying, dissolute partying, aggressive masculinity, transphobia, extramarital affairs and other ills are a toxic brew that may begin as social satire but end up as a horror show.
Although Assassination Nation was not a box office success during its initial release, it could be rediscovered and a cult-classic in the making.
