Our dystopian 'Black Mirror' future is here thanks to Pizza Hut

Dystopia comes with a side of breadsticks.
 By 
Jess Joho
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Well, every Black Mirror viewer knew it’d only be a matter of time before we started ranking social class using people’s Uber ratings, or wasting our lives in a VR game, or uploading our digital selves to the toilet -- or whatever.

But actually, one Black Mirror prediction just became vividly real at CES. And it's more horrifying than all of those combined.

Pizza Hut took to Twitter to unveil the state-of-the-art tech that will revolutionize the way the company inserts its cheese-covered cardboard circles into your mouth hole. Its driverless pizza delivery vehicle, the e-Palette developed by Toyota, works eerily similar to the fictional one seen in Black Mirror's "Crocodile" episode.

The Netflix show's Twitter account had the perfect response, too, which basically amounted to, "We tried to warn you, sheeple."

Autonomous pizza delivery! I mean just imagine: Soon you'll be able to get all the nutritional value of ketchup sauce flatbread, only without the hassle of minimal human interaction. It's like Seamless, but for people who find even the very concept of a person being in proximity to their delivery food distasteful.

Eagle-eyed viewers might've also caught on that the show's fast food chain, Fences Pizza, was a recurring easter egg throughout Season 4, appearing in "USS Callister" as well as "Crocodile." Actually, Fences Pizza was a major plot point of "Crocodile," when one of its driverless trucks hits a pedestrian, leading plucky insurance investigator Shazia Akmand on a journey to get to the bottom of the victim's claim. (Spoiler alert: Shazia winds up biting off a bit more than she can chew lolz.)

So there you have it folks. According to Pizza Hut's CES announcement, we've got about two years to prepare for our automated pizza delivery truck dystopian future. Because if Black Mirror taught us anything, it's that this will immediately lead to robot pizza car overlords murdering everyone in the streets. Or, worse still, will trap us all in lengthy insurance claim battles. Or even more nightmarish: They'll force feed us Pizza Hut's (at best) semi-edible pies until we die, or turn into the doughy humans seen floating around space in Wall-E.

**shudders** No thank you. Give me at least half-decent pizza, or give me death.

But now that our worst Black Mirror predictions are coming true, we'll also likely be quick to lose all ability to connect and interact with one another and the natural world around us. Cause that's just how technology works, right? I mean, instant driverless pizza delivery! What could be next -- a reality TV show cartoon character getting elected president?! Hahahahahahaha!

Oh wait.

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Jess Joho

Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.

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