Netflix Documentaries that can Change Your Perspective
I love to watch series, movies until I get bored and started to watch a bunch of documentaries on Netflix. Netflix has a bountiful of great documentaries that cover a diverse range of subjects. Below, I’ve assembled a list of my recommendations of documentaries that can change your perspective. They are all mind-blowing and insightful.
The Great Hack
This 2019 documentary is about how our information on social media being harvested and used by another party impacts the political situation. This documentary takes a deep dive into the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. Through interviews with Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, the film offers a shocking deep-dive of how data has become the most valuable resource on the planet, and how data is used to target users with ads and fake “viral videos” and news stories to swing major elections. This film reminds me of the quote I ever read that “data is the new oil” and it convinces me how powerful the data can be used, it can affect how they chose what kind of information fit for us and how those pieces of information can change our perception with the end goal is to influence our decision, including political decision. And sadly, those pieces of information might not true or considering fake news that intentionally made in order to influence our decision.
The Minimalists: Less Is Now
This 2020 documentary is eyes opening and makes me rethink the life I live. The word of the day is “stuff”. We all have too much of it. And how much stuff do we really need? This is the question posed in The Minimalists: Less Is Now by Joshua and Ryan, best friends from chubby schoolkids who were poor and grew up to be an “American dreams” personae. From the life process, they’re experienced, it led them to be a question mark about “what is their life purpose?”. They realized that all those stuff are meaningless at the end of the day.
From this documentary, I can get a lesson that we often get blinded by stuff around us. We associate our identity with the newest iPhone or the hype fashion item without we realize at the end of the day they all will be meaningless. We tend to work harder than we can in order to afford the stuff that we think will make us happy. When we stress caused by overworked, we go to retail therapy, buy things we think we need, then pay them with the money we got from the job that caused our stress. And it builds a cycle.
Although, I haven’t applied the minimalist in my life now, it influences my perception toward life itself.
The Social Dilemma
The Social Dilemma focuses on how big social media companies manipulate users by using algorithms that encourage addiction to their platforms. It also shows, fairly accurately, how platforms harvest personal data to target users with ads — and have so far gone largely unregulated. All the digital platforms become “marketing tools” that aspire to have really crazy growth each year by convincing users to buy our product. How they convince? by all of those data, it’s getting easier to read the behavior, to get your taste, to hear what you need or want and in a blink of eye, they will offer you the product that advertisers put on the platform and make you buy it. Social media is free, we are the product, and advertisers pay for the product they buy.
Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates
This docuseries consists of 3 episodes of Microsoft’s founder. The idea of this docuseries is to replicate Bill Gates’ thought processes. Each episode of Inside Bill’s Brain focuses on one of the foundation’s major initiatives: improving sewage conditions in developing countries, eradicating polio, and developing a cleaner, safer form of nuclear power. Each of the three parts shifts rapidly between interviews, biographical material, and fly-on-the-wall footage of the Gates team’s philanthropic missions. My highlight of this docuseries is on his reading habit. He always has a book in his hand, not only reading it, but he also tries to understand the book and applies it in his life. Gates always involved in the complicated project and all the books he read is to help him change the “complicated” into “simpler”.
Explained Docuseries
Explained consists of many episodes that try to simplify the explanation of many topics. It doesn’t dig too deep and tries to summarize the pros and cons of complex and interesting subjects in as little as 30 minutes. Each episode will have a different topic, so we can choose which topic that more interesting for us.
That’s all from me. Thanks for reading! :)
