TV thrillers are making me ridiculously terrified of technology

Ever since I was a child I’ve been easily spooked. I can’t comfortably get within two feet of a spider, let alone kill one. Whenever an unexpected visitor rings my doorbell my heart rate goes through the roof. And I played Temple Run a total of one and a half times before the feeling of being chased made me so anxious I deleted the app. So it should come as no surprise that I also detest thriller and horror films.

I skillfully do my best to avoid any and all consumption of them, but when my fave John Krasinski decided he just had to make A Quiet Place, I had no choice but to cave. In the name of love I forced myself to pluck up, order a vodka on the rocks from the movie theater bar, and endure one hour and 31 minutes of paralyzing fear. And you know what? It was stressful as hell! But weirdly empowering.

After surviving that single viewing of Krasinski’s horror film last April, I set out to be braver. I decided I’d cheat on my TV lineup of comedies and dramas  when the perfect thriller came along. Once I found out Hollywood royalty (Connie Britton) was starring in Bravo’s adaptation of Dirty John, I knew I’d found my gateway show. 

What I didn’t know, however, was that TV thrillers like Dirty John and You would wind up making me ridiculously paranoid about everyday technology.

For those unfamiliar with Dirty John, the 8-episode limited series is based on the true story of Debra Newell’s life, which stems from the popular Los Angeles Times print series and podcast. 

Newell, played by Britton, is a wealthy single mother of two girls who fell in love with a conman named John Meehan (Eric Bana). After the two got married things spiraled out of control, and Newell’s entire family found themselves in danger — with technology partly to blame.

At his least invasive, Meehan checked Newell’s text messages while she was away from her phone. At his most, he used her phone’s location settings to his advantage, put a tracking device on the bottom of her car, installed security cameras in the house, and even enabled push notifications to receive alerts when she accessed their safe deposit box.

Technology allowed him to keep constant tabs on Newell, and once she realized that, she used those same devices to outsmart him. But surveillance wasn’t the only way he carried out destruction.

Over the course of his life Meehan used online dating websites to introduce himself to as many women as possible until he found his perfect target, which is how he met Newell. And during his relationships when things didn’t go his way he turned to online review processes to unleash anonymous fury.

When complications arose in his relationship with Deborah, Meehan targeted her and her daughter’s professional careers by posting negative Yelp reviews and comments.

Ultimately, Meehan was a master of psychological manipulation, often under the influence of drugs. While cameras, tracking devices, and internet access weren’t the sole root of the problem, they enabled him.

I firmly believe if he hadn’t relied on technology to stay one step ahead of Newell — tech that so many of us have readily accessible in our own lives — his malicious plans would have, at the very least, been significantly tougher to carry out.

Everyday tech with an evil twist

Since only one episode of Dirty John aired a week, when Netflix added the Lifetime series, You, in late December I thought I’d take on a quick 10-episode binge.

To my own detriment, I wasn’t entirely sure what You was about when I embarked on my two-night speed binge, but it starred former Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars actors so I didn’t think that much could go wrong. I soon learned the shows I’d chosen to watch simultaneously were far too similar for my liking.

While it isn’t based off of a true story like Dirty John, You is also centered around a villainous man who uses technology to pray on his victims. An adaptation of the Hidden Bodies book series by Caroline Kepnes, the show follows Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley,) a bookstore manager who becomes completely obsessed with a writer named Beck (Elizabeth Lail).

After learning her name from an innocent credit card transaction at his store, Goldberg finds out everything he can about Beck from the internet. He stalks her social media accounts to learn her whereabouts, casually inserting himself into her everyday life, and after managing to steal her phone he even gains access to her iCloud account.

While spying on her every digital move — from text messages with friends, to calendar updates, location, and more — in order to get as close to Beck as possible Goldberg starts murdering friends of hers that pose a threat to him. After he kills them, he doesn’t just move on, though. He uses their own social media accounts to cover his tracks, tweeting as though he’s the victims in order to keep up the appearance that they’re still alive. 

It’s all incredibly fucked up, and while I’ve always known tech was something to be wary of, seeing how easy it was for both Meehan and Goldberg’s characters to use everyday devices and social media to wreak incredible, life-changing and sometimes life-ending amounts of havoc shook me to my core.

Curious if I was alone in my tech paranoia, I spoke with my colleague and self-described massive horror junkie, Alison Foreman. Despite her love of all things horror, however, Foreman admitted that she too was “deeply unsettled” by the way technology played a role in the series.

“Watching You made me uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the reality of being a woman online,” she said. “Before watching the show, I was aware of the dangers around geotagging and oversharing your physical location through social media, but the way You combined those data tools with personality profiling based off of personal posts and photos was particularly unnerving.”

Foreman said Joe Goldberg made her “far more afraid of stalking than Michael Myers ever did” — which, I am told is a bold statement in the horror world — and that the show also served as a strong reminder to be more aware of oversharing online.

Seeing is believing ?

As someone who works on the internet for a living and spends the majority of their week extremely plugged in, I’m well aware technology comes with risks.

It’s no secret that accounts can be hacked, or that billions of people with email addresses and millions of Facebook users have been impacted by security breaches in just the past few years alone. Devices such as the Amazon Echo could very well be spying on us. And self-driving vehicles still have quite a ways to go before I even consider being a passenger in one.

The concept of dangerous tech is far from new to me, and yet, witnessing all the emotions, repercussions, and regrets that these characters exhibited on screen left me with a significantly heightened concern.

Actually seeing dangerous scenarios visually unfold has a greater impact on me than simply being given a warning, like “Choose secure passwords or there could be serious consequences.”

If someone tells you to unplug your slow cooker before bed rather than simply turning it off to prevent fires, for example, you might consider heading their warning but not necessarily feel an extreme sense of urgency.

But if you watch the scene from This Is Us where a slow cooker bursts into flames and ignites a house on fire while The Cinematic Orchestra’s “To Build A Home” plays in the background, I can nearly guarantee you’re never going to be able to look at a slow cooker without a twinge of pain in your heart, let alone go to sleep with the appliance plugged in.

Other shows with a heavy tech presence, like Black Mirror, are intense as well. But because Black Mirror imagines the perilous potential of technological capabilities at their most extreme it rings less true to reality for me.

The relatability is what adds a whole other layer of horror to the mix — the fact that so many people have Nest or pet cameras in their homes, store their most personal content in the cloud, and enable location settings without a second thought.

Despite my initial fear, I’ve learned not to let a television show stop me from being overly paranoid. I will still use my credit card at a book store, but the mistakes of these characters have undoubtedly made me more alert about my personal relationship with technology.