An Essay on

At its core, Mr. Robot is a story about control—who has it, who doesn't, and the nature of those who realise the truth. The story revolves around Elliot Alderson, a clinically depressed, disillusioned cybersecurity engineer by day and vigilante hacker by night. Recruited by the insurrectionary anarchist known as "Mr. Robot", Elliot joins "Fsociety", a hacker group who plan on erasing all debt records and taking down E Corp, an all-powerful conglomerate that controls everything from banking to technology.

Sound familiar? It should, because the world that Mr. Robot enacts as its setting isn't a dystopian fantasy—it's a thinly veiled reflection of our own. We live in a time where corporations, tech giants, and big banks hold an overbearing amount of control over our lives. It's a bubble where the average person is blindly and painfully chained to them through mortages, debt and wage slavery, all the while the top 1% continue to pull the strings, prey on the working class, and manipulate money to serve their own maligant interests. It's a crooked system.

The frustration that Elliot feels, the sense that the system is rigged and that the average person is powerless to change it, is one that has been ever-so prevalent in the last 10 years, and this manifests as Elliot's hesitant but willing participation in Fsociety. In many ways, Mr. Robot serves as a mirror to our own reality, where the top 1% of the top 1% continue to consolidate wealth and power, while the rest of society struggles and lives in economic misery.

One of the show's secondary themes is its exploration of how modern technology, especially social media, is used to manipulate and control people. The show implicitly doubles down as a wake-up call, showing to us that the corporations not only wield a malignant control over our finances, but also the way we live and think. Elliot often speaks directly to the audience, breaking the fourth wall in his realisation, and reminder, to us that we are being watched, tracked, and fed information designed to shape our behaviour—a fact of 21st century life.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok create echo chambers, feeding us biased information based on our likes, searches and interactions. This doesn't just influence what we buy or what we eat—it shapes our opinions, our politics, and even our sense of reality under the guise of "personalisation". The algorithms designed to keep us engaged are also designed to keep us in line, showing us only what we want to see or should be shown. Our screens have led us into an era of mass hypnosis, where the lines between truth and fiction blur, the manipulators control the masses, and only the unbrainwashed are left to witness the horror.

As well as controlling the flow of information, these platforms are also giant data collection machines. Every search, scroll, and like is recorded, analysed, and sold to the highest bidder. Edward Snowden's revelations about mass government surveillance only confirmed what many of us suspected: our privacy is a thing of the past. We live in an age where both corporations and governments have access to our most intimate data, and they are using it to influence and control us in ways we are wholly blind to.

These ideas of the manipulated reality we live in are personified through the frictions that occur between Elliot and Mr Robot early on in the show. Elliot, in a state cognitive dissonance and barely holding onto a sense of reality, struggles with the overbearing presence of Mr Robot in his life, and what the existence of someone with his philosophy means for the side of Elliot that rejects the system. Mr Robot presents the fact that the digital and societal illusion we live in is met with only one answer: the realness of Mr Robot's existence, his philosophy, and the necessity for his complete rejection of the system that perpetuates it.

Elliot's struggles with mental illness are central to the narrative of Mr. Robot, reflecting not only his personal battle but also a broader commentary on how society deals with psychological issues. Throughout the show, Elliot grapples with his anxiety, depression, and dissociative identity disorder (DID). His internal conflict manifests as a constant dialogue between himself and his alternate perceptions of reality. This psychological fragmentation mirrors how many people feel divided between their true selves and the roles society forces them to play.

In a world dominated by economic malevolence, social media, and external pressures, Elliot's mental struggles highlight how modern society often exacerbates feelings of isolation and powerlessness. Elliot often retreats into his mind, using hacking as a way to feel a sense of control that is otherwise absent from his life. Hacking is his coping mechanism, a way for him to reclaim power and connect with the realest parts of people in a world where he feels alienated and helpless otherwise. This resonates with how a lot of people today use technology as an escape, even as it continues to deepen their isolation.

Ultimately, Elliot's journey through mental illness in Mr. Robot represents a larger societal issue: the failure to adequately address the impact of systemic forces on the individual psyche. His isolation, paranoia, and fractured identity serve as a perfect depiction of the modern condition, where the pressures of late-stage capitalism and social expectations drive people to the brink, leaving them to fend for themselves in a system that alienates them. His story is a powerful reminder that mental health is deeply intertwined with the structures of power and control in today's world.

If Mr. Robot taught us anything, it's that the systems governing our lives are more twisted and corrupt than we might think, and that a lot of people are frustrated by how little power they actually have. It holds up a mirror to our own world, reflecting the fears, frustrations, and anxieties that have come to define life in the 21st century. Whether it's the growing power of corporations, the erosion of privacy, or the alienation we feel living in the digital age, the show taps into the unease we face and the boiling point we could face in our warped and twisted society.

The insurrectionary acts that Fsociety and Elliot eventually undertake in the show seemingly express this, not as a solution, but as a revolt—a full force rejection of the system. The economic and social meltdown that ensues from encrypting E Corp's financial data and thus erasing all debt records, shows the screaming indifference in Fsociety's mentality and their resistance to an utterly malignant system. A mentality of "society or no society, economy or no economy, we will take back control"—that indifference is one that many people will continue to relate to, and what makes Mr Robot a timeless and brilliant, 21st century, cinematic expression.