The movie "Nerve" was almost overshadowed by "Suicide Squad" as they were released around the same time. "Nerve" is a compelling sci-fi thriller that is guaranteed to put you on the edge of your seat and make the hairs on your neck stand up. It brings human morality and how far an individual will go into question.

Nerve is a game where individuals can earn money by filming themselves as they complete dares. This separates the game into two categories, the players, those who take on the dares, and the watchers, those who pay to watch the players and create the dares. As a collective the watchers create increasingly more difficult dares for the players. At the end of the night the three remaining players who have the most watchers compete in the finals. By this point the dares have become insane. The dares in the beginning are harmless little things, similar to what you would read on a Five gum wrapper: Kiss a stranger, flash a crowd, etc. This will earn you a couple hundred bucks, but if you want to keep it you have to win; if you bail on your dare you're out and you lose all the money that you've earned. Eventually the dares become dangerous and illegal; for example, you'd have to skitch a police car (hold onto it while riding on a skate board), or hang from a construction crane, all the while filming yourself. The watchers are well aware of the fact that the players could get in big trouble, or even die, but this doesn't deter them.

So why would these watchers do these things? In the real world could this actually happen? The answer to the latter is yes, it is possible for individuals, the watchers, aided by anonymity, to make these players do terrible things. To understand why this happens we can look to "social psychology" for help. For starters, Nerve is using the foot-in-the-door technique to entice players and watchers. Foot-in-the-door technique is simply getting someone to do something big (shoot your friend) by first getting them to do a number of smaller things (kiss a stranger, flash a crowd, etc.). Then we can turn to Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, which, simply put, is the mixed feelings you get when your beliefs don't match your actions. Cognitive dissonance leads to an individual modifying their beliefs to meet their actions to reduce their internal strife. So, what happens in Nerve is people, specifically the watchers, will change their beliefs in order to quell their consciences. As they create more and more amoral dares they feel less and less guilty. The movie particularly plays on the fact that the watchers are guiltless because they are anonymous, and the fact that they are acting as a collective.

In the movie it comes down to the final two players who are (lovers) friends, and the watchers create a dare where the first person to shoot the other wins. In a turn of events the third place player comes back and announces to the crowd that he would shoot the girl. So the next scene is comprised of watchers voting on their phones, some voting yes, some voting no. In a movie full of edge-of-your-seat moments this is one of the most gut-wrenching because we can see and feel the dilemma and internal dissension of each watcher. Despite the anxious feeling the scene gives you, you just know that they will vote yes, and they do. I won't spoil the movie tell you what happens after that; we can see how the technological age empowers the anonymous collective, and it's a new hurdle society has to overcome, but will likely trip over.