Joan is Awful is the first episode of season six of Netflix’s Black Mirror that talks about the impact of artificially generated content on the lives of citizens, taking their mundane lives and turning them into a streaming special on ‘Streamberry’ for everyone to watch. The titular character Joan (played by Annie Murphy), is subjected to this midway through the episode when she sits to watch a curiously titled episode on the Streamberry streaming service that uses her name, Joan is Awful and has the actress Salma Hayek playing re-enacting her life. The episode becomes important from the perspective of theories of Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard when one analyses the semiotics and sees how the authenticity is stripped away in this spectacle, where “this dystopian narrative plays out the socio-technical implications of technology pushed to an extreme” (Hildebrand 356). How does Joan is Awful use simulated reality to critically examine authenticity, agency, and the nature of truth in the age of digital media and surveillance? What are the impacts on individual agency and identity when life becomes a mediated spectacle in Joan is Awful? How does the episode critique surveillance and control, specifically dataveillance? In what ways does Joan is Awful show Baudrillard's simulation and ‘hyperreality’ blurring reality and authenticity? The aim of the essay is to conduct a qualitative analysis that focuses on close reading, emphasizing instances from the episode that align with the scope of the essay. Along with it, the aim is to also focus on post-structuralist and critical media theories that are highly relevant to this episode.