To be completely honest I don't understand the appeal of Squid Game. It's a very thin metaphor around super shocking imagery --- and don't get me wrong, although it's not my thing, I can understand people liking slasher movies and the like, but I don't understand why this discourse that Squid Game is very deep (and anything other than cheap gore horror) became so popular.
The acting is superb, I really have not seen a single actor fail to deliver. They are all shocked beyond reason given the circumstances. It's like watching what would happen in real life.
It has high realism precisely because not everyone believes in a dog eat dog world. There are those that sacrifice themselves to save someone else. The immigrant that believes he is inferior simply because he came to the land and you have genuine human elements come to the surface even in the brutal world.
It doesn't lose a second on pointless discussions. It just starts strong and goes on and on until the very end. Substance all the way through. It's not just gore for the sake of gore or for shock value.
I don't understand the appeal of Squid Game. It's a very thin metaphor around super shocking imagery
Sounds to me like you understand the appeal of Squid Game perfectly :)
Squid Game is very deep
I don't think many people are saying that Squid Game itself is very deep, rather that it seems to work as a catalyst for many to have deeper conversations about these topics that they haven't really been having before.
You get the same every time this is done: Hunger Games and Battle Royale were also hailed for much more than the competitive brutality idea they were built on, and really they had little else to offer but that. For some reason people seem to feel the need to say they enjoyed it for reasons other than just enjoying inventive, competitive death games (maybe they really do, I don't know).
Anyway, I loved Squid Game but I wouldn't call it remotely deep. It's a formula. You just need to come up with a few decent characters and it practically writes itself.
IIRC, the maker of Squid Game was quoted as being unable to contemplate what a season 2 would involve. Are you kidding? Just put a new bunch of characters through a new bunch of games, sprinkle a bit of extra plot on it and keep up the production values. People will watch an infinite amount of this.
<DerekJacobi>He will bring them death, and they will love him for it.</DerekJacobi>
It's the execution. The main plot had been done multiple times before but not to anywhere near this level.
The acting, characters, sets and twists made it chilling in a way that makes Hunger Games et al look amateurish. At least until the English-speaking people opened their mouths...
Its shocking and gore, portraying a totalitarian sub society with hints of communism. It reminds us of North Korean. But for some reason, westerners think its a “critique of capitalism”.
Edit: to clarify, the “hints of communism” here refers to the game on the island, not south korea. These people willingly left capitalism to join this weird commie authoritarian style game to make money.
I think many people don't reflect on the show's messaging beyond the surface level "catchy costumes and violence in a game show" aspect (which honestly wasn't even new when Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed it in Running Man).
The social critique of Squid Game isn't the squid game. It's the world outside the game. It's why so many of the participants not only volunteer but also volunteer to come back after having already experienced it. The world outside the game show is portrayed as so bleak that hundreds of people would rather compete in a life-or-death "game" that promises fairness and a life-changing cash reward.
And the critical message of the show is that this world outside the game is not significantly different from ours. The game is a grotesque exaggeration of a get rich quick scheme but there are plenty of examples for people hoping to beat the odds or being willing to scam others for promises of great fortunes (look no further than the way the GameStock pump and dump was framed as a proletarian revolution until it was revealed most of the stock movement was the result of established investors jumping in to cash out on the gullible masses still tweeting "diamond hands" memes as the tide was starting to turn).
The cheap gore horror sells the show, but the implications of the story it tells, what people are willing to do to themselves and others for the promise of a carefree life, and how characters from all walks of life can end up in the gutter and devoid of hope, is why people dig their claws into it for more than just a few viral marketing memes. It speaks to the zeitgeist, especially during a pandemic that has repeatedly demonstrated failures of government and society, and economical interests being placed above the individual's well-being.
Before 2020 many people likely believed that their country would come together in a crisis like this, that people with power would forego their own interests for once an help out or that the wealthy wouldn't do less than even the bare minimum to contribute to the society that made them rich. In 2021 I don't think there are many people left having any such illusions about the systems they exist within.
So yeah, detached rich people betting on the dying and desperate like horses in a race strikes a chord with people right now. A show casually presenting a social reality in which poor people are willing to participate in such a "game" even more so. Note that this show's success on Netflix followed both The Platform and Snowpiercer (or the serialization thereof) as well as Parasite and Knives Out. There's a common thread between the themes of these films and Squid Game managed to strike the nerve.
The whole thing is about maintaining anticipation of the next horror, which it does really well. Also it’s a complete dystopia which is always a good thing to have around as it keeps reality in check. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Also to reflect other comments the acting and the whole imagery was excellent.
It's pretty easy to understand and not deep at all.
All those people prefer to go back to the game where it's almost certain they will die but that at least gives them one chance, rather than living a normal life in a ruthless capitalist society that treats them as garbage.
The success of Squid Game I think is mostly that it somehow allowed western audiences to put on it the anticapitalist sentiment that is rightfully in the air. It often happens that there's some work that matches common sentiment well enough that it becomes a thing of itself, even if the author didn't intent it.
To me honestly it feels like a boilerplate manga/anime plot, but to a more untainted audience it can be more.
Art imitates life. Squid Game is very deep. The reason is that it doesn't allow for the initial knee-jerk reaction that the poor are virtious and are simply crushed beneath the wheel of the powerful and the rich.
The main character is a gambler that lives off of the back of his mother. This can be blamed both of his own shortcomings and that of society. At the end of the show it is proven yet again that he is a gambler in heart when he chooses to play the last game with the mastermind of the game instead of going out and helping the freezing homeless person. On top of that, he hoards the money and sits on it for a year instead of helping the victims' families. This can hardly be blamed on society or on the rich.
Dog eat dog world assumption really doesn't work in Squid Game. Here's why. Being a woman and old is disadvantegous. Yet the team chooses two women and old man for the tug of war competition. If this is not downright irrationality I don't know what is. Yet the little compassion that they muster during life and death situation ends up being their ticket towards survival. This imitates real life where even the morally worst will do something to save someone just to prove to themselves that they are not that far gone.
In the following game the main character again chooses the old man who most likely would've been left off to die. Yet again this small compassion brings him a victory as the old man simply gives him the marbles because they are friends and friends share everything.
So yeah squid game imitates life but that's not really pessimistic because it contains both the beautiful and horrible aspects of human nature.
> Meritocracy is a fallacious idea – a convenient lie told to those whose lack of wealth or social class leaves them at a distinct disadvantage.
This is a bit oversimplified. Meritocracy is not an outright fallacious idea, but depending on the subject, there is a certain threshold of opportunity above which it becomes the dominant force, and for many that threshold is out of reach.
For instance, learning to program is fairly "accessible" today, but even it has certain minimum requirements, a threshold of opportunity above which the playground becomes more equal: You need a computer, internet access, enough free time... eventually you need a job. The one that really generalises against meritocracy is "you need free time", because most of the world is fighting for their next paycheck and are not in a position to attempt to improve their life. I believe this is what the author is getting at, wealth and "social class" are just an indirect way of saying "the freedom to pursue more opportunities".
However throwing out meritocracy completely is not the solution to this, if replaced with ideas revolving around inclusivity and equality alone it will fall apart - meritocracy is part of equality, it's just not all of it, it doesn't automatically solve equal opportunity... And this is where I think the author is missing the point: the world, society, government does little to ensure equal opportunity - This is the point squid game is making, everyone starts equal unlike reality.
Meritocracy is a friend of disadvantaged people, really? Merit reward merits. It's advantage compounding on advantage, whether that's luck, gene, talent, or just good environments and good parents. You win, then you can then plow that back into winning more.
A meritocracy is inherently a society of elite. It is not egalitarian.
Meritocracy is a fallacious idea exactly because it ignores social context. It's the equivalent of talking about spherical cows. Meritocracy not only assumes you can judge merit perfectly and that merit is expressed perfectly, but also that it is observed and rewarded perfectly. None of these is true and none of this can be true in any human society.
It's a lot like trying to reason about society as a network of perfectly rational actors making optimal decisions. The problem is not only imperfect knowledge and flawed decision making but personal biases on all sides, and not all of these biases are undesirable (unless you are looking for an optimum devoid of all externalities).
E.g. you could argue that insufficient risk taking is a failure to execute on your potential merit, but you may be risk averse because you lack a social safety net (e.g. wealthy parents) or because you have vulnerable dependents (e.g. a sick or disabled spouse, parent or child).
Meritocracy only works on an abstraction of what people are, but people can't be that simply because they're human animals with emotions, desires and needs. And this doesn't even go into undesirable biases like (unconscious) racism or sexism.
--
Spoilers ahead:
That said, where a lot of surface level readings of the squid game (the game in the show) fail is that they take the Frontman at face value. The game is decidedly not meritocratic. To start with, the games are very much not a level playing field as the participants carry over advantages and disadvantages from their life outside the game (e.g. poor health, physical strength, age, etc). The games also intentionally disrupt any attempts at cooperation (e.g. by alternating between picking teams and picking opponents without making it clear which is which). Several participants even outright cheat or are aided by staff. And the penultimate game not only replaces any pretense of skill with pure chance but also changes the rules when one participant reveals a relevant skill. But more importantly than anything else, one of the participants is revealed to actually be the person who invented the game and participates freely, even beating (killing) other participants, but is spared the consequences (execution).
Not only is the society outside the game shown to be unjust and impact the pretense of meritocracy within the game, the Frontman actively sabotages a meritocratic victory in one of the games for the entertainment of the VIPs and one participant is exempt from all consequences because his wealth and status allows him to participate on his own terms and manipulate the other participants, skewing the results.
The participants don't volunteer to come back because the game is meritocratic, they come back because they think they have a chance. In fact ultimately the victor is a gambler who tried to win by uniting some of the weakest participants (though punished by having to cheat the seemingly most vulnerable person in order to survive), and a ruthless tactician willing to sacrifice everyone to get ahead but ultimately sacrificing himself out of regret. Heck, after weeding out most of the survivors in a blatant game of chance, one of the three finalists is gravely wounded (and consequently murdered) by sheer bad luck and we know that at least of the participants that made it to the game of chance got there by actively cheating their opponents (and at least one was "gifted" their place by another participant sacrificing themselves voluntarily).
If anything, the game demonstrates an environment intentionally set up to disrupt any attempt at solidarity (tho this idea was portrayed much more explicitly in The Platform) while blaming the individual for their failure in a system designed to prevent their success.
Yes I took the squid game message to be “we’re gonna shock you with all this gore but at the end of the day it’s not far from real life. Well maybe not for you as you are rich… after all you can afford to watch this”
I don't see the appeal of this show. It's a prepackaged, shallow production that adds little to the actual works it undoubtedly inspires and gets much from, FKMT's manga.
The interesting thing to me is its popularity. Back in 2007, the same people that are now singing praises to SG would not have looked twice at Kaiji. In fact, I bet that had SG not been popular, the very same people would not watch it or allow themselves to enjoy it.
In other words, it seems to me that it first had to be publicly announced as 'popular', before people would consider watching it thus actually making it popular.
Yes. Basically it is a re-branded, re-heated and re-packaged entertainment version of today's rat race.
Unfortunately, lots of people are just easily impressed by what influencers are watching or what is 'trending' these days. So they follow the hype squad around; like sheep.
It is great for Netflix's business since they have a successful hit, but count me out of the hype squad; since I simply cut through the hype.
It's fun, it's well produced, the acting is decent, the children's games add a fun twist. It's a great way to spend a couple of hours over the weekend. And it's way, way better than most of the stuff that gets released on Netflix.
Not every movie has to be a work of art with a truly original story. If that were the case, non of the most successful movies of the past decade(s) should really exist.
This is pure anecdata and somewhat tangential to the article, but - I had multiple conversations, distinct from each other and completely unprompted, where people said they thought the hype for this show was manufactured. One person in particular said Reddit felt like someone "flipped a switch" and suddenly everything was Squid Game for a week. At first I didn't see it but after the Nth article breathlessly repeating the same points about the show's message one does wonder.
Though I've seen it a hundred and more times, I'm always a little surprised to see this community completely miss the point of artistic works that challenge inequality.
Y'all seem to think that we're in some kind of meritocracy, that predatory capitalism isn't centrally planned, that you earned your position in society and so everyone who's poor just isn't working hard or smart enough...
And even after watching a show that makes the point in as simplistic a metaphor as you could wish for; even after reading an article that breaks the metaphor down precisely and makes it abundantly clear, there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
How can smart people miss the point so completely? It's simple, but still surprises me almost every time - "“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”
It's not that I'm wilfully blind to the flaws of the system I live in. It's that the overwhelming majority of people who offer critique offer absolutely nothing in the way of workable solutions. If the public intellectuals who came up with the doughnut economy, teal society, or the Rojavan system were having a talk in my town, I'd be very interested in going. But note that these people actually created something and spend very little time cataloguing flaws of the things they're seeking to replace. Nearly anyone can critique a thing that exists, and people who do nothing but criticise tend to rub everyone the wrong way.
More insidiously, there are often class interests at work motivating the criticisms or denials of meritocracy, and most people who enjoy having the chance to make a positive contribution to the world view that particular class with an extreme suspicion and often well-earned hostility. If you'd really like to understand how the other side thinks, I'd recommend this essay: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/01/donald...
>How can smart people miss the point so completely?
They want to miss it so badly, it's simple cognitive dissonance. Some people don't want to accept that they had luck while others didn't. They have successfully convinced themselves that we are not all equals, that somehow there are people who are more deserving.
You're conflating different people's comments. From reading the thread, people expressing opinions described in your second paragraph are not also expressing opinions described in your third paragraph.
The show can have a good message and also have bad writing/be derivative/etc.
Not sure what you’re arguing against here. A piece of fiction can have a strong moral point of view and still be of poor quality. The righteousness of message doesn’t instantly make the messenger appealing.
> Y'all seem to think that we're in some kind of meritocracy, that predatory capitalism isn't centrally planned, that you earned your position in society and so everyone who's poor just isn't working hard or smart enough...
Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet. Sure, some poor people don't have a chance and the closer you are to money, the easier it gets, but it's not like it's all on the system. There are also quite a few capitalist countries other than the US, with less problems.
> there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
I agree that squid game can be interpreted that way. But let's be real here, there's massive amounts of gore in there and it's portrayed extensively, far beyond where it would be necessary to make a point. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of people watch it mostly for that and for the crime story, not the implied portrayal of society. You can see it in there, but squid game is mass market first, social critique second.
Meritocracy exists on a small scale, but always remember that someone wrote the rules, and they generally have an opinion on the outcome. The best moment of the show was when they changed the rules of the glass jumping game after someone figured out a trick to win. Basically the whole RobinHood/GMC debacle. Only approved parties get to manipulate the market.
Most of us are on the winning side of the game right now - central banks have dumped a ton of money into investments and banking, software has very low marginal cost at scale, and companies can be unprofitable for decades if they have a good story. Big Tech has also been immune to regulation and taxes. If the regulatory/legal space or the market want ROI now, then many of us may be the losers in the next round of our economic Squid Game.
I don't really see the game itself as a societal criticism, but more how desperation from an unfair society can drive people to participate, and how extremely wealthy individuals can abuse this desperation for fun and games.
And why do they participate? Because its their only chance to get away from being poor. That's exactly the point of capitalism - people do things they don't want to do every day so they don't have to be poor.
Isn't inequality or competition for basic needs, and how those can lead to terrible outcomes, a better starting point if you want to come up with an ancap interpretation?
I don't think the series says much about central vs local planning, and even if it did that'd only be tangentially related to capitalism or anti-capitalism.
What's with the hate of borrowing concepts from other shows? By that standard I haven't really seen much of a real original concept in the last couple of decades.
Yeah all these waves of enthusiasm for a show just wash over me. I have ignored every one of them in recent decades. It has never harmed me socially to be utterly unaware of the details of the latest Mad Tiger Squid Soprano.
miguelmurca|4 years ago
nnoitra|4 years ago
It has high realism precisely because not everyone believes in a dog eat dog world. There are those that sacrifice themselves to save someone else. The immigrant that believes he is inferior simply because he came to the land and you have genuine human elements come to the surface even in the brutal world.
It doesn't lose a second on pointless discussions. It just starts strong and goes on and on until the very end. Substance all the way through. It's not just gore for the sake of gore or for shock value.
dagw|4 years ago
Sounds to me like you understand the appeal of Squid Game perfectly :)
Squid Game is very deep
I don't think many people are saying that Squid Game itself is very deep, rather that it seems to work as a catalyst for many to have deeper conversations about these topics that they haven't really been having before.
omnicognate|4 years ago
Anyway, I loved Squid Game but I wouldn't call it remotely deep. It's a formula. You just need to come up with a few decent characters and it practically writes itself.
IIRC, the maker of Squid Game was quoted as being unable to contemplate what a season 2 would involve. Are you kidding? Just put a new bunch of characters through a new bunch of games, sprinkle a bit of extra plot on it and keep up the production values. People will watch an infinite amount of this.
<DerekJacobi>He will bring them death, and they will love him for it.</DerekJacobi>
AussieWog93|4 years ago
The acting, characters, sets and twists made it chilling in a way that makes Hunger Games et al look amateurish. At least until the English-speaking people opened their mouths...
vowelless|4 years ago
Edit: to clarify, the “hints of communism” here refers to the game on the island, not south korea. These people willingly left capitalism to join this weird commie authoritarian style game to make money.
hnbad|4 years ago
The social critique of Squid Game isn't the squid game. It's the world outside the game. It's why so many of the participants not only volunteer but also volunteer to come back after having already experienced it. The world outside the game show is portrayed as so bleak that hundreds of people would rather compete in a life-or-death "game" that promises fairness and a life-changing cash reward.
And the critical message of the show is that this world outside the game is not significantly different from ours. The game is a grotesque exaggeration of a get rich quick scheme but there are plenty of examples for people hoping to beat the odds or being willing to scam others for promises of great fortunes (look no further than the way the GameStock pump and dump was framed as a proletarian revolution until it was revealed most of the stock movement was the result of established investors jumping in to cash out on the gullible masses still tweeting "diamond hands" memes as the tide was starting to turn).
The cheap gore horror sells the show, but the implications of the story it tells, what people are willing to do to themselves and others for the promise of a carefree life, and how characters from all walks of life can end up in the gutter and devoid of hope, is why people dig their claws into it for more than just a few viral marketing memes. It speaks to the zeitgeist, especially during a pandemic that has repeatedly demonstrated failures of government and society, and economical interests being placed above the individual's well-being.
Before 2020 many people likely believed that their country would come together in a crisis like this, that people with power would forego their own interests for once an help out or that the wealthy wouldn't do less than even the bare minimum to contribute to the society that made them rich. In 2021 I don't think there are many people left having any such illusions about the systems they exist within.
So yeah, detached rich people betting on the dying and desperate like horses in a race strikes a chord with people right now. A show casually presenting a social reality in which poor people are willing to participate in such a "game" even more so. Note that this show's success on Netflix followed both The Platform and Snowpiercer (or the serialization thereof) as well as Parasite and Knives Out. There's a common thread between the themes of these films and Squid Game managed to strike the nerve.
hvgk|4 years ago
Also to reflect other comments the acting and the whole imagery was excellent.
pkrotich|4 years ago
Did you happen to watch Parasite - it’s sorta cut from the same cloth. Curious if it didn’t interest as well.
pastacacioepepe|4 years ago
All those people prefer to go back to the game where it's almost certain they will die but that at least gives them one chance, rather than living a normal life in a ruthless capitalist society that treats them as garbage.
mihaic|4 years ago
To me honestly it feels like a boilerplate manga/anime plot, but to a more untainted audience it can be more.
helloooooooo|4 years ago
nnoitra|4 years ago
The main character is a gambler that lives off of the back of his mother. This can be blamed both of his own shortcomings and that of society. At the end of the show it is proven yet again that he is a gambler in heart when he chooses to play the last game with the mastermind of the game instead of going out and helping the freezing homeless person. On top of that, he hoards the money and sits on it for a year instead of helping the victims' families. This can hardly be blamed on society or on the rich.
Dog eat dog world assumption really doesn't work in Squid Game. Here's why. Being a woman and old is disadvantegous. Yet the team chooses two women and old man for the tug of war competition. If this is not downright irrationality I don't know what is. Yet the little compassion that they muster during life and death situation ends up being their ticket towards survival. This imitates real life where even the morally worst will do something to save someone just to prove to themselves that they are not that far gone.
In the following game the main character again chooses the old man who most likely would've been left off to die. Yet again this small compassion brings him a victory as the old man simply gives him the marbles because they are friends and friends share everything.
So yeah squid game imitates life but that's not really pessimistic because it contains both the beautiful and horrible aspects of human nature.
tomxor|4 years ago
This is a bit oversimplified. Meritocracy is not an outright fallacious idea, but depending on the subject, there is a certain threshold of opportunity above which it becomes the dominant force, and for many that threshold is out of reach.
For instance, learning to program is fairly "accessible" today, but even it has certain minimum requirements, a threshold of opportunity above which the playground becomes more equal: You need a computer, internet access, enough free time... eventually you need a job. The one that really generalises against meritocracy is "you need free time", because most of the world is fighting for their next paycheck and are not in a position to attempt to improve their life. I believe this is what the author is getting at, wealth and "social class" are just an indirect way of saying "the freedom to pursue more opportunities".
However throwing out meritocracy completely is not the solution to this, if replaced with ideas revolving around inclusivity and equality alone it will fall apart - meritocracy is part of equality, it's just not all of it, it doesn't automatically solve equal opportunity... And this is where I think the author is missing the point: the world, society, government does little to ensure equal opportunity - This is the point squid game is making, everyone starts equal unlike reality.
kiba|4 years ago
A meritocracy is inherently a society of elite. It is not egalitarian.
hnbad|4 years ago
It's a lot like trying to reason about society as a network of perfectly rational actors making optimal decisions. The problem is not only imperfect knowledge and flawed decision making but personal biases on all sides, and not all of these biases are undesirable (unless you are looking for an optimum devoid of all externalities).
E.g. you could argue that insufficient risk taking is a failure to execute on your potential merit, but you may be risk averse because you lack a social safety net (e.g. wealthy parents) or because you have vulnerable dependents (e.g. a sick or disabled spouse, parent or child).
Meritocracy only works on an abstraction of what people are, but people can't be that simply because they're human animals with emotions, desires and needs. And this doesn't even go into undesirable biases like (unconscious) racism or sexism.
--
Spoilers ahead:
That said, where a lot of surface level readings of the squid game (the game in the show) fail is that they take the Frontman at face value. The game is decidedly not meritocratic. To start with, the games are very much not a level playing field as the participants carry over advantages and disadvantages from their life outside the game (e.g. poor health, physical strength, age, etc). The games also intentionally disrupt any attempts at cooperation (e.g. by alternating between picking teams and picking opponents without making it clear which is which). Several participants even outright cheat or are aided by staff. And the penultimate game not only replaces any pretense of skill with pure chance but also changes the rules when one participant reveals a relevant skill. But more importantly than anything else, one of the participants is revealed to actually be the person who invented the game and participates freely, even beating (killing) other participants, but is spared the consequences (execution).
Not only is the society outside the game shown to be unjust and impact the pretense of meritocracy within the game, the Frontman actively sabotages a meritocratic victory in one of the games for the entertainment of the VIPs and one participant is exempt from all consequences because his wealth and status allows him to participate on his own terms and manipulate the other participants, skewing the results.
The participants don't volunteer to come back because the game is meritocratic, they come back because they think they have a chance. In fact ultimately the victor is a gambler who tried to win by uniting some of the weakest participants (though punished by having to cheat the seemingly most vulnerable person in order to survive), and a ruthless tactician willing to sacrifice everyone to get ahead but ultimately sacrificing himself out of regret. Heck, after weeding out most of the survivors in a blatant game of chance, one of the three finalists is gravely wounded (and consequently murdered) by sheer bad luck and we know that at least of the participants that made it to the game of chance got there by actively cheating their opponents (and at least one was "gifted" their place by another participant sacrificing themselves voluntarily).
If anything, the game demonstrates an environment intentionally set up to disrupt any attempt at solidarity (tho this idea was portrayed much more explicitly in The Platform) while blaming the individual for their failure in a system designed to prevent their success.
quickthrower2|4 years ago
hayanno|4 years ago
0x_rs|4 years ago
agent008t|4 years ago
In other words, it seems to me that it first had to be publicly announced as 'popular', before people would consider watching it thus actually making it popular.
rvz|4 years ago
Unfortunately, lots of people are just easily impressed by what influencers are watching or what is 'trending' these days. So they follow the hype squad around; like sheep.
It is great for Netflix's business since they have a successful hit, but count me out of the hype squad; since I simply cut through the hype.
donkeyd|4 years ago
Not every movie has to be a work of art with a truly original story. If that were the case, non of the most successful movies of the past decade(s) should really exist.
subjectsigma|4 years ago
mandmandam|4 years ago
Y'all seem to think that we're in some kind of meritocracy, that predatory capitalism isn't centrally planned, that you earned your position in society and so everyone who's poor just isn't working hard or smart enough...
And even after watching a show that makes the point in as simplistic a metaphor as you could wish for; even after reading an article that breaks the metaphor down precisely and makes it abundantly clear, there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
How can smart people miss the point so completely? It's simple, but still surprises me almost every time - "“Never argue with a man whose job depends on not being convinced.”
SuoDuanDao|4 years ago
It's not that I'm wilfully blind to the flaws of the system I live in. It's that the overwhelming majority of people who offer critique offer absolutely nothing in the way of workable solutions. If the public intellectuals who came up with the doughnut economy, teal society, or the Rojavan system were having a talk in my town, I'd be very interested in going. But note that these people actually created something and spend very little time cataloguing flaws of the things they're seeking to replace. Nearly anyone can critique a thing that exists, and people who do nothing but criticise tend to rub everyone the wrong way.
More insidiously, there are often class interests at work motivating the criticisms or denials of meritocracy, and most people who enjoy having the chance to make a positive contribution to the world view that particular class with an extreme suspicion and often well-earned hostility. If you'd really like to understand how the other side thinks, I'd recommend this essay: https://thearchdruidreport-archive.200605.xyz/2016/01/donald...
lexapro|4 years ago
They want to miss it so badly, it's simple cognitive dissonance. Some people don't want to accept that they had luck while others didn't. They have successfully convinced themselves that we are not all equals, that somehow there are people who are more deserving.
subjectsigma|4 years ago
The show can have a good message and also have bad writing/be derivative/etc.
mypastself|4 years ago
Sebb767|4 years ago
Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet. Sure, some poor people don't have a chance and the closer you are to money, the easier it gets, but it's not like it's all on the system. There are also quite a few capitalist countries other than the US, with less problems.
> there's still people in this thread saying "I don't understand the appeal", "it's just brutality and shock value", "if you can watch this you're rich and who it's aimed at", "pfft, this is a ripoff of [obscure manga]"...
I agree that squid game can be interpreted that way. But let's be real here, there's massive amounts of gore in there and it's portrayed extensively, far beyond where it would be necessary to make a point. And I'm pretty sure that a lot of people watch it mostly for that and for the crime story, not the implied portrayal of society. You can see it in there, but squid game is mass market first, social critique second.
hayanno|4 years ago
timonoko|4 years ago
ahdh8f4hf4h8|4 years ago
Most of us are on the winning side of the game right now - central banks have dumped a ton of money into investments and banking, software has very low marginal cost at scale, and companies can be unprofitable for decades if they have a good story. Big Tech has also been immune to regulation and taxes. If the regulatory/legal space or the market want ROI now, then many of us may be the losers in the next round of our economic Squid Game.
wodenokoto|4 years ago
unknown|4 years ago
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unknown|4 years ago
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Smithalicious|4 years ago
bjornsing|4 years ago
BrianOnHN|4 years ago
If Naval is right, then that will make America the same as the "Offshore" in "3%"...
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/naval/status/1463388121710481410
unknown|4 years ago
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pietrovismara|4 years ago
lexapro|4 years ago
__alexs|4 years ago
Meritocracy is an attack on capitalism. Read the book.
boppo1|4 years ago
wodenokoto|4 years ago
MildlySerious|4 years ago
peakaboo|4 years ago
McBeige|4 years ago
I don't think the series says much about central vs local planning, and even if it did that'd only be tangentially related to capitalism or anti-capitalism.
pastacacioepepe|4 years ago
It is 100% a critique on capitalism and he states it clearly.
idonotknowwhy|4 years ago
kiba|4 years ago
While Gantz rewards only individual players, it is not a battle royale. Teammwork is basically essential for survival.
donkeyd|4 years ago
forgotmyoldname|4 years ago
kortilla|4 years ago
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mountainb|4 years ago
djbusby|4 years ago