Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 55 posts

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#41

Post by dbspin »

fingerlocks wrote: post #31
dbspin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was B2B - it was a golf course brag for executives. Customers camping outside Apple stores was something different. That's personal identity defined by not merely consumption, but parasocial relationship to a brand.

Apple isn’t unique. There’s all sorts of products like that. Concert tickets, sports events, recreation permits, and especially video game stuff. People camped out when the Nvidia RTX 30xx series launched a few years back. There was a massive line of people, a real wtf moment. That’s just a graphics card.

Video games are a good counter example. The others you've listed are fandom specific which is distinct from having a relationship with a brand per say.

I hadn't heard about camping for the 30 series, thats nuts.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#42

Post by yapyap »

Man I love Severance, the black Kier thing in the most recent episode was hilarious but also gave a good insight into Seth ad a character. It showed me that he hadn’t fully given his life to Lumon, in the way that he was still able to dislike decisions they made. As opposed to Natalie.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#43

Post by gHA5 »

yapyap wrote: post #42

Man I love Severance, the black Kier thing in the most recent episode was hilarious but also gave a good insight into Seth ad a character. It showed me that he hadn’t fully given his life to Lumon, in the way that he was still able to dislike decisions they made. As opposed to Natalie.

So you got the impression he didn't like the paintings? He seemed to be moved by them to me.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#44

Post by TheBozzCL »

gHA5 wrote: post #43
yapyap wrote: post #42

Man I love Severance, the black Kier thing in the most recent episode was hilarious but also gave a good insight into Seth ad a character. It showed me that he hadn’t fully given his life to Lumon, in the way that he was still able to dislike decisions they made. As opposed to Natalie.

So you got the impression he didn't like the paintings? He seemed to be moved by them to me.

It was pretty obvious he didn’t like them IMO. He didn’t even hang them, he put them away as hidden as he could.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#45

Post by 47282847 »

thrance wrote: post #16
iamkonstantin wrote: post #2

It’s also kind of ironic - is Apple the first corporation to succeed in applying the “corporate cult” strategy to consumers at such a scale?

There's a case to be made for cigarette companies as well. People were known to never change who they bought their poison from, despite all of them providing the exact same product.

Sounds like you never smoked. The difference in taste is vast, much more than say the difference between Coca Cola and Peps or between different brands of ketchups.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#46

Post by xerox13ster »

nonameiguess wrote: post #20
iamkonstantin wrote: post #2

It’s also kind of ironic - is Apple the first corporation to succeed in applying the “corporate cult” strategy to consumers at such a scale?

From watching Severance, the closest parallel to me for a company I ever actually worked for is Disney. Disneyland performer was one of my first jobs, and the orientation is a lot like Lumon's. Video history of the company's reach and achievements. Tremendence reverence for the founder. Disneyland has a statue of Walt holding hands with Mickey at the junction between Main Street and Fantasyland and Main Street itself…

The real parallel is Walmart, Sam Walton and Bentonville Arkansas.

Walmart corporation owns half the land in Bentonville and anybody who lives in Bentonville or Centerton, which is the bedroom community for Bentonville, either works for Walmart or knows someone who does.

When I worked at the Walmart corporate office in DGTC, they gave us an orientation, covering the company’s history and the founder and his family and all of the CEOs since, and in the most recent episode, I experienced a similar experience with my family when they came for lunch.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#47

Post by woleium »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #36
SubGenius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an Iron Maiden song inspired by that show and features a voice clip from it. It's called The Prisoner.

There's a whole village in North Wales that's Prisoner themed

The other way round, it predates the show and was used as the set.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#48

Post by drdec »

yapyap wrote: post #42

Man I love Severance, the black Kier thing in the most recent episode was hilarious but also gave a good insight into Seth ad a character. It showed me that he hadn’t fully given his life to Lumon, in the way that he was still able to dislike decisions they made. As opposed to Natalie.

I'm not sure Natalie has. She knows she needs to give the appearance in order to keep her position. IMHO she was coaching Seth as to what the right response was.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#49

Post by kyriakos »

TheBozzCL wrote: post #44
gHA5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you got the impression he didn't like the paintings? He seemed to be moved by them to me.

It was pretty obvious he didn’t like them IMO. He didn’t even hang them, he put them away as hidden as he could.

The exchange in looks he had with Natalie character right after the board dropped off the call was clearly also an indication of dissatisfaction from both of them.

Re: The Severance writer and cast on corporate cults, sci-fi, and more

#50

Post by tonyedgecombe »

gloflo wrote: post #34
JKCalhoun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's an apt comparison. And, perhaps like The Prisoner, there may not really ben an "answer" that is revealed in the end. I somewhat worry that the show is all atmosphere, no story. Like, is the writer really winging it at this point? We've certainly seen enough shows where that was the case. Premise with no payoff. But perhaps I should just give up looking for various threads to be tied up — even stop look…

I wish it was clearly communicated if a series was fully planned and with a final ending, or not. The best series I know are selfcontained, single season series with a clear overall story telling.

I did read somewhere that they have plan for all the series. It won’t end up like Lost.
Post reply on HN