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Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

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Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#71

Post by mandmandam »

Sebb767 wrote: post #52
mandmandam wrote: post #28

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 sho…

> 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…

> Not everything is perfect, but we're not living in a dictatorship yet.

There's 'not perfect', and then there's us... We've got sanctioned torture, an oligarch class, perpetual war, unaccountable surveillance, black sites, executive orders, secret courts, silencing, detention and torture of foreign journalists, and record inequality.

And that's in our own country - we do much worse to South America, Africa, the Middle East. Have done for hundreds of years. We even threaten and surveil European groups and leaders without (immediate) consequence.

> squid game is mass market first, social critique second.

So what? If it were social critique first people would be complaining that it's too political. I've overheard people discussing social inequality in the grocery store because of this show, and I fucking love it for that.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#72

Post by imtringued »

omnicognate wrote: post #18
miguelmurca wrote: post #7

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.

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…

There are already so many of these survival game shows and movies. I don't see what a sequel is supposed to bring to the table. In fact, the title "X Game" is so unoriginal... I've watched too many of those.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#74

Post by catlikesshrimp »

omnicognate wrote: post #18
miguelmurca wrote: post #7

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.

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 didn't enjoy parts 2 and 3 of the cinema Hunger Games.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#76

Post by agent008t »

donkeyd wrote: post #67
agent008t wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Back in 2007 Back in 2007, Netflix wasn't a globally available streaming service and they were still sending out DVDs. > would not have looked twice at Kaiji I still wouldn't, it's a cartoon, I'm not into cartoons. > it first had to be publicly announced as 'popular' I didn't figure out it was popular until after I finished watching the show. Meanwhile, while watching the show, I was telling all my friends about ho…

It is more of a lamentation of the fact that people's opinions of things are significantly affected by the perceived popularity of those things. I guess the benign explanation is that people are more likely to invest time into something that is recommended by many people they believe they have a lot in common with, but I think it runs deeper than that.

I suspect it applies to a significantly lesser degree to the HN audience, who know well that unpopular things can be well worth investing the time into and so for whom popularity is less of a useful metric; if anything, popular things tend to appeal to the lower common denominator and so popularity is often a negative indicator.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#77

Post by ahdh8f4hf4h8 »

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.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#78

Post by catlikesshrimp »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #46
miguelmurca wrote: post #7

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.

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.

One of them suicides rather than going back to poverty ( the friend who mortgaged his mother's house )

The protagonist was going to be gutted by his loaners. He had signed a waiver on his body rights.

There are some participants who didn't come back. I assume that we were supposed to assume that they didn't come back because they had died in society.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#79

Post by mandmandam »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #66
mandmandam wrote: post #28

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 sho…

Speaking only for myself... 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 act…

I'd love to see more focus on solutions, but there are _huge_ numbers of people who don't (or won't) even recognize that there are problems; and that recognition is step one.

The public intellectuals and concepts you mention may be known in your bubble, but they are not popular or talked about.

It's insane that with all of our gains in productivity the last hundred years Americans are working two or three jobs just to survive. That's fucking bananas. Cloaking that in dry academic discussion may work for you, but it clearly isn't having a big cultural impact.

Squid Game touched a nerve. People know that that we're all getting screwed.

And it's not just America, clearly. Neoliberals all over the world are strip mining the common good, at our expense and at the expense of our descendants.

So let's not shit on media that at least gets people talking about systemic inequality, while also actually managing to be popular. That's an accomplishment, and to be praised.

Re: Sorry, but you're already living in the “Squid Game”

#80

Post by catlikesshrimp »

pkrotich wrote: post #16
miguelmurca wrote: post #7

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.

Same way I would never understand appeal of WWE or super hero movies for that matter. Did you happen to watch Parasite - it’s sorta cut from the same cloth. Curious if it didn’t interest as well.

The protagonist of parasite is rather disgusting.
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