Squid Game: The Challenge Is A CRIME Against Humanity

what's that like to be able to pay off your house what's that like to be able to pay off your car I know these may be simple dreams what's that like yeah I got my own dreams they may not be much but I got dreams too so they made a game show version of squid game so that's fun Netflix decided that the huge success of squid game had to be replicated by subjecting real life people to the same atrocities that happened in the original show and I have to tell you for the past 2 weeks it's been my number one Obsession not because the show is good cuz it's not mostly because of the irony of Netflix even creating a real life version of this show but also because I think it's just bad like it's not great so that's we're going to be talking about in this video actually had absolutely no intention of even watching this show but I kept seeing Tik toks of players who are actually on the show recounting their experience and it's so ridiculous that I had to see what all the fuss was about so let's talk about squid game the premise so what is squid game squid game is a very popular Korean drama that premiered on Netflix in 2021 the show follows a group of people who are in crippling debt when they get presented with an opportunity to win a lot of money by participating in a game in the game over 400 players are competing against each other for millions of dollars and after each game players who are unsuccessful are eliminated we find out that the games are actually kid games like red light green light but the twist is after each player is eliminated they're killed so the stakes are pretty high as the players risk their lives for millions of dollars the games were created by a bunch of rich people called VIPs because they were bored and thought it would be fun to see people die for money the show was really popular and sparked an interesting conversation around capitalism and how it exploits and dehumanizes people so of course Netflix looked at that and said hey let's do that to real people and thus squid game The Challenge was born a reality show challenge based on the Original Series where over 400 people compete for 4.65 million what could possibly go wrong how people got picked so in going through the actual players recount for the show it seems there were a couple different ways people were chosen to be part of the show a lot of players said they simply saw an ad advertising the series and went on a website to audition to be a part of the show some players said they were directly contacted by Netflix to participate in the show through social media and you'll see that there actually is a good amount of influencers participating in the show but we'll get to that later still regardless of how players were brought into auditions it seems as if the process was pretty similar they would meet with a representative answer a bunch of questions including what they would do if they won the money send in a self tape to see if they would be a good fit for the show after a couple months of waiting they'd get a call either to say they would be a part of the show or not players that were chosen had to fly to London that's where the show was being filmed and they had to quarantine for a couple days and then they were officially brought onto set to play in the games the show films for about 2 weeks in January of 2023 which means that a lot of people had to take time off from work just to be a part of the series one player in particular player 432 said that he even dropped out of college just to be a part of the show so people took the participation very seriously the challenges so in order to pick it back from all of the success of the original show the entire set was recreated to look exactly like the original even the creator of the original squid game worked closely with Netflix to ensure it was as authentic as possible and you can tell that they really wanted to make the experience feel as close to the real game as possible so the challenge is also pretty closely met matched the challenges the players had to do in the original show the first game was Red Light Green Light which was the same in the show where players are brought out to this huge field and have to get to the end of the field within 5 minutes if they get caught during red light then they were eliminated they really replicated this set down to the tea even the huge robot was replicated but it seems to be merely decorative like it's not actually tracking players movements to eliminate them so this game was pretty controversial and a lot of players describe it as the most difficult part of the entire experience to us the viewers the game seemed to only have lasted 5 minutes in fact the entire challenge only took up about 15 minutes of the entire episode but in reality the game went on for 7 hours players said that they had to stay frozen for 30 to 40 minutes at a time apparently this was done to make the challenge more difficult but also to get camera shots of all of the players so just imagine these players freezing like this for 40 minutes at a time while a camera goes around getting their reaction and the entire time they can't move move the series was also shot in January so players describe it as being freezing temperatures and a lot of them complained that they were very cold during filming this challenge which would actually be included in the lawsuit some players filed against Netflix because apparently some players passed out playing this game but we'll also get to that later also there's this one girl who at a certain point she froze in a squat and because of that she had to hold this post for about half an hour and in the actual edit of the show we're seeing the clock tick down so it seems that she's only holding this post for a couple seconds but no she actually had to stay like this for a very long time eventually it got so bad so she gave up in order to be as authentic to the show as possible they also strapped these explosive pouches to their chest so when a player gets eliminated there's this really dramatic explosion where black Dy oozes out to replicate players getting shot like in the original squid game players that were able to cross the finish time before the time ended were saved from elimination and were able officially enter the dorm room there they would live and sleep for the next 2 weeks they even replicated the dorms exactly how they appeared in the show even having this piggy bank that has all the money each time a player gets eliminated like it gets pretty crazy players also said that a lot of time actually passed in between each challenge some say that there were days in between each challenge where they weren't really doing anything and basically just hanging out the bathroom seemed to be co-ed meaning men and women were allowed to use them at a time they also got like pouches of things that they would need throughout their stay they got toothbrush toothpaste a comb but one thing that they didn't get was lip balm because they were filming in the middle of January players actually described it as being really really cold and because of that a lot of players suffered from chapped lips and trust me when you watch the show you can tell sometimes apparently it got so bad that players would take the condoms that were given to them and use the Lube in the condoms as lip bomb eventually Netflix decided that they would just give the players their own lip bombs which is like I mean I guess that's good but I don't understand why it took so long it seems like they were really adamant about making sure that the experience was as close to the original game as possible which I'm not sure how denying players's lip bomb would have accomplished that but anyways so the next main challenge is dalona which is the same challenge in the original show where players have to select a shape and then try cutting out that shape out of a cookie without breaking it my first thought when it came to these challenges were how they would be able to effectively Implement them because the big thing in the original squid game was that the players had no idea what challenges were coming up next so part of the mystery and difficulty of the game was figuring out what you were supposed to do but obviously anybody participating in this event would have probably seen the original and know exactly what challenges to expect so to accommodate for that the show has to make certain adjustment to the challenges to make the selection of shapes Fair they have all the players form four lines and the first player in each line has to select the shape the entirety of their line will be cutting and all four players have to agree on their selection obviously umbrella is the worst shape and so nobody wants to pick that one but if all four players don't agree on a shape then they all get eliminated I think this was a pretty interesting twist it created this interesting Dynamic where a player has to decide whether or not they're going to be selfish or think about the well-being of other players in the line because if they decide to not take the umbrella then they get eliminated in The Game and lose opportunity to win $4 million while the rest of their line still has a chance but if they submit to taking the umbrella then they at least give themselves a fatting chance to still be in the game but will end up pissing off everyone in their line so that's what's kind of happening to this guy he kind of got bullied into picking umbrella for his whole line and he only agreed to do it if the other players helped out but then they announced it's an individual game and you're not allowed to help other players it seems he has a lot of anxiety and people in his group were pissed at him but he ended up being eliminated anyways so who cares the next main challenge was a complete shift from the original in the original the next challenge was tug of war and the players assumed that that would be the next challenge so they started forming alliances and groups to Bear their chances of winning and there was even a group of a bunch of really strong men but then we find out that the next challenge isn't tug of war but a completely new game of battleships so teams have to choose a captain and a tenant and the rest of the players get in these boats and the captains have to try to SN the other team's boats and the first team to SN two boats wins this was a complete change from the original so it's no wonder why it sucks this was just a really terrible challenge because for one it makes the players passive actors throughout the game like the captain and the lieutenant are the ones making all the decisions so if you're in the boat your fate is completely rested on these two people you have absolutely no say which is ridiculous because as sadistic as the original squid games were you were the master of your own fate whether you failed or passed the challenge was completely dependent on you even those challenges where you had to play as a team and I think this challenge being such a contradiction of what the point of the original challenges were is such a testament to how the creators of the reality show fundamentally misunderstood the original the games being children's game and being very simplistic but with these huge consequences such as the loss of your life was to create this equal standing among players so that they all had the best possible chance of winning winning and yeah those games were still unfair but the whole point was that you get to have control of your life in these games whereas you might not have control in the real world so having this challenge where you sit in a boat while other players make decisions that might get you eliminated isn't even in line with the basic thesis of the original show also even if a team won if any of their ships got sunk those players were still eliminated so we're seeing a team celebrating their win while eliminated players are just sulking in the background because is while we're all jumping around to see my Fallen teammates and I'm just like I do at least appreciate that they tried to shake it up and make it surprising and interesting but this was just a bad idea for a challenge anyways the next major challenge was marbles which was again identical to the show they had players pair up and they had to come up with a game within 5 minutes using marbles in the show this was a really emotional challenge because players teamed up with people they trusted so having to play against these people that they actually liked was really difficult knowing that they would die if they won so in the reality show to replicate that they gave the players a picnic and told them to f up only to reveal that those would be the people they would be playing against but it's still not great so the big issue here is that because there are so many people in this show it is difficult to keep track of all the emotional through lines and relationships and for the most part the show doesn't even try to establish these relationships so we see these people getting really emotional about potentially losing their friends they're crying they're hugging and we're supposed to see this as a really big emotional climax it's supposed to be a devastating Revelation that these players have to face off against each other but as a viewer the whole time you're watching it's like who are you again have you always been here and why is this sad it's crazy because they have them talk in confessionals about how emotional and meaningful the connections they've made are but we don't really get to see it we're just watching them talk about how close they are to these people there's no real emotional through line I don't care about any of these people I'm not devastated that she had to eliminate her friend because I never really see them build up that relationship so these moments just fall flat especially when we cut to players where this is the first episode where they've had any major screen time I don't know who these people are I don't feel sad about this the does try to follow a few major characters and we'll get to that in a minute but for the vast majority of people we're seeing here we have little to no context about any of these relationships and that makes it really hard to care or root for anybody so this was just a really bad implementation of this challenge the next major challenge was the glass bridge challenge so this challenge was also in the original and to introduce the twist they had players randomly choose the order in which other players would walk across the glass Bridge essentially there are two options if a player walks on the wrong glass it opens up and eliminates them my favorite part about this is that there's this guy TJ who kind of always puts himself in a leadership role and that annoys some of the other players and so when this player gets to choose who she wants to give number one to which again is the singularly worst number to get in this game because it's essentially a game of chance so the first player to cross the bridge would definitely get eliminated she gives it to TJ and her explanation is because she thinks he's a good leader and he can lead them across the bridge and it's like just say you want to get the man eliminated if you think he's a good leader number one is the worst number to give him anyways when they start playing the game they come up with an idea to have each player overtake the next so instead of one player trying to cross the bridge at a time each player would have to make a 50/50 call which significantly increases the chances of the players with lower numbers getting across a lot of players did not love this idea not everyone seemed to agree with it there are some who thought it would be better if everybody played their own game instead of trying to work together which I get they did eventually do it though and a lot of players were able to move on to the next round because of it but TJ was still number one so he got eliminated I wonder if she celebrated in her head but it's fine anyways cuz she also gets eliminated later on the funniest Revelation about this is that they had stunt doubles due the Falls like the players aren't actually falling through the glass I just thought that was hilarious final challenge which is the challenge they used to decide the winner of over $4 million was a game of rock paper scissors yeah that's it it's almost insulting that they would even let this be the last challenge like they completely gave up and ran out of kids game by the last challenge even in a game of rock paper scissors there's ways you could make it more of a challenge or at least more visually interesting but no this was all we got which was just crazy to have to sit through it was so boring and so anticlimactic at this point who cares who won in the original the final challenge was squid game which is a Korean childhood game so either Netflix thought the game would be too difficult for players to understand how to play or they thought the game was just too dangerous to play because it's a pretty physical game but this was just the laziest substitution they could think of so in addition to the main challenges the show also had players do tests in between challenges to add a little bit more surprise and drama into the mix and they are some of the worst least imaginative tests you could think of these dormatory tests really highlight me that Netflix is probably just bad at making up games and challenges because any game that they did not directly adapt from the original squid game was so boring and seemingly just a random way for them to eliminate more players the first test happened after red light green light and they basically just offer two random players the opportunity to either eliminate another player or give another player an advantage in the next challenge that's it so they decided to eliminate a player and he just lost they kicked him out of the game because these two players said so and I think again this just highlights how Netflix really does not understand the point of the games in the original show hell in the original when some of the guards were caught cheating and giving a player an advantage in the game the head game maker literally killed them and strung them up to make an example out of them he literally went on a whole speech about how the games are supposed to be these great equalizers and everyone should have the same chance as everyone else they tainted the pure and fair ideology everything here has been built upon each and every one of you is considered an equal within the walls of this facility you must be guaranteed the same opportunities without being disadvantage or facing any kind of discrimination and yeah it's a load of crap but is it too much to ask that the games that they make at least uphold those values so Netflix introducing these tests where other players can just randomly get whoever they don't like eliminated completely undermines the whole point and they kept doing this the other test had players literally forming a line and punching in numbers into a kead to eliminate other players they had players play Jack in the Box where after turning the Box they might get an advantage in the game or be eliminated or you guessed it get the opportunity to eliminate any other player in the game one girl got the opportunity to eliminate three players which is just insane one of the tests was answering the phone with a chance that you might get eliminated I wonder who came up with that one and one of the worst tests that they had was to have players roll a dice and they can either nominate another player or themselves and if they roll a six that player gets eliminated it is just so unbelievably lazy and unimaginative and so boring to watch I felt like at a certain point it would have been more fun to have them just play duck duck goose to see who gets eliminated it is crazy to me that every single original idea that they had for this show was so lame that they couldn't come up with an interesting challenge to save their life I will say that some of the tests did create some interesting Dynamics and drama among the players because the test often times boils down to vote out whoever you don't like it created a scenario where alliances became extremely important and forming bonds among players was imperative to increase the chances of survival but the thing is this is not a team game I think these tests would work better for other games but in a challenge where only one person can win what's the point I do think this part was funny though oh my God I don't remember if it's 30 or2 or 302 I just want to make sure it's the same I think I got it now either is it the characters so like I said before one of the biggest challenges of this entire show was establishing a narrative through line because there were so many players it would be impossible to Spotlight or follow all of them but I still think Netflix did a Terri able job choosing which players to follow also one thing I thought was funny is that if a player didn't make it through Red Light Green Light they didn't even get their pictures taken or made it to the dormatory which I just thought was hilarious so what's interesting to me about the way in which they shot and edited these episodes is that they obviously know who the winner and finalists are by the time they're working on these but we never really spend any significant amount of time with any of these players by the time we reach the final episode these are our three finalist and I kid you not I don't think we've ever heard this guy speak until like episode 7 which is insane because again the editors knew he'd be a finalist when they started editing the show so why are we only now learning about these people even ma who probably has the most screen time out of all the other finalists we didn't really start seeing her on screen until around the fourth or fifth episode I think it's just such a weird way to edit this show together because it makes it really difficult for us as the audience to root for anybody because we don't know these people we spent the last three episodes watching 432 interviews how am I going to know who to root for and on the one hand I do like the idea of giving screen time to people who still get eliminated early on it just kind of Paints the idea that anyone could get eliminated at any moment and just because they're talking to the camera and get interviews doesn't mean they are going to last long in the game like stara she gave an interview in the very first episode about how badly she wants to win and a couple minutes later as soon as the game starts she gets eliminated so it does create that suspense but why not sprinkle in the people we know who are going to go all the way from the very beginning so we have a more coherent storyline to follow instead what they do is essentially have different stars for different episodes so for example episode one set up this Mother's Son Duo who entered the competition together and we continue to follow their story line throughout the show there's also this guy Brandon who gets featured very prominently in the first batch of episodes because he he's a bit abrasive and Brash but he's out pretty early on I definitely think some of his screen time could have gone to this guy just so it doesn't feel so underwhelming going into the finale but that's not what we got so oh well authenticity so one of the big talking points about this series is how authentic was it were the games rigged were aspects of it scripted were the players told to act a certain way based on player accounts it does seem like it was an authentic experience and that everything that was presented to us including the results in the challenges were real I was a bit skeptical only because there seemed like there was some moments in the show that seemed to mirror the scripted show like this guy forming a bond with the older man Rick or Lorenzo going back and getting extra food it made me wonder if they were told to act a certain way so it seemed as close to the original as possible but I guess those were just coincidences brought on by the environment they were in so there's that exploitation so at this this point it's probably dawned on you that Netflix creating a reality show about a Korean drama that critiques the entire institution that enables them to even mink this show is pretty ironic so how does Netflix as a company reconcile this idea and justify subjecting real people to these exploits where in the original show they would firmly be the bad guys well their answer to that is to Simply downplay the significance of those critiques in the first place of course in retrospect Netflix has to say that the capitalism critique was only a small part of the show the show was actually about playing kids games because it's the only way they can justify the existence of this reality show but the thing about this is the reality show so badly wants to mimic the success of the original that in trying to make the experience as identical as possible they stray so far from what even made the original entertaining to watch and I think the biggest example of this is that when you watch the reality show version It's So abundantly clear that the players there are participating for very different reasons in the original scripted show all the players were in crippling debt the show was not being broadcasted to millions of people and so the only benefit they would gain from participating in these dangerous games is the chance to be free of their debts and live a life of luxury the whole point of the original was that these people's lives were so terrible that even the possibility of facing a horrible death seemed like a better deal than living their lives the way it is now I mean the second episode of the series is titled hell and that episode takes place in the real world so when we cut to these games and we're seeing all of these people who very clearly don't need the money and by that I mean this is none a life ore situation for a lot of them at least not the ones that are heavily followed some of them already had pretty significant social media followings before even being a part of the show and you can tell that for a lot of them especially for the younger ones being a part of this experience was most so about the exposure it would give them from being a part of a Netflix reality show than winning millions of dollars and sure anyone would have loved to have won Millions of dollars but it's very clear that that was not the main motivator for a lot of them and so it creates this really weird atmosphere where so many of the players are playing for vastly different reasons with varying degrees of stakes and tonally it's just such a whiplash so we started the series with a player stara sharing with us why she even decided to participate in the competition and she talks earnestly about feeling this was an opportunity to really free herself from her financial struggle she talks about just wanting to know how it feels to own her own home and pay off her car and that's ju suppos with a bunch of 20-year-old ticktockers competing for shits and giggles and you're like well not only is this not like the original squid game which again is the main selling point of this reality show where we're just watching people being exploited for money as soon as we're introduced to sah she was eliminated so us hearing her story was only to the benefit of Netflix she left that competition having earned nothing in the same position she arrived there in and Netflix was able to make millions of dollars off of her image and story and well that's just not a fun show to watch it's so clear that Netflix only included her interview in the show because it perfectly mirrors the reasons why players in the original even risked their lives to play those games to begin with they were desperate this was their last chance and in trying to recreate the most authentic experience to the original Netflix ended up making the games less about the lenss people would go through under capitalism to better their circumstances and more about people just really really wanted to be on TV and I think the reason that became the way it was is because of how they choose who to include in the competition so players were from many different countries but they were overwhelmingly American and most of the players were in their 20s and 30s and I don't think anything better sums up that discrepancy than this conversation here so in the marbles game these two players talk about why they want to win the competition and he talks about the fact that he's too old to work he wants to retire and also donate some of the money to charity and she says she wants to win because she's deaf and it would be good representation for her community well I mean you know I'm deaf for me it's about representation I want to make my community proud and I've never seen anyone ever that represented me one wants to win the money to retire and one just wants to win cuz it would be good representation for their underrepresented community and I don't think any reason is less value than the other and I do think on a certain level they were both kind of virtue signaling I'm sure even the 20-year-olds wouldn't mind winning millions of dollars but it's just so obvious that not all of these players are here for the same reason and that's what makes this show weird because in other Netflix reality shows contestants are around the same age to make it as Fair as possible but here that's not the case and I can't help but think that the younger players who are better able to capitalize on the experience walk away with so much more than the older players because a lot of them have made Tik toks and Instagram accounts even having their numbers and their bios but for the older people they just got exploited and can't get anything back from that and also because of that I think some players were motivated to kind of act out of character for the chance of getting featured more heavily in the show I mean some have even said that they were told to be as dramatic as possible when they got eliminated for a better chance of being featured so it feels like instead of we're watching people trying to compete for money which again is terrible under any circumstances we're watching people compete for greater chance of being heavily featured in a reality show which again is still really weird this show should have never been made especially since people got hurt the lawsuit so Netflix got threatened with a lawsuit remember at the beginning when I talked about Red Light Green Light well apparently what Netflix didn't show us was that some players passed out during that challenge they were filming in January during winter in London and so a lot of players recount how cold it was and how that was the most difficult part of the entire experience for them it was reported that some players passed out due to hypothermia and some even suffering nerve damage why was this show made players said that in the consent form that they had to S off to participate in the game it explicitly mentions playing in cold temperatures I think the waiver form might be the only real defense Netflix has but it's crazy that this even happened so what should we take away from this Netflix should have never made this show and they definitely should not make another season the thing is if you even look past all the exploitive stuff squid game The Challenge isn't even a good reality show there were way too many players too many to even care about that by the time we get to the finale it's confusing who to even root for the games that they created for the show are also just bad lazy and unimaginative there are moments where the show is entertaining but generally I just think this premise is a bad idea for for a game show they did such a bad job creating new challenges for the series I don't think this is a show that could go on for years and years the only way I think the show could even work is if the original scripted show keeps making New Seasons with new challenges but even then I didn't think the original squid game needed a second season and as sure as hell don't think this one needs another season either how long before they complete the r of kids games to have these people play so yeah this should have never been a thing and the craziest part about this is that the creator of the original squid game worked closely with Netflix to make this reality show the same man who created a show wherein the major critique was how exploitive capitalism was in a world where the rich would subject people to these inhuman conditions helped a multi-billion dollar company do the same thing to real people I'm just so curious how he's able to reconcile that within himself that he helped to do that exploiting he critiqued in his show the truth is people shouldn't have to endure this kind of abuse just for the small chance of winning money and I hope this is the last we ever see of the show oh God anyways that's it let me know your thoughts be sure to like comment and subscribe I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Tronn

Views: 30,847

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Id: 40RnSQ7eA4k

Length: 30min 6sec (1806 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023