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It’s a little odd to me how much media attention these shows are getting, yet how little debt, more specifically usurious interest rates that lead to inescapabl

It’s a little odd to me how much media attention these shows are getting, yet how little debt, more specifically usurious interest rates that lead to inescapable debt, as a general factor of modern life is discussed. I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on. But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company.

logicchains 2y ago
Criticism of usury is a sensitive subject because it has in past unfortunately been associated with extreme racism.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
robertlagrant 2y ago
Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. And if you disagree that they were all very left wing: college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! So either side will happily highlight that, although perhaps only one will suggest why that is.
- defrost 2y ago
  So extremely of the left they made the Wobblies look right wing! /s https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-world/ https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-wor...
- __alexs 2y ago
  Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." They are just boring old neoliberals.
  - rgrieselhuber 2y ago
    Fabian socialism is all about wearing a neoliberal mask.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." I don't see the need for this sort of poor attitude in phrasing. I have some idea about left wing politics, and also have seen a lot of very left-leaning policies enforced at social media companies and other related companies. You might say some people are neoliberal, or being very left wing (or perhaps "progressive") between 2010-2020 was just the most money-making stance for a neoliberal, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant.
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      Why don't you actually firm up your original claim with examples, because as stated large numbers of people disagree with it for good reason, and it's not clear what you mean by 'left wing'.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I think the other commenter is right in calling them neoliberal, not left wing. An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility…but I don’t want to veer into that debate here. To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.
  - maeil 2y ago
    > An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility There have been many, and still are, under the most common definitions of left-wing. Of course you'll find zero of them on the NASDAQ. That indeed is a modern-day impossibility.
    - InitialLastName 2y ago
      To put a finer point on it: Instruments that exist to enable the owner class to buy and sell control of the means of production are incompatible with systems that don't distribute control of the means of production to an owner class.
      - maeil 2y ago
        I'd very much count employee-owned businesses as corporations. In certain jurisdictions they may or may not meet the legal definition of a corporation but that feels like semantics.
        InitialLastName 2y ago
        Employee-owned businesses are certainly a coherent left-wing concept. On the other hand, NASDAQ is an organization built around exchanging money for ownership of businesses, which tends to concentrate ownership in the non-employee direction.
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
- netdevphoenix 2y ago
  That's such an American thing to say. Tech companies are better described as neoliberal
- Matl 2y ago
  They're liberal on cultural issues, because it's an easy marketing win, (or at least was), they're not interested in any left-wing ideas that would give greater ownership of these companies to their employees for example. > college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.
  - ecocentrik 2y ago
    Some tech companies have been liberal on cultural issues in the past for promotional and branding reasons, like you suggest. Some, more recently, have promoted conservative talking points and ideas for the same reason. Those political positions and policies should not be seen as anything other than profit seeking and are almost completely disconnected from any ideological positions held by the leadership of those companies. If pretending to be MAGA creates engagement, they will all be MAGA.
- powerhugs 2y ago
  > Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure. Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that. In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - StefanBatory 2y ago
    ... and if companies support, for example, LGBT rights (not that it should be political or left-wing, but here we are in such times...) - because ultimately it profits them. If you compete for engineers or skilled workers in a place where there are no LGBT rights, they will go somewhere else if it can be helped if they're LGBT, most likely. Or even if not, still may apply. Works the same for other things too ;) Not that it's a necessarily bad thing (invisible hand of market of Smith goes as an example), but it's a thing.
- kaoD 2y ago
  America's corporate seemingly managed to convince y'all that identity politics are "left". First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all). Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded). The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why? By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites. And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics. Stop playing their game.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    > First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. Identity politics, at least as I've seen them over and over again, look at identifying an individual's struggles / privileges / speech rules / etc through their membership of groups, not their individual struggles or advantages.
    - kaoD 2y ago
      Yes, groups so fragmented they consist of exactly one individual in your state. You might be gay, but are you gay-hispanic like me? Then we're not in the same overlap of the intersectionality Venn diagram. Sorry. Have you considered why the pride flag (a rainbow, metaphor for inclusion of all "colors", has no need for extensions) now has so many additional flags superimposed on it? Wikipedia's "List of gender identities" has dropdowns for letters of the alphabet (and growing). None of this is accidental.
- tivert 2y ago
  > Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. No. They have their own thing going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology. > During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs together based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. No, none of the big for profit, often venture-capital funded or publicly traded, firms in the tech industry have been advocates for any of the pro-labor and anti-capitalist ideologies that define the left. Being (often only performatively) on the Democratic side of some of the culture war issues between the centrist Democratic Party and the hard-right Republican Party while spending lots of money to keep the Democratic Party strongly committed to corporate capitalism doesn't make them even slightly left-leaning.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    Of course it does. "Left" describes more than economics. You might say, that makes left-right a bad range, and you'd be right at that point, but I think it's pretty obvious what aspects of left/rightism I meant.
0xEF 2y ago
I'm in your camp. Media like Squid Game annoy me to no end because they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual, rather than circumstance. And this, the system that continues to create student loans debt, housing debt, etc, goes relatively unacknowledged for another day. As a result, I have trouble having any sympathy for characters portrayed in stuff like Squid Game. They brought it on themselves through their own greed, right? That is what we are supposed to think, I suppose. The show touches only mildly on why Player 456 needs to gamble on horses, showing that his mother is sick and that he is rather destitute after a failed marriage and being laid off, presumably unable to find different work. We're supposed to empathize with that position, but it certainly does not reflect my own debt struggle, nor that of anyone who is suffering the same fate I am which is driven by a lending system that turns us into indentured servants. I don't gamble or take any real financial risks. I just made the mistake of being born with a lifelong medical condition, trying to buy a house and a decent car, and put my kid through college, and I suddenly find myself in a very deep hole with zero chance of escaping before I die. Of course, on screen, that's not as sexy as debt from crime and gambling.
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  You're annoyed that a Korean show isn't about your American problems? Good grief.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Korea has the problem even worse.
  - 0xEF 2y ago
    The wealth gap and the exploitation of the lower class is a highly visible global problem. I'm a bit blown away that your take just assumes my position on that is US-centric.
- nunez 2y ago
  One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into debt because of a failed business venture, and several of them are there because of medical debt caused by others in their families.
ralfd 2y ago
Do Korea or Japan even have student loans or medical debt? I think you are confusing these US specific phenomenons with global ones.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Not sure it really matters that much. Squid Game is a global phenomenon and even though it’s ostensibly a Korean series, it’s pretty clearly funded by the very American corporation Netflix.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    Netflix might be American, but making Koreans have specifically American problems would ruin the suspension of disbelief.
  - slightwinder 2y ago
    Netflix is specifically buying local productions. Changing them on fundamental levels just to cater some us-viewer seems pointless.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      That is true in some cases, but not Squid Game, which was specially produced by Netflix.
      - slightwinder 2y ago
        Which is what I meant. They look for promising projects in other countries and finance them partly or even buy them as a whole. But those projects usually already existed before Netflix came in, meaning they are not specifically designed for Netflix and the US-market. Squid Game for example was written 10 years before Netflix started financing them. And this is even more obvious when they finance sequels to old series which were already running decades ago.
        2y ago
piltdownman 2y ago
"But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company." You've never heard of Breaking Bad? More recently, Emily the Criminal is an absolutely superb movie and great example of exactly this - Aubrey Plaza's best role in fact. ""Saddled with student debt and unable to find work, a college graduate becomes involved in a credit card scam, acting as a dummy shopper and buying increasingly risky products with stolen credit cards."" For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance. ""Set in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, it revolves around a man who struggles to make the payments on a heart he has purchased.""
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > You've never heard of Breaking Bad? Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay. It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.
  - tarentel 2y ago
    It's been a while since I watched it and I'm pretty sure he wasn't in debt but I thought the reason he decided to do it was to help pay for the treatment so he didn't go in debt and to leave a nest egg behind for his family when he died. It may not be exactly what the OP stated but it's a pretty similar situation.
    - azemetre 2y ago
      That’s the reason he states but he was given multiple opportunities and chances to have his medical care covered for but opted for continually selling drugs instead. Every goal he wanted (getting enough money to pay for college for his children, paying living expenses for a decade, etc) he met and still continued. He even says so in the last episode, he did it because it made him feel alive.
afavour 2y ago
> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company. I think my take on that is even more cynical: they'd be absolutely happy to make a story along those lines as long as they could monetize it successfully. I thought the first season of Squid Game was wonderful and it depressed me to no end to see how thoroughly the whole thing was monetized. I get it, it's the way of the world, but seeing Netflix commission a "real life" game show, kids in Squid Game outfits at Halloween, the fact that the second season largely exists because the creator was financially screwed out of the first... I don't think it's possible to make a broader argument about any of this stuff without the distributors immediately undermining it.
- crtasm 2y ago
  > the creator was financially screwed out of the first. I wasn't aware of that until watching this recently: The Capitalist Body Horror of Squid Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4
NoboruWataya 2y ago
> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company. I don't really get this point (which I often see repeated online). There are tons of TV shows, books, movies, songs, etc, which include scathing critiques of various aspects of "the system" (government, the financial sector, the medical sector, the class system generally, etc). Many of these are produced and promoted by "big business". There is no centralised control over what gets funded, businesses will fund and produce what is likely to make them money. If shitting on capitalism will make them money they'll happily sell you that.
- anigbrowl 2y ago
  Fringey political theorists like the Situationists have a concept called recuperation which suggests that capitalism doesn't just do these things to make money, but to perpetuate itself by giving people a safe method of blowing off steam, much like the 'bread and circuses' idea of Roman imperial governance. You could argue that the second season of Squid Game is specifically about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
banannaise 2y ago
> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions It's depressing that we're still stuck framing gambling as "irresponsible decisions" as online gambling becomes more and more ubiquitous and deliberately drives addiction.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  Offline gambling also deliberately drives addiction, and has for much longer.
  - banannaise 2y ago
    Yes, but that's why we find it important to limit the number of places you can access it. There's a reason nearly every state in the US restricts offline gambling to specific gambling houses (if even that) and nowhere else.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on. Student loan and medical debt don't have the kind of ticking clock that the issues in Squid Game (whether its payments on debt to gangsters, anticipated costs without which a loved on won’t get medical care, or whatever) have.
satvikpendem 2y ago
Why is that odd? People like to watch shows about a topic but don't necessarily want to take action in the real world about issues depicted therein.
ttoinou 2y ago
Student loans isnt much different than gambling though, except it’s socially accepted and higher education isn’t seen as the scam it really is
wanderingmoose 2y ago
Debt is a common trope in Korean shows and establishes the characters are destitute and answers why they would become contestants in this show. Then the show creator has the set up that allows them to start poking at class hierarchy. In asking for a critique of debt in general, you are asking for a different show. Squid Games is gets a lot of attention from the games and mass deaths of the contestants, but ultimately it is a Korean show using a different "language of film" than international audiences might be used to. Think of how silly a lot of hollywood tropes are if you stand back and look. Try "My Mister" if you want a different take on a destitute character.
- fennecfoxy 2y ago
  Reborn rich
diob 2y ago
This is kind of why I can't watch Squid Game. I just can't convince myself to watch it since it's probably going to be depressing.
bpodgursky 2y ago
Squid Game actually only makes sense in the context of Korea which doesn't have robust bankruptcy laws like the US. Student loans are the exception, everything you could just walk away from in the US.
- butlike 2y ago
  You can't walk away without repercussion, through, and from my understanding it becomes very difficult to attempt to collect the things you walked away from again. E.g. no one will give you a loan to start a business after declaring bankruptcy.
  - bpodgursky 2y ago
    Sure (for 7 years IIRC). But that's hardly a blocker to a dignified life.
    - anigbrowl 2y ago
      I think you should talk to more homeless people.
kkukshtel 2y ago
I think a pretty salient line from an organizer of the games in ep 2 of the new season is "the games won't end unless the world changes." The show doesn't really interrogate that beyond that point, but if anything honestly points to a future where something like it is real - except it will be televised and everyone will watch and it won't be secret.
hedora 2y ago
For such things to be plausibly popular, the contestants cannot elicit sympathy in the (fictional) audience: “It’s their fault they are in debt, but not my fault I am in debt.” For the same reason (wanting someone to look down on) the one group that reliably votes against minimum wage bumps is the group whose pay is below the new minimum wage, but above the old minimum wage.
deadbabe 2y ago
That doesn’t work though. The people in the games are there because they are gambler types on some level. A person with student loan or credit card debts wouldn’t be a very interesting player, a person with medical debt might not even care about paying back their medical debt enough to risk their life. These people want to make a fortune to pay off their debt and live lavishly.
ericmcer 2y ago
I love this take, and it is something that can be seen in real life as well. It is particularly apparent on a show like "Alone" where people try to survive in the wilderness for $500k. Most of the contestants are professional survivalists who need the money to get their own land to build and farm on. I love watching it for the survival strategies and the human endurance aspects, but it does feel a bit dirty when they start talking about how badly they need the money as they try not to starve for a few more days.
KPGv2 2y ago
> credit cards with 25% interest rates This is actually illegal in South Korea > medical debt South Korea has a single-payer system > student loan debt I think this is much less of a problem in S Korea than in the US.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  Yeah, we really shouldn't ask a South Korean show to depict American problems
- tootie 2y ago
  South Korea ranks near the top in highest amounts of consumer debt. Significantly higher than the US.
  - KPGv2 2y ago
    I did't say anything about consumer debt, did I? And I didn't respond to someone talking about it, did I?
- stavros 2y ago
  This is the answer, you're expecting a South Korean show to depict US problems, because culture is invisible if you're in it. These problems don't exist in many countries (e.g. here in Greece we have free education and healthcare, so you can't have student loans or medical debt).
asdasdsddd 2y ago
The shows are made for the average person and the average person doesn't understand the insidious effects of interest
low_tech_love 2y ago
Not all the characters in season 1 had debt problems; the main girl for example wanted to bring her family from the north. Also have you seen Parasite by any chance? I think you’re wrong, anything can be used for making money. I don’t think any major studio would refrain from funding anything if they felt it would profit.
Neonlicht 2y ago
My country tried student debt. The experiment was ended after a few years. As many things American politics it should stay on that side of the Atlantic. Turns out saddling young people up with 50k debt for a mediocre degree is rather demoralising.

logicchains 2y ago

Criticism of usury is a sensitive subject because it has in past unfortunately been associated with extreme racism.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

robertlagrant 2y ago

Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. And if you disagree that they were all very left wing: college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! So either side will happily highlight that, although perhaps only one will suggest why that is.

defrost 2y ago
So extremely of the left they made the Wobblies look right wing! /s https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-world/ https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745399591/wobblies-of-the-wor...
__alexs 2y ago
Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." They are just boring old neoliberals.
- rgrieselhuber 2y ago
  Fabian socialism is all about wearing a neoliberal mask.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." I don't see the need for this sort of poor attitude in phrasing. I have some idea about left wing politics, and also have seen a lot of very left-leaning policies enforced at social media companies and other related companies. You might say some people are neoliberal, or being very left wing (or perhaps "progressive") between 2010-2020 was just the most money-making stance for a neoliberal, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    Why don't you actually firm up your original claim with examples, because as stated large numbers of people disagree with it for good reason, and it's not clear what you mean by 'left wing'.
keiferski 2y ago
I think the other commenter is right in calling them neoliberal, not left wing. An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility…but I don’t want to veer into that debate here. To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.
- maeil 2y ago
  > An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility There have been many, and still are, under the most common definitions of left-wing. Of course you'll find zero of them on the NASDAQ. That indeed is a modern-day impossibility.
  - InitialLastName 2y ago
    To put a finer point on it: Instruments that exist to enable the owner class to buy and sell control of the means of production are incompatible with systems that don't distribute control of the means of production to an owner class.
    - maeil 2y ago
      I'd very much count employee-owned businesses as corporations. In certain jurisdictions they may or may not meet the legal definition of a corporation but that feels like semantics.
      - InitialLastName 2y ago
        Employee-owned businesses are certainly a coherent left-wing concept. On the other hand, NASDAQ is an organization built around exchanging money for ownership of businesses, which tends to concentrate ownership in the non-employee direction.
- StefanBatory 2y ago
netdevphoenix 2y ago
That's such an American thing to say. Tech companies are better described as neoliberal
Matl 2y ago
They're liberal on cultural issues, because it's an easy marketing win, (or at least was), they're not interested in any left-wing ideas that would give greater ownership of these companies to their employees for example. > college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.
- ecocentrik 2y ago
  Some tech companies have been liberal on cultural issues in the past for promotional and branding reasons, like you suggest. Some, more recently, have promoted conservative talking points and ideas for the same reason. Those political positions and policies should not be seen as anything other than profit seeking and are almost completely disconnected from any ideological positions held by the leadership of those companies. If pretending to be MAGA creates engagement, they will all be MAGA.
powerhugs 2y ago
> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure. Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that. In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  [flagged]
- StefanBatory 2y ago
  ... and if companies support, for example, LGBT rights (not that it should be political or left-wing, but here we are in such times...) - because ultimately it profits them. If you compete for engineers or skilled workers in a place where there are no LGBT rights, they will go somewhere else if it can be helped if they're LGBT, most likely. Or even if not, still may apply. Works the same for other things too ;) Not that it's a necessarily bad thing (invisible hand of market of Smith goes as an example), but it's a thing.
kaoD 2y ago
America's corporate seemingly managed to convince y'all that identity politics are "left". First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all). Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded). The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why? By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites. And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics. Stop playing their game.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. Identity politics, at least as I've seen them over and over again, look at identifying an individual's struggles / privileges / speech rules / etc through their membership of groups, not their individual struggles or advantages.
  - kaoD 2y ago
    Yes, groups so fragmented they consist of exactly one individual in your state. You might be gay, but are you gay-hispanic like me? Then we're not in the same overlap of the intersectionality Venn diagram. Sorry. Have you considered why the pride flag (a rainbow, metaphor for inclusion of all "colors", has no need for extensions) now has so many additional flags superimposed on it? Wikipedia's "List of gender identities" has dropdowns for letters of the alphabet (and growing). None of this is accidental.
tivert 2y ago
> Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. No. They have their own thing going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology. > During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs together based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning. No, none of the big for profit, often venture-capital funded or publicly traded, firms in the tech industry have been advocates for any of the pro-labor and anti-capitalist ideologies that define the left. Being (often only performatively) on the Democratic side of some of the culture war issues between the centrist Democratic Party and the hard-right Republican Party while spending lots of money to keep the Democratic Party strongly committed to corporate capitalism doesn't make them even slightly left-leaning.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Of course it does. "Left" describes more than economics. You might say, that makes left-right a bad range, and you'd be right at that point, but I think it's pretty obvious what aspects of left/rightism I meant.

0xEF 2y ago

I'm in your camp. Media like Squid Game annoy me to no end because they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual, rather than circumstance. And this, the system that continues to create student loans debt, housing debt, etc, goes relatively unacknowledged for another day. As a result, I have trouble having any sympathy for characters portrayed in stuff like Squid Game. They brought it on themselves through their own greed, right? That is what we are supposed to think, I suppose. The show touches only mildly on why Player 456 needs to gamble on horses, showing that his mother is sick and that he is rather destitute after a failed marriage and being laid off, presumably unable to find different work. We're supposed to empathize with that position, but it certainly does not reflect my own debt struggle, nor that of anyone who is suffering the same fate I am which is driven by a lending system that turns us into indentured servants. I don't gamble or take any real financial risks. I just made the mistake of being born with a lifelong medical condition, trying to buy a house and a decent car, and put my kid through college, and I suddenly find myself in a very deep hole with zero chance of escaping before I die. Of course, on screen, that's not as sexy as debt from crime and gambling.

bongodongobob 2y ago
You're annoyed that a Korean show isn't about your American problems? Good grief.
- immibis 2y ago
  Korea has the problem even worse.
- 0xEF 2y ago
  The wealth gap and the exploitation of the lower class is a highly visible global problem. I'm a bit blown away that your take just assumes my position on that is US-centric.
nunez 2y ago
One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into debt because of a failed business venture, and several of them are there because of medical debt caused by others in their families.

ralfd 2y ago

Do Korea or Japan even have student loans or medical debt? I think you are confusing these US specific phenomenons with global ones.

keiferski 2y ago
Not sure it really matters that much. Squid Game is a global phenomenon and even though it’s ostensibly a Korean series, it’s pretty clearly funded by the very American corporation Netflix.
- Tade0 2y ago
  Netflix might be American, but making Koreans have specifically American problems would ruin the suspension of disbelief.
- slightwinder 2y ago
  Netflix is specifically buying local productions. Changing them on fundamental levels just to cater some us-viewer seems pointless.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    That is true in some cases, but not Squid Game, which was specially produced by Netflix.
    - slightwinder 2y ago
      Which is what I meant. They look for promising projects in other countries and finance them partly or even buy them as a whole. But those projects usually already existed before Netflix came in, meaning they are not specifically designed for Netflix and the US-market. Squid Game for example was written 10 years before Netflix started financing them. And this is even more obvious when they finance sequels to old series which were already running decades ago.
      - 2y ago

piltdownman 2y ago

"But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company." You've never heard of Breaking Bad? More recently, Emily the Criminal is an absolutely superb movie and great example of exactly this - Aubrey Plaza's best role in fact. ""Saddled with student debt and unable to find work, a college graduate becomes involved in a credit card scam, acting as a dummy shopper and buying increasingly risky products with stolen credit cards."" For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance. ""Set in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, it revolves around a man who struggles to make the payments on a heart he has purchased.""

dragonwriter 2y ago
> You've never heard of Breaking Bad? Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay. It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.
- tarentel 2y ago
  It's been a while since I watched it and I'm pretty sure he wasn't in debt but I thought the reason he decided to do it was to help pay for the treatment so he didn't go in debt and to leave a nest egg behind for his family when he died. It may not be exactly what the OP stated but it's a pretty similar situation.
  - azemetre 2y ago
    That’s the reason he states but he was given multiple opportunities and chances to have his medical care covered for but opted for continually selling drugs instead. Every goal he wanted (getting enough money to pay for college for his children, paying living expenses for a decade, etc) he met and still continued. He even says so in the last episode, he did it because it made him feel alive.

afavour 2y ago

> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company. I think my take on that is even more cynical: they'd be absolutely happy to make a story along those lines as long as they could monetize it successfully. I thought the first season of Squid Game was wonderful and it depressed me to no end to see how thoroughly the whole thing was monetized. I get it, it's the way of the world, but seeing Netflix commission a "real life" game show, kids in Squid Game outfits at Halloween, the fact that the second season largely exists because the creator was financially screwed out of the first... I don't think it's possible to make a broader argument about any of this stuff without the distributors immediately undermining it.

crtasm 2y ago
> the creator was financially screwed out of the first. I wasn't aware of that until watching this recently: The Capitalist Body Horror of Squid Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4

NoboruWataya 2y ago

> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company. I don't really get this point (which I often see repeated online). There are tons of TV shows, books, movies, songs, etc, which include scathing critiques of various aspects of "the system" (government, the financial sector, the medical sector, the class system generally, etc). Many of these are produced and promoted by "big business". There is no centralised control over what gets funded, businesses will fund and produce what is likely to make them money. If shitting on capitalism will make them money they'll happily sell you that.

anigbrowl 2y ago
Fringey political theorists like the Situationists have a concept called recuperation which suggests that capitalism doesn't just do these things to make money, but to perpetuate itself by giving people a safe method of blowing off steam, much like the 'bread and circuses' idea of Roman imperial governance. You could argue that the second season of Squid Game is specifically about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

banannaise 2y ago

> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions It's depressing that we're still stuck framing gambling as "irresponsible decisions" as online gambling becomes more and more ubiquitous and deliberately drives addiction.

dragonwriter 2y ago
Offline gambling also deliberately drives addiction, and has for much longer.
- banannaise 2y ago
  Yes, but that's why we find it important to limit the number of places you can access it. There's a reason nearly every state in the US restricts offline gambling to specific gambling houses (if even that) and nowhere else.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on. Student loan and medical debt don't have the kind of ticking clock that the issues in Squid Game (whether its payments on debt to gangsters, anticipated costs without which a loved on won’t get medical care, or whatever) have.

satvikpendem 2y ago

Why is that odd? People like to watch shows about a topic but don't necessarily want to take action in the real world about issues depicted therein.

ttoinou 2y ago

Student loans isnt much different than gambling though, except it’s socially accepted and higher education isn’t seen as the scam it really is

wanderingmoose 2y ago

Debt is a common trope in Korean shows and establishes the characters are destitute and answers why they would become contestants in this show. Then the show creator has the set up that allows them to start poking at class hierarchy. In asking for a critique of debt in general, you are asking for a different show. Squid Games is gets a lot of attention from the games and mass deaths of the contestants, but ultimately it is a Korean show using a different "language of film" than international audiences might be used to. Think of how silly a lot of hollywood tropes are if you stand back and look. Try "My Mister" if you want a different take on a destitute character.

fennecfoxy 2y ago
Reborn rich

diob 2y ago

This is kind of why I can't watch Squid Game. I just can't convince myself to watch it since it's probably going to be depressing.

bpodgursky 2y ago

Squid Game actually only makes sense in the context of Korea which doesn't have robust bankruptcy laws like the US. Student loans are the exception, everything you could just walk away from in the US.

butlike 2y ago
You can't walk away without repercussion, through, and from my understanding it becomes very difficult to attempt to collect the things you walked away from again. E.g. no one will give you a loan to start a business after declaring bankruptcy.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Sure (for 7 years IIRC). But that's hardly a blocker to a dignified life.
  - anigbrowl 2y ago
    I think you should talk to more homeless people.

kkukshtel 2y ago

I think a pretty salient line from an organizer of the games in ep 2 of the new season is "the games won't end unless the world changes." The show doesn't really interrogate that beyond that point, but if anything honestly points to a future where something like it is real - except it will be televised and everyone will watch and it won't be secret.

hedora 2y ago

For such things to be plausibly popular, the contestants cannot elicit sympathy in the (fictional) audience: “It’s their fault they are in debt, but not my fault I am in debt.” For the same reason (wanting someone to look down on) the one group that reliably votes against minimum wage bumps is the group whose pay is below the new minimum wage, but above the old minimum wage.

deadbabe 2y ago

That doesn’t work though. The people in the games are there because they are gambler types on some level. A person with student loan or credit card debts wouldn’t be a very interesting player, a person with medical debt might not even care about paying back their medical debt enough to risk their life. These people want to make a fortune to pay off their debt and live lavishly.

ericmcer 2y ago

I love this take, and it is something that can be seen in real life as well. It is particularly apparent on a show like "Alone" where people try to survive in the wilderness for $500k. Most of the contestants are professional survivalists who need the money to get their own land to build and farm on. I love watching it for the survival strategies and the human endurance aspects, but it does feel a bit dirty when they start talking about how badly they need the money as they try not to starve for a few more days.

KPGv2 2y ago

> credit cards with 25% interest rates This is actually illegal in South Korea > medical debt South Korea has a single-payer system > student loan debt I think this is much less of a problem in S Korea than in the US.

wongarsu 2y ago
Yeah, we really shouldn't ask a South Korean show to depict American problems
tootie 2y ago
South Korea ranks near the top in highest amounts of consumer debt. Significantly higher than the US.
- KPGv2 2y ago
  I did't say anything about consumer debt, did I? And I didn't respond to someone talking about it, did I?
stavros 2y ago
This is the answer, you're expecting a South Korean show to depict US problems, because culture is invisible if you're in it. These problems don't exist in many countries (e.g. here in Greece we have free education and healthcare, so you can't have student loans or medical debt).

asdasdsddd 2y ago

The shows are made for the average person and the average person doesn't understand the insidious effects of interest

low_tech_love 2y ago

Not all the characters in season 1 had debt problems; the main girl for example wanted to bring her family from the north. Also have you seen Parasite by any chance? I think you’re wrong, anything can be used for making money. I don’t think any major studio would refrain from funding anything if they felt it would profit.

Neonlicht 2y ago

My country tried student debt. The experiment was ended after a few years. As many things American politics it should stay on that side of the Atlantic. Turns out saddling young people up with 50k debt for a mediocre degree is rather demoralising.