Reality is Always Darker…

Yeah, I watched Squid Game.

But as much as I want to think about the ending, all the weird plot twists, me diving into all of the weird YouTube breakdowns, I’ve sat mainly with the objective of the show itself: how grotesque and despicable late-stage capitalism will be and what it already has become.

Even from the outset, the premise of playing a deadly game for the sake of winning money, only after falling into life-trapping debt, is an all-too-obvious reflection of society. I’ve been stuck at home and in limbo about a lot, trying to figure out what to do with all of this time on my own. Part of me is asking myself whether the show was so enthralling because of the isolation I’ve been in, or perhaps it was that great. But I think that irrespective of what the answer to that question may be, what I believe is clear is that the show only briefly attempts to capture the conditions of society.

For much of my time watching the show, it felt as though for as much spectacle and horror-inducing the show was, it still never felt like it could capture what the real world is. Similar to how I feel when watching horror films, it’s hard for me to get terrified or disturbed at something on-screen when I know that the real world is so, so much darker. The premise of the game itself does not at all seem like a far-fetched idea in the future (heck even in the…