The squid games of real life.

[Phoebe]

No meaningful spoilers in what follows here, but the point is to relate it back to the squid game story.

I have come across a remarkable phenomenon that explains so much. I play this mindless cell phone game where you have to accumulate points in order to have more stuff in the game. Sometimes you compete against other players and sometimes you compete against the game itself, but other players decide whether you win.

I had to put my phone down for a moment so that I could drive and during the interval of driving I drove past a half of a watermelon just sitting there in the road perhaps very lightly partially eaten but still containing much of its melon contents.

Anyway, in this game it doesn't help you in any way when other players lose, it just hurts them so they can't do as much stuff in the game or can't do it as easily or whatever. In short the game is slightly less enjoyable every time you lose and it becomes slightly more enjoyable and pleasant every time you win.

So someone asked, why are so many players always voting against one another even in the situation where the computer wins and the player loses and there's no point to punishing the other players this way? And I thought most people would say, Oh yeah, We should do it in whatever way helps the other live human players so that they can make progress or whatever and do more things in the game. After all, it's not a zero sum kind of thing where someone else's advancement hurts the others - again, it just hurts the player if they lose to the computer and it's indifferent to the other players whether this happens.

Imagine my surprise, despite being an old lady who has lived a long time among people with this type of mindset, when I discovered that many people, out of sheer nasty ass spite, consistently vote against the human player and do not give a crap if it hurts them or not! Even over something as trivial as whether they obtain a small benefit in a little cell phone game! And more to the point, they think that voting against the player is going to teach them some kind of valuable life lesson! These people are deeply offended at the suggestion that they should try to help out their fellow players by throwing them a bone when they're competing against the computer, because if they are supportive of their fellow players, somehow that player will get something without having to work hard enough for it or that they didn't fully deserve!!!!! My God, we can't have anything as horrible and unjust as tiny and nearly meaningless undeserved gains! How dare anyone try to scratch out a little undeserved gain?!

Meanwhile, just like in contemporary capitalist society, the people who own the game and profit from the whole thing go on making money hand over fist regardless of the scrambling over scraps among these a-hole players.

I thought to myself, this is one of the many takeaways that I took away from watching squid game. And here it is playing out in real life! Maybe you can tell a story about the viciousness of people in real life situations that have major stakes - situations where they themselves will be seriously harmed at the expense of others who prevail - where someone else's gain turns out to be your tragic loss.

But you don't even need to do that much: you just need to present people with a situation where they can stick it to other people for no goddamn reason whatsoever, and it gives some people great joy to do it. This right here is the problem. This could be like a test question where if you give the wrong answer we put you on that Amazon/Musk spaceship and leave you wherever it goes, along with most of the spaceship owners.

[Phoebe]

Apparently the conflict is all resolved now thanks to my husband chatting people up, but it arose from my daughter being horrified by hostility toward the homeless. Since she has long been taught that it doesn't really matter why someone is homeless: Pick any homeless person you like and unless they're somehow on the lam from a murder charge, how do their sins add up? They hurt themselves, so badly, and now they have the audacity to be out here receiving a dollar from someone. What kind of crime is that? Why are you mad at that?

It's interesting to read responses to squid game where people start off that way: Oh this guy is an antihero! He's out here at the racetrack gambling! What kind of irrational person does that, and ends up unable to buy his daughter her birthday chicken? Any of us could have predicted that was a stupid choice. Somehow it's so stupid that his whole life no longer has worth to so many people.

Meanwhile back to the real life case: The same people are so damn stupid that they hate masks and vaccines like little babies, probably because at bottom they're afraid to get a shot, and who knows how many people they have inflicted suffering on by living their stupidity in public? Who knows whether they're even indirectly responsible for someone dying, and yet they're going to be mad at a homeless person for being destitute and desperate?