Many will remember at the beggining of the year there was sudden worldwide histeria about a Russian survival TV show called “Game2: winter”.
It was portrayed as a show where contestants could kill, rape and maim (and do many others mischevious things like hiding eachothers socks, I guess)
Obviously, as someone who likes survival shows, my curiousity was piqued.
810 words
The show sounded really good, I mean, the ass end of Siberia is a great location and if you can kill, rape and maim it probably also means you can go tribal. i.e. you can form a group with a shared goal. (unlike most shows where the contestants are pretty much chained dogs)
In fact the show sounds downright fucking awesome, not in a “survival” but a “let’s go back hundreds of years” because, if I recall correctly, the contestants will have a chance to build shelter prior to the show.
Alas we all know the “you can kill, rape and maim” thing was bullshit (some enlightened minds like me or honestly anyone with two neurons to rub together knew that it was BS as soon as they heard the phrase, because dude…really?); there was of course the slight detail that the contestants could do it, it’s not like they would have a cop on each of them 24/7, but then they should expect a visit by the police if they broke any laws.
——— WARNING: really edgy content, don’t cut yourself ———–
Well, I’ll admit seeing the cops arriving in an helicopter (Rambo: First Blood style) to get some dude who would stand peering over the remains of some chick after he raped, killed, gutted her and then spread her hide to dry because she said something stupid would be kind of…well suffice to say it would be an historical moment for survival shows or any kind of show that I know of.
But I’m not posting about my opinion of the show or the hysteria…no…well, kind of “yes”.
Today I was sitting…on a sofa, because sure as fuck I haven’t fixed my PC yet (priorities have shifted slightly due to IRL stuff), so I wasn’t sitting in front of the computer, while browsing youtube on my smartphone.
As I was saying, I was sitting and had one of those moments where I go “So…which month is it again?”
May, it’s the end of May.
“Oh, wasn’t that russian survival show starting in a couple of months?”
I dunno, haven’t looked it up.
But I knew they had a youtube channel where they had the videos of the wannabe contestants.
So I searched for it.
And then came what I wanted to write about. (about frigging time, 420 words into the rant)
Nearly 99.5% of the videos I found with the name of the show had some permutation of the following:
“Real life Hunger games”
English videos, spanish, french, italian, some nordic language…all of them with some mention to that *expeletive* movie.
Made me wonder if the whole thing wasn’t some sort of marketing campaign from the brains behind the american knock off of Battle Royale.
Seriously. When video after video after video has almost the same exact title (and none has “Real life Battle Royale”) it can either be one of three things:
• Idiotic marketing campaign
• The complete destruction of the “society of individuals” model because, as it seems, the individuality simply conveys an even larger (than expected) swath of the population to become part of a hivemind, which is a few levels beyond mere collectivism. (if that’s good or bad could be argued)
• People nowadays are so fucking dumb and unoriginal that such titles are the best they can come up with.
Seriously, to the point of not being able to conjure a title that had a couple of different words compared to the other 9001 videos. (oh, look, I’m still doing DBZ memes)
Of course my 3 explanations are tied up with my perspective on life and the world, hence they might seem a bit cynical.
There’s also a fourth option that is the “guy who lost his last shred of faith in humanity that he didn’t even knew he had” extra cynical option: they have the same exact fucking title “because SEO”.
And that 4th option always makes me sad, makes these people seem like no more than little whores. (some of them might go beyond being figurative whores and be actual whores, but I digress)
The “because SEO” explanation is something that always grinds my gears, fuck having decent content, fuck actually having any content at all, what matters is that people click on it.
Also if they are going to do “real life dystopian movie” they should do 1984, call it “Big Broth…oh, wait…
But hey, I’m just going to say that a real life Battle Royale could do wonders for the quality of the content on youtube.
See you next rant.