this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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There's a very good way of gauging how much of a dystopian shithole our world has become, and that's by simply watching quiz shows on daytime TV.
Compare Who Wants To Be A Millionaire to The Chase. In its original run, WWTBAM had two milestones for answering 5 (£1,000) and 10 (£32,000) questions correct respectively. This meant that failing after one of these checkpoints guaranteed you that prize. The Chase on the other hand is a series of quick-fire pub quiz rounds with some notoriously difficult questions where you're up against a professional quizzer and have to survive multiple rounds, before all the remaining contestants have to beat the 'Chaser' in a two-minute quick-fire round of pub quiz questions. Fail at any point? "You get nothing! You lose! Good day sir!"
The Chase is legitimately a much harder show where it is exponentially harder to actually win a cash prize as a contestant and that is one of the main reasons I fucking hate that show.
Where am I going with this? With the way the economy, automation, AI, scarcity, human population growth, etc is going, we are one day going to reach a point where we'll have to compete in game shows just to get a fucking job! If recruiters are making you record 2 to 5 minute video responses on a fucking job application, then we're already part-way there.
There was a game show in Russia in 2000s where high schoolers had to answer ridiculously hard questions about Ancient Greece in order to enroll into MGIMO, a prestigious state university of foreign affairs, which was near-impossible to enroll in any other way (e.g. entrance exams) if you weren't a child of a top-level government official.
The contestants had to sit as the audience first and answer some pop-up questions before even having a chance to actually participate in the game show, and then win in a series of games (like quarter-finals, semifinals, finals...)
It really does look like modern job application process where you have to participate in a series of never-ending interviews and test tasks
It sounds like something out of a YA novel. If that theme continues, the nepo babies that got in through enrollment have a derogatory term for the kids who got in through the game show.
Come to think of it, yeah, sounds also like a Korean drama about bullying or social inequality :)
On a more serious note, there is only one public person I could think of who has enrolled into MGIMO through the game show, that's Alexey Navalny's aide Kira Yarmysh (there is even an episode of the game with her on YouTube; she lost that year and won a year later). I don't remember her mentioning any animosity towards her because of her participation.
Incredible find, thanks for sharing
I had the same thought when I was watching "Alone". They pay them about 1000 bucks a week to document themselves struggling to live in the woods. Some of them are pulled out for medical reasons, some quit. But for some, this is probably the only way they can afford a vacation.
The challenge is part of the appeal. Perhaps Tipping Point is more your speed.
Reminds me too much of those penny arcade machines.