What is Squid Game and why do people watch it?

However, with only nine episodes, all of which are easily bridgeable, you might find yourself without a show after watching all of the dark series in one night (guilty as charged). Squid Game is gruesomely violent and emotionally punishing. It’s also one of Netflix’s most popular shows. Since its premiere on Sept. 17, the South Korean thriller has become a global phenomenon: Its viewership has increased by 481% in less than a month, and the hashtag #SquidGame has been viewed more than 22.8 billion times on Tik Tok. It’s easy to see why: The series is superbly acted and visually striking, containing easily recognizable outfits and diabolical plot twists that make it ripe for endless theorizing and memes. But it also begs an uncomfortable question: Why are we so obsessed with a show about human suffering? A drama inspired by South Korean history and politics, Squid Game follows Seong Gi-hun and 455 other debt-ridden participants who are whisked away to an island to play six rounds of basic children’s games. If they survive, they win 45.6 billion won (about $38 million). If they lose, they die in terrifying and inhumane ways — all while a group of billionaires watch for their own voyeuristic pleasure. It’s a clear commentary on how crushing economic inequality and financial instability can be for lower-income people — issues that only have been exacerbated by the global pandemic. Particularly against the backdrop of the last 18 months, “People can identify with feeling like they’re not the ruling class, but the underdog or the downtrodden,” Dr. Eric Bender, a child, adolescent, adult, and forensic psychiatrist tells Bustle. Desperation, indeed, is what drives Squid Game’s participants to compete. Although they’re given the option to leave the game at the beginning of the show, they all ultimately return, realizing that scraping by in the real world with no viable way to escape poverty is possibly worse than risking death for a life-altering prize. From this perspective, the brutality is almost beside the point — although there likely are some people who do watch for the gore. “The violence really puts an exclamation mark on the human struggle elements,” says Dr. Praveen Kambam, a child, adolescent, and forensic psychiatrist. “[It] shows just how far these people are willing to go ... They would rather endure this level of violence, or chance of violence, than deal with the system outside of the game.”

Bender adds that when he sees kids in therapy, it’s apparent that they’re “not in control of their lives.” So when you have adults forced to play children’s games, it’s like the tables are turned and “suddenly they’re the children not in control.” This makes Squid Game heart-pounding and devilishly effective: Just as viewers were horrified to learn that The Hunger Games offers up children as tributes, so too does Squid Game work to constantly disarm us — a reflection of what the characters themselves are feeling. As Squid Game progresses, the moral dilemmas the characters face grow increasingly intractable, and the show forces us to look inward and question how we would react in similarly distressing situations. In social psychology, people tend to “overestimate the moral choice” they would make and “underestimate the influence of group dynamics and compliance,” Kambam says. None of us want to believe that we’d side with the bully or act only in self-preservation. But shows like Squid Game ask us to second-guess ourselves, and “that is [both] scary and exciting on an unconscious level,” Kambam adds. We see that dynamic in Squid Game between the VIPs and competitors, but on a more meta level, it speaks to us as audience members as well. Watching onscreen is “a ‘safe’ way of sharing the risky adrenaline rush of the participants,” Kambam says. While the VIPs watch Gi-hun and the participants, we watch them all from our own little glass boxes at home.

Netflix’s Squid Game has fast become the most talked-about show of 2021. According to the streaming giant, Squid Game’s debut has also become the platform’s biggest series launch of all time, and the show’s popularity among viewers also aligns with an extremely positive critical response.

However, one element of the Korean series that was not so well received was the show’s English-speaking VIP characters, who appear in Squid Game’s seventh episode, during which they are shown placing bets on the high-stakes competition.

~“Everyone going on about the Squid Game English dub but what about the VIP actors? Those English actors were terrible,” wrote one Twitter user, while another fan commented, “Episode 7 of Squid Game was one of the best but I don't understand where they got the VIP actors from? Did they find randomness on the street?”

Would highly say to use sub, and watch it in Full on Korean.