My Experience on Squid Game: The Challenge
I am player 392 and this is how I felt watching Episode 1
I am 53 years old — Generation X — which means that not only do I remember the appearance and rise of MTV in my junior high years, I also remember MTV’s first reality TV show — The Real World.
The Real World debuted in 1992 when I was a senior in college. I identified with the inhabitants of the house, who were young adults just like me figuring out life. Unlike me, they had not married young and were free to explore themselves and the world without a husband in tow. They were free to live in a cool house with a bunch of strangers and just see what happened. They were free to fall in love or in bed with someone on a whim. I was envious and enthralled.
Reality TV was familiar, something I’d been pretending to do my entire life — live my ordinary day in front of an imaginary TV audience. As a child I would plan my entrance into a room, narrating every move in my head. I would pre-plan entire conversation threads, and upon catching a glimpse of myself in a window or mirror, adjusted my posture or my facial expression according to what I wanted the imaginary viewers to see. I dreamed of being in a reality TV show.
Last summer, I saw an article here on Medium announcing that Netflix was looking for cast…
