The most popular Netflix show in the platform’s history is perhaps an unexpected hit. Why do people so enjoy watching others get brutally murdered simply for losing at children’s games? According to Edward Castronova, it’s because we see ourselves in the players. Life itself is a game, and these days it’s a rigged, zero-sum game: winner gets all, while the losers do nothing but suffer. Yet, while we sympathize with the players on screen, at the same time, in our own lives, we continue to play and perpetuate our own version of Squid Game. But even if life is a game, there are other ways of playing it.

 Read Rebecca Roach’s counterpoint article, Life is not a squid game.