A New Netflix Game Show Reflects Our Post-Truth Times


Netflix’s new quiz show has a lot of things you’ve seen in quiz shows before. For starters, there’s Howie Mandel. There is a large board with increased cash prizes. There are contestants who answer multiple choice questions about science, history and geography. Sometimes – usually, actually – they give the wrong answer.

This is where the real game starts.

Lack of information on “Bullsh*t the Game Show” is not a disqualification. This is practically a requirement. In this trivia quiz, being right is far less important than being right—a distinction that has made an otherwise unremarkable game show a symbol of our fraud-ridden culture in a demonic time.

Once a contestant chooses an answer, we cannot know whether it is correct or not. Instead, the player tells a story about how he knew the answer. The three panelists then decide whether they believe the story or not.

Finally, the real answer emerges. If the competitor is right, he advances to the next round. If the contestant is wrong, they continue to the next round, as long as at least one panelist is deceived by the false statement.

Players can directly win up to a million dollars while getting more wrong answers. “You know almost nothing,” Mandel tells an errant competitor. “But it does not matter!”

What? Self-confident. Personality. Vivid, but not overly lively specimens. The knowledge that it’s often easier to fool people by taking real facts—for example, “My mom hated Kevin Costner”—and squishing them into a true-false Frankenfiction with made-up details.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say “lie”. This is because there is an important difference between a lie and the plot of the game show; it’s closer to the kind of puffy hoo-hah that flows intensely and freely through our public life.

in his article “On Bullshit” Philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt distinguishes between the topic of the title and mere lying. Lying requires the liar to realize the truth. A liar knows a certain thing is true and wants the audience to believe something false.

On the other hand, nonsense is indifferent to reality. Its practitioner, Frankfurt, “doesn’t care if what he says accurately describes reality. He chooses or fabricates them according to his purpose.”

I’m sure this sounds like some people you know. It’s easy to look for parallels in politics: In 2016, Frankfurt described Donald Trump with self-described “genuine exaggeration” and improvised campaign-motive fantasies. master of art.

But it’s also in the scam sagas of Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Fyre Festival, and others. This is reflected in Netflix’s social media reality show “The Circle,” in the impressive culture where its actors can “broadcast” others using fake characters and imagery. Because it’s mediated by social app filters and sensible editing, a story doesn’t have to be 100 percent false to be completely fake.

Now I doubt that the producers of Mandel’s new game show relied heavily on Frankfurt’s scholarship. (Unlike Frankfurt, Mandel and the actors use the show’s title and “lie” interchangeably.) But this isn’t a bad functional example.

When a player makes up a story to rationalize a wrong answer, it’s not primarily because of a desire to inform the panel about which volcano shares its name with an Italian dish, for example. (Spoiler: This is Stromboli.) Out of desire to cheat the panel. whether the player knows which volcano and which food.

In other words, the goal is not to misrepresent the facts. The purpose of misrepresenting the misrepresentation.

Game shows are the forgotten workhorses of TV, but they have a way of reflecting the values ​​of their era. They tell us what is good. The mind-blowing quizzes of the ’50s and ’60s like the “$64,000 Question” reflected a nation that relied on experts and supported education amid the Cold War and space race – hence the existential crisis created by the quiz scandals.

The populist 70s saw a shift towards games like “The Price Is Right,” which rewarded everyday skills like knowing the cost of a box of candy. Rice-A-Roni. And the flamboyant, dramatic prime-time game shows of the 2000s—like Mandel’s Mephistohelian “Deal or No Deal”—repeated reality shows they competed against by rewarding risk-taking, cunning, and game theory talent.

In 2022, the road to wealth is paved with manure. There have been other game shows with elements of deception, such as “To Tell the Truth”. But the Netflix show embodies its completely, playfully fake spirit until you do. As Mandel told the contestant Katie Dolana live communication consultant: “You come off as a really good spirit. People believe in you. And it’s a talent!”

The show is not malicious; Just like a snakeskin suit, the truth is wearing comfort with our optional times. Call it “Danger!” Compare that to the bastion of expert knowledge, struggling to find a replacement for Alex Trebek, who struggled to bring his sensitivity to reality to the world. I did my own research age. most of his fans they were disturbed with the recruiting of the show Mayim BialikQuestioning vaccine applications and approving a brain supplement described as pseudoscience, Dr.

Netflix’s show also indulges our immortal fantasy that when the world is full of bulls, you and I are personally smart enough to see it. (As Alyssa Rosenberg recently wrote in The Washington Post, this is also part of the appeal related to blind fraud dramas like “Exit”)

After all, when you watch it, who are you really “playing with”? Say “Wheel of Fortune” as you do, not competitors. The questions tend to be less of the type that you can reason with and more of the “You know or you don’t know” type. No, you play with the panel, scouting for ticks, narrations, and very fine details, testing your personal BS detector against theirs. You’re not a sucker – are you?

To be honest, beyond that pleasure, the show is mostly forgettable; It suffers from the hectic pace of prime-time game shows like “Deal”. But there is something resonant about the concept of post-truth. You can also find it, in a sweeter form, in Netflix’s celebration of fraud. “Cake?” It’s based on an internet meme where panelists speculate whether objects are what they seem—designer bags, fast-food meals—or whether they’re finicky confectionery scams.

This is the trompe l’oeil world we live in. Sometimes a good invention is cake. And sometimes it’s something sharper.





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