Last night I watched TV with my mother

[conuly]

We saw an episode of Divided, which I think is possibly the cruelest game show I've ever seen, but it has potential to be hilarious. It never gets old watching three strangers squabble over how to divide up a $90 dollar pot, and all the while the timer is running down and the money with it. Edit: To be clear, they must divide it up 60/30/10. They may not divide it up evenly.

Anyway, yesterday the four contestants can be summed up as: White woman (she's the one who got voted off), guy-in-suit, black woman, nerdy guy. Guy-in-suit was super obnoxious (at one point, he condescended to white woman, causing black woman to jump in and defend her in no uncertain terms), but they racked up quite a sizeable potential win.

And now it's time to divide it up, 60/30/10. As is typical, each player thinks they deserve the biggest share - and now both the men turn around and try to convince black woman (white woman having been kicked off) that she should take the smallest share. "After all, it's still a lot of money, better than getting nothing!"

After hearing half a minute of their smarmy bullshit on this (meanwhile, neither of them noticed, btw, that they both were giving themselves the large share, because "after all, better than getting nothing" doesn't apply to either of them), she gave up. She folded her arms and stood there and let the clock run down, and she was so in the right.

It must be a year or more since that episode was filmed, and to this day, I doubt either of the two male contestants understand that they were the reason she made that choice. But they were the reason. They were such jerks by the end that she was happy to let them walk away with nothing, and she was right to do so. I would've made the exact same choice. (Then again, I would've voted off guy-in-the-suit. The woman who was voted off said he wouldn't want to compromise at the end, and boy, she called it.)

There is some sort of feminist moral here, but I'm not sure how to sum it up.

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Comments

[wpadmirer]

I have never seen that game show, but it sounds like something I would not enjoy. Good for that woman refusing to make a choice. I'd have done the same thing, too!

[rhoda_rants]

Whoa, that sounds fascinating! And indeed cruel. What in the world is the argument for not dividing it up equally? $90 splits three ways down the middle. Starting with 4 would be tricky, sure, but what is the deal there? I must be missing something. Anyway, good for her.

[adafrog]

I hate that show because of the division. :( But ITA with you there.

[oracleofdoom]

I'm not quite understanding why people can't agree to equal shares in this game show. Other than just because they're entitled assholes.

[silailo]

Social media outlets like Facebook have definitely made me feel depressed, but it is mostly Facebook that makes me feel that way. I finally took it off my phone and only access it through my laptop, because I carry my phone around more than my laptop.

For me it's the negative social comparison, and it's hard to keep in mind that people mostly post the highlights of their lives on social media. But that doesn't stop me from comparing myself. If it's within my power to do something about it (like deleting my Facebook or limiting what I see), then I should do something, not expect Facebook to do anything because it's in their best interest to keep me coming back again and again.

[conuly]

They're not allowed. They have to split it 60/30/10, and the fourth person has to be kicked off.

[conuly]

I suppose it depends on how much you enjoy seeing people squabble themselves out of cash.

[conuly]

The argument is "that's the way the game is structured: either you all agree on who gets the most and the least, or you all get nothing."

That's just the way it is. You have to kick off one person in the middle, you have to divide up the cash at the end, and you have to divvy it up 60/30/10. Though one episode where they were literally dickering to death over a grand total of $75, one of them took a hit for the team and said "I'll take the low value, you two split it up this way, and when we're done, we'll all go out for a drink", which apparently is allowed under the rules.

[conuly]

I actually do enjoy it in small doses, but that's because I love seeing them lose half their pot due to bickering over who gets the large share.

[conuly]

The trouble is, FB is designed, intentionally or not, to be addictive. It's hard for you to "just do something" because, to your brain, it's not entirely within your power. (But anecdotally, once you kick that habit, apparently it's easy to stay kicked.)

[silailo]

Yes, certainly. My mom deleted her Facebook a while back, and she said that after a while she finally stopped wondering what was happening on Facebook. I often toy with the idea of deleting mine, but my addicted brain always finds excuses not to (I'll lose contact with certain people, I have a lot of history there, etc.)

[adafrog]

Yeah, that would be a big zero. Glad you enjoy it, though.

(frozen) Interesting links.

[nodrog]

        Among the principles and polices that have become entrenched at schools—and are now spilling out into the wider world—
        are the beliefs that accusers are virtually always telling the truth; that the urgency to take action is more important
        than fair procedures; that we shouldn’t make distinctions between criminal acts and boorishness; and that predatory male
        behavior is ubiquitous…


Not the wider world, pal.  The wider world - men and women alike! - recognize American women as spoiled, crazed pit vipers.

¡Buena suerta, gringas!

सौभाग्य, महिलाओं!

“We Almost Had Jet Packs on the Moon” - Vintage Space

[nodrog]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/vintagespace/2017/09/28/we-almost-had-jet-packs-on-the-moon/#.WjaBU_CnHcs

[nodrog]

That's exactly my attitude toward LiveJournal, tho' it's slowly dying out:


               


- yet I have an enormous amount of time and labor invested in it!  I don't want to just delete all that…

So like Major Kong in Dr Strangelove, I'll probably ride it all the way down…

(frozen) Re: Interesting links.

[conuly]

So I'm all for different opinions, but I don't want people insulting me, or anybody else here. Thanks.

Here is a feminist moral

[amaebi]

I think that those two men assumed bone-deep, as USian males are typically trained to do, that they get to sit in judgment on the lesser beings who are women, and that the rules they accept/establish/defend are not human-created institutions but The Shape Of the Whole Universe Can't You See? And then got surprised that they could propose and the woman dispose-in-a-bin.

Re: Here is a feminist moral

[conuly]

That could be it. For crying out loud, the comment that got Suit Guy rebuked was calling the woman's opinion "adorable". You can shudder now.

Re: Here is a feminist moral

[amaebi]

*shudder*

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"There is some sort of feminist moral here, but I'm not sure how to sum it up."

'Gambling is for losers' isn't specifically feminist, but it certainly seems to apply here.

[conuly]

I don't think the game show counts as gambling, exactly, even though "gamble" is, of course, the frequentative of "game". I mean, they didn't spend any money to be on the show, did they?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a good point; none of them actually lost anything but the game itself.

I have to wonder why none of these Hopeful Contestants ever hit on the seemingly-obvious solution of running their own little game of chance and agreeing to abide by the results. Either rock/paper/scissors or 'guess the number between 1-100' would work fine - since there's three of them, they'd have do elimination-trials to rank themselves, but that's no difficulty.

Heh, I used to use 'guess-the-number' to assign chores to the kids I looked after. I'd write the number down, each would try to guess it; the one who was closest got first pick of which room to clean; second got second pick; last got what was left. (That band of children all had to be working in separate rooms, else they did nothing but bicker.) Nobody could whine "It's not fairrrr!" that way, because hey, they guessed their numbers, and they chose their chores. There's nothing fairer than the 'luck of the draw.'

[conuly]

It's possible that on some episodes, they do divvy it up using tricks like rock-paper-scissors. But the ones who are cooperative enough to do that are usually cooperative enough to just say "Fine, I'll cop to deserving the lowest" if that's the case.