#its about Nikita and Matt being able to laugh about being the 'best survivor' like its all a game

[sushiburritonoms]

Well as Matt would say, "it's interesting..." (sticking all this under a cut because its really long)

I think part of the whole appeal of ETN is the fact that everyone has to vote each other into challenges, honestly. Nobody gets away without real blood on their hands and nobody is innocent. But what I find really interesting is how the show itself manipulates the guests and the audiences to root for people to fake die. I also think this format of pseudo-scripted fictional reality tv only works on Youtube, despite the fact that Joey keeps trying to sell it to traditional media. It works because the guests are all influencers and their whole job is manipulating people into watching them and buying what their selling. In the nicest way possible, these people are already characters to us, and so watching them vote each other to "death" has another layer of unreality to us that makes it enjoyable. Yes, there's no such things as witches or demons, but also they're "just youtubers", silly man and women children dressing up for a laugh.

The show itself adds another layer of dehumanization to the show by having the guests assume characters. I think that's critical to the show and Joey needs it, even as the excuse for why they are playing characters becomes thinner and thinner with each season (by season 4 its ridiculous and everyone immediately drops their "All Star" personas completely). But, I'd argue they need it because it is easier to vote someone to die if you don't use their real name. Especially in seasons 2 and 3. In the later seasons everyone has stylized cards with their characters on them so you're not voting for Colleen to die; you're voting for the Disco Dancer and the aggressive persona she's displayed this whole time. In canon, this works too because the only friend they all have in common is Joey. Nikita and Matpat have no business ever interacting with each other in real life, and Safiya and Manny are technically business rivals (sorta). In canon, they only know each other from a computer screen so they're already almost non-people to each other (with a few exceptions, like Matt and Ro pretending to be best friends when in real life they're ...who knows).

So I say this show can only work on Youtube because you have two layers of dehumanization going on. They are the season's themed characters and they are also underneath it all, the personas they portray online. This is most evident in Season 3 where people call Roi, 'Guava' and Matt, 'Matpat' interchangeably. When guests are first introduced, they are shown with their channel names and stage names only. Two layers protect the real person underneath but also to create the illusion that it is totally ok to vote this human to die. They're not real. Matpat really screws with this because in episode 1 he only gets credited as as "Matpat from Game Theory/Film Theory". Dude absolutely refuses to be perceived lol. Contrast this with his cameo in Five Nights at Freddy's, where he used his legal name in credits (but Corey did not, he used his youtuber handle!).

In sum, the dehumanization is key to this show and its probably the only reason I can write RPS without mentally breaking down. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Does anyone else ever think about how fucked up it is that the setup of Escape the Night has us talking about who "deserved" it?

You see it in the fandom, and in the show itself, too — where there's discussions about who "pulled their weight" or who did the most for the team, with the implication that those who didn't deserve...what? A horrible, lonely death? To never see their families and loved ones again?

"I'm going to vote for [X], because they didn't pull their weight," is literally saying that someone being foolish, oblivious, and/or lazy is a mistake that should be punished by death.

Or the fandom, as they say that, "[X] wasn't doing very well, so they deserved to be put into that challenge."

And, look, I do not legitimately believe that anyone in the fandom or the show would ever be okay with someone dying because they couldn't figure out a riddle — I'm one of the ones screeching about how your fannish participation is not morality, and what you enjoy in fandom, or say about fictional characters (or fictional personas of real people) is not, in any way, reflective of your actual beliefs. Let me be abundantly clear: it doesn't matter to me who you think "deserved" to die, because nobody died, and at the end of the day, it's a fake web series.

...But that doesn't change that I think Escape the Night is a perfect encapsulation of the way that manipulation works on humans. As they say,

“1. Man is a MORAL animal. 2. You can get human beings to do anything — IF you convince them it is moral. 3. You can convince human beings anything is moral.” — Frank Bidart

In ETN, and especially in Season 3, the guests were convinced that voting people to die was the morally correct option. After all, world annihilation (and their own life) was on the line. Isn't that worth a little blood on your hands?

But it's hard to convince your average person that killing other people (or sentencing them to death, I suppose), if those people are otherwise innocent of severe crimes, is moral. So the situation sets it up using two things that are highly prized: merit and fear.

The fear is the easier option to discuss; it's the same point I made earlier regarding world annihilation and their own lives. (And, of course, it's easier to control scared people than it is to control people who have their wits about them. Manipulation 101.)

Merit, of course, is the entire point of this post. Many of us, I would hazard a guess, grew up with the American justice system, wherein death is an appropriate punishment for certain things. In ETN, that category is just stretched a little wider. Someone missed a clue? Well, they must be stupid — so they deserve to die.

And yes, I am defining voting someone in as tacitly saying that they deserve to die, because that is the unspoken consequence that could happen to anyone who was voted in.

Anyways, back to merit. Before every death challenge, barring the special ones, like the Witch's Challenge in S3, there's literally a discussion where the guests are supposed to defend themselves and prove that they helped. And if the court of public opinion decides you didn't? Well, off to the chopping block with you, my friend — your performance was unsatisfactory, and therefore you deserve to be beaten to death/buried alive/whatever terrible fate awaits them that episode.

But isn't that absurd, when you think about it like that? It's like having a shitty coworker that never responds to emails and takes 45 minute lunches. That's basically it. That's what these people are dying for.

Literally everyone on the show is guilty of this, even fan favorites like Matthew, so it's not like I'm trying to call guests out, or anything. I just think it's a really fascinating look into the way that humans can be manipulated into being willing to kill other humans.

Maybe someday I'll write something more in-depth on this.