Check out the details of the hilarious memes and the shipping going on between Netflix and Twitter during the tweet exchanges.
What is Squid Game?
If you haven’t caught it yet, Squid Game is the surprise hit Netflix Original Series from South Korea. Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk, the series is an interesting take on the “Most Dangerous Game” or “Ten Little Indians” trope, where the main cast members are eliminated one-by-one. This trope has been used before by popular adaptations such as the Arnold Schwarzenegger film The Running Man (1987) or Japan’s ultra-violent Battle Royale (2000). Video games have also used this template, as in the case of the popular multiplayer Fortnite and Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG). One interesting difference with Squid Game is that the participants are mostly willing participants (at least at the start), before learning what the terms of the game are. All the 456 players are aware of is that it will involve children’s games and that there is a very large sum of money awaiting the winners who can make it through the end without being eliminated. However, they are unaware how permanent and brutal that elimination is going to be. The central character is Seong Gi-hun (played by Lee Jung-jae), a down on his luck family man and gambling addict, who accepts the offer of a cryptic salesman (Gong Yoo of Train to Busan fame) to play the Squid Game. Seong is joined by other players who are equally as downtrodden and in dire need. The 9-episode series follows the progress of the latest Squid Game, while the numbers of players, including the main cast members, continuously dwindle.
Netflix and Twitter have fun at Facebook’s expense
Squid Game has been a very successful Netflix Original. Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has gone as far to claim that the Korean suspense drama series as the most successful produced by the streaming giant: Although Netflix has not released the exact numbers as of yet, there is no doubt that the South Korean project is one of the most watched Netflix Originals non-English productions so far. This would put it on par with Bridgerton and Lupin, and eventually overtake them, if the hype and attention continues. Coincidentally, at the height of the attention Squid Game has been receiving, another widespread event was going on. On October 4, 2021, Facebook, and its sister social media platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, suffered a large-scale outage. In fact, this incident is one of the longest and most debilitating, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself. With 2.89 billion monthly users of Facebook alone, the global 6-hour outage of the company’s social media platforms naturally led to discussions, rumor-mongering, and jokes of the situation, shared through other social media outlets. Netflix saw this as an opportunity to poke fun at Facebook’s misfortune. Tweeting through the official Netflix Twitter account, the meme featured one of the key scenes in Squid Game where main character Seong Gi-Hun is held by the collar by another player, at the end of the first episode, after playing the Squid Game version of Red Light, Green Light. But it doesn’t end there. The official Twitter account of, well, Twitter, responded to Netflix’s tweet with a Squid Game meme of its own. This time, the meme is based on the Dalgona cookie game from the second episode. The tweet exchanges between Netflix and Twitter caught the attention of users who have found them very amusing.
— Twitter (@Twitter) October 4, 2021 With how successful Squid Game has become, more memes inspired by the series will likely continue to pop up in the future, Facebook outage notwithstanding. Talks about a second season have already been discussed, but creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has stated that there are no clear plans set in stone for a continuation to the series. The official Netflix synopsis for Squid Game reads: The Netflix Original Series stars Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, O Yeong-su, Wi Ha-joon, Jung Ho-yeon, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung. All 9 episodes of Squid Game are currently available on the Netflix streaming service.
