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Isolation challenges - often advertised on Douyin, as TikTok is known in China - have risen in popularity this yearIn China's take on Squid Game, fraudsters are preying on the financially distressed in a slumping economy with promises of prize money, debt restructuring and other schemes that are not always what is promised. Unlike the dystopian South Korean TV series, which returns to the small screen for a second season on Thursday (Dec 26), Chinese players taking on "self-discipline" challenges do not risk their lives if they lose. But courts have found some participants in isolation challenges - who pay...

We knew that Squid Game would be huge when it returned for season 2, given that season 1 was the most-watched Netflix series ever by a significant margin. But now it has set an entirely new record.We don’t know viewership yet, it’s too early for that, though of course that’s going to be enormous. Rather, the record in question is that Squid Game season 2 is the first series to debut at #1 in all 93 countries where Netflix is available. That’s everywhere from the US, of course, to Cyprus to Honduras to Kenya to Oman to Thailand. The entire...

One of MrBeast’s YouTube co-hosts, Ava Kris Tyson, announced she’s quitting the popular channel after allegations of grooming a minor.Tyson, 28, was recently accused of sending inappropriate messages when she was 20 to a then-13-year-old.Tyson addressed the allegations on social media on Tuesday....................................SNIP.................................Tyson, who came out as a transgender woman last year, was accused of grooming Lava in a 45-minute video posted online in June by the account Prism42, according to Rolling Stone.

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is the largest individual creator on YouTube. His main channel has 144 million subscribers. His most popular video, a recreation of the Netflix hit “Squid Game,” has amassed an astonishing 401 million views. He is admired for his generous charity work and trusted by millions of parents worldwide, who allow their children to watch his kid-focused videos that consist of pranks, over-the-top challenges, and reaction videos.However, an emerging controversy involving one of his closest friends and longtime co-creator Chris Tyson — who has recently come out as being on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) —...

Update from Ukraine | Squid Game for Ruzzian Soldiers | More of their Tanks were hit by Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZaCfH1OKck Follow on Instagram up to date uploads. https://www.instagram.com/denys_pilot/ ****SUMMARY Military MAPS & COMMENTS here: NEW- https://militaryland.net/news/invasion-day-353-bakhmut-front/ https://militaryland.net/maps/deployment-map

A smuggler who sold copies of Netflix’s smash hit series “Squid Game” in North Korea has been sentenced to death by firing squad, according to a report. The man allegedly smuggled copies of the Korean-language show on USB drives from China into North Korea, where seven high-school students were caught watching the footage, sources told Radio Free Asia. A student who bought one of the flash drives received a life sentence, while six others who watched the footage have been sentenced to five years of hard labor. Teachers and administrators at the school were fired or face forced labor in...

...It’s episode six, “Gganbu,” that hits the hardest. That’s the one where the story puts its characters through their most savage tests yet, pitting friends and allies against each other. When the players are asked to choose partners, their first instinct is to choose their favorite person. They don’t know they will come to regret it later. When the game’s rules are announced, the players learn the harsh truth: The two partners are competing against each other, and whoever loses the game will be “eliminated.” Inside Syria’s infamous Sednaya prison, I lived through the real-life version of this episode. The...

In the last few years alone, South Korea shocked the world with “Parasite,” the first foreign language film to win best picture at the Academy Awards. It has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, band in the world with BTS. Netflix has introduced 80 Korean movies and TV shows in the last few years, far more than it had imagined when it started its service in South Korea in 2016, according to the company. Three of the 10 most popular TV shows on Netflix as of Monday were South Korean. South Korea has long chafed at its lack...

For Netflix, Squid Game, which cost just US$21.4 million (S$29 million) to produce, has given it a subscriber boom, pushed up its share price and is set to create an outsized windfall of almost US$900 million. Media watchers said the global hit marked the latest, if not the biggest pop culture export so far from South Korea, whose TV shows, films and pop music have been making waves beyond the country for at least two decades. Notable K-drama hits over the years include Winter Sonata in the early 2000s...Idol groups like Girls’ Generation began breaking out of Asia by the...

Read a smattering of national and even international news headlines and you can see it: San Francisco has an image problem. It’s not just conservative media slamming the city. The New York Times, the Economist, even British-based publications like the Independent and Sunday Times have run recent stories on the state of San Francisco, ranging from its highly visible housing issues to its shoplifting problems. “Why San Francisco’s city government is so dysfunctional,” reads a headline from the Economist. “Crime is basically legal in San Francisco,” says another headline from the Daily Mail. The New York Times, meanwhile, just ran...