The ring of bullets against the ears will always satisfy an eager crowd in a movie theatre. Afterall, we love death.

With the release of Netflix’s Squid Game in September of this year, the South Korean drama features plenty of death for our eyes to feast on.

With an astonishing 900 million dollars raised from it’s release, Squid Game became one of the largest growing shows on the platform with 111 million viewers in the first month. It follows a sadistic path of different games, all with the reward of 45.6 billion Korean Won. 

And viewers love this. 

This glorification of death has been more prominent in all sorts of media than just the T.V. We’re taught about death in schools; we read books about it; we dissect frogs in class just to see how they work, yet we’re so sensitive to the idea of dying.

Romeo and Juliet is about a love-struck couple who kill themselves at the end of the story. But students from all over the United States read it as a required book in their English class. 

There have been over 60 million sales for the Hunger Games series, and that’s completely excluding the multi-million dollar movies.

This trend of blood follows up everywhere we go and in every single bit of media we consume. It stretches all the way back to Ancient Rome gladiatorial fights. 

It goes as far as to target the very core of our society, even children without us knowing. 

Parents, have you seen what children play now-a-days? A new Call Of Duty game, Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite. These large game titles that have no intention of hiding their prominent evidence of death. 

It’s impossible to not hear about these, and even with Fortnite’s lack of blood; the concept is you’re trapped on an island and have to eliminate your fellow castaways to win.

This genre of killing has become so popular throughout the media it’s gotten its own “tag” — the battle royale. With over 27 billion dollars generated with one game series alone, it’s clear that this death game has gotten out of hand.

Even I was in a Fortnite and Call of Duty phase at one point, and it’s almost guaranteed that someone else around you has seen this violence in any media. So although it’s a bizarre thing to say, we love death. 

Every generation loves this, the blood and everything about death. Movies made about WWII, video games showing kids violence since the 70s, and our favorite protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, fighting others to the death.

So next time you walk into a movie theatre, or open Netflix, consider what media you’re consuming. 

And limit your love for death.