The Push on Netflix

[Reuben]

The premise: Can a team of actors at a fake charity auction manipulate an unwitting J. Nearly Random into trying to commit murder in just 72 minutes?

If you don't have Netflix, here's a spoileriffic review:

http://www.indiewire.com/2018/02/the-pu ... 201933412/

If you do have Netflix, predict how many of the four participants will actually push someone off the building, and then watch it to see if you're right.

If you're worried about the reactions of the victims, don't, too much. It appears that, as in Milgram's original compliance experiments, the participants generally regard the experience as distressing but personally valuable. (I'm not saying that Milgram's experiments should pass a contemporary ethics review, though.)

We watched it with our kids (ages 10-17) after I vetted it myself. DW and I first explained 1) that there would be many F-bombs near the end; 2) that we would use the show to help them learn how to resist being manipulated into acting against their morals; and 3) how the participants ultimately reacted (as above). The kids were on tenterhooks the whole way through, and were simultaneously educated, thrilled, and disturbed. I'll write the lessons I picked out from it later.

I originally found out about this at r/exmormon, where, true to form, some of the denizens were saying that they found the manipulation to be eerily familiar. (For any negative thing, there's always someone that can see the church in it.) I didn't see a lot that was familiar, though. Probably the best match was light grooming for sexual abuse via worthiness interviews. No, the church tends to get you to cede your moral authority in different ways.

[MoPag]

I'll have to check this out. The Milgram experiment is fascinating.