Nippon Television’s (NTV) producers have obviously never heard of the Geneva Convention. If they had, they wouldn’t have treated poor Nasubi the way they did. They wouldn’t have stripped him naked and shut him in an apartment, alone with no food, furniture, household goods, or entertainment. They wouldn’t have kept him there for over a year until he had won $10 000 in prizes by sending in postcards to contests. They wouldn’t have cut him off from the world and they would have told him that he was on nation-wide TV.
fuck?
I can’t think of any other response. How? Why? What the fuck?!
I find it rather hard to believe that it isn’t completely fake. Some guy gets put in an apartment without any food for two weeks and he doesn’t try to escape? And somehow food he wins in contests is enough to keep him from being malnourished for five months?
That was my first instinct as well, but I’m not even sure what to think now. They say he had no food for two fucking weeks! Even Oh Dae-su got food and water!
Do I understand this correctly that he had almost no human contact for over a year? In addition to the nutritional problems, this loneliness is my greatest cause for skepticism. There’s a reason why being put in the “hole” is the ultimate form of punishment in prison; the isolation is a sort of on-going low-level torture. Even at the so-called “super max” federal prison in Colorado, inmates are slowly resocialized after their year in isolation and rarely relapse because most inmates regard the crushing isolation as beyond cruel and ususual even if the courts do not. And I believe the Internation Space Station, which has a max capacity of only three people, doesn’t allow a single astronaut to remain alone on board for more than two weeks for both safety and psychological reasons, even though he’s got realtime contact with people invested in his well being. And I believe the same is true of the two dozen or so Antarctic research labs, although my Google-fu is unable to find anything about the subject of isolation in either location.
Still, this guy on the show is obviously not in the same situation, but it sounds very similar from my understanding. I just don’t see how someone could survive for long like that, either physically or psychologically.
The 24-hour live webcam feed that ran for all but the first five months of the show stunt pretty much confirmed it wasn’t fake. Neither link discusses the psychological damage done to the guy, which was very real as well. Being suddenly revealed to a thousand fans at the end of the stunt was horrifying for him, and he really didn’t understand what was happening. Last I heard anything about it was 2005, and he apparently still wasn’t entirely back to normal.
That rocket-propelled massage chair is just wrong.
Especially when the rider spills sake on his own head as he’s propelled out the door.
the fuck what
Sake? I was afraid it was hot tea. I’m not sure if that is any better though.
On one hand: It’s not a 180 degree liquid spilling on your towel-clad genitals.
On the other hand: Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!
Ya, they pull shit off like this too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqNxrK-hkHA&feature=related
Or the one where the car splits in two and is driven off a pier into water. You know, so people can get concussions and drown.
Americans would sue sooooooooo fast.
Scare tactics on Sci Fi was a pretty good show, but I believe that it was canceled because too many of the “contestants” were threatening legal action. Could have just been rumor though. Scare tactics was tame shit compared to “sealing someone in a room for a year+ with no food etc.”
" Do you need help little man?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYVT1-xz5LM
“Game shows aren’t about cruelty, they’re about greed, and wonderful prizes, like poorly built catamarans. But somewhere along the line, you lost your way. For shame!”
Extreme Wind-Ups did the exact same thing.
Wasn’t this like 10 years ago or something? I remember reading about this way, way back.
As Damon Killian said, “You won’t get ratings like that with reruns of Gilligan’s Island!”
Wow. I’ve seen stuff like Takeshi’s Castle, but I didn’t fully appreciate the Japanese creativity - almost genius - for elaborate, humiliating pranks.
That’s just wrong.
But I laughed.
MXC makes Takeshi’s castle so much more hilarious.
2002 or so. I remember desperately trying to find a way to watch it after reading the article. I never could find it.