In many instances, the audience is even encouraged to pay to “vote” for those to ostracize and banish—a clear simulacrum of the neoliberal marketplace. Game shows used to reflexively reward the poor; now pay-to-play reality TV crushes them. Computer gaming used to be about triumphs of virtuosity; now, as in Grand Theft Auto, it is all about debasement of the losers.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 372