Well that was fascinating, distressing and I guess not all that surprising. It's really interesting to see how much overt psychological manipulation goes into making the show. Being interviewed by psychiatrists before and after the show and being asked if the contestant harbors murderous feelings towards the judges (or themselves) after losing is pretty intense.

On a meta-note it was interesting to read such dark subject matter about exploitation in the name of advertising while salon.com did their best to exploit me as a reader. I've never had such a bizarre experience on what I thought was a mainstream site. I was hijacked mid-article to go to a punch the monkey type ad, chunks of text would load only after I viewed mid article ads, my browser never stopped loading as I read. The tone of the article and the reading experience combined to really create a nefarious vibe.

If anyone would like to skip the existential crisis, I put the article text on pastebin to make it actually readable:

https://pastebin.com/dPVUnKS8