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Viewing The Running Man today, through the eyes of someone born in 1969, feels like peering into a crystal ball that didn’t quite nail every detail but caught the essence of where society was headed. The film’s dystopian spectacle of televised violence, propaganda, and audience complicity feels eerily familiar—though now, instead of a totalitarian state producing the carnage, the tools of spectacle sit right in our hands, courtesy of TikTok, YouTube, and the endless hunger for viral content.

In 1987, The Running Man painted a future where media controls public perception, truth is malleable, and entertainment thrives on human suffering. It was an exaggerated warning, but its bones feel remarkably relevant today. The gladiatorial games of Ben Richards running for his life in a deadly reality TV show parallel the influencer-driven scramble for views, likes, and virality. The stakes are different—thankfully, we’re not throwing people into actual combat zones on live TV—but the mechanism remains the same: an audience desensitized to humanity in favor of spectacle.

Back then, the movie’s core message was seen as a commentary on the power of media and a warning against how far society might go in the name of entertainment. Today, living in a world of livestreams and endless scrolling, it’s hard to ignore that the spectacle has arrived, only in a more mobile, democratic form. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram democratize content creation, but they also amplify the same human tendencies The Running Man critiqued: our obsession with violence, our hunger for drama, and our willingness to sacrifice truth for the sake of entertainment.

If anything, the film underestimated how much we’d embrace the chaos. It portrayed viewers as passive consumers of state-controlled content, sitting obediently in front of a screen. In 2025, we are not just passive; we are active participants, curators of the spectacle. The crowd that cheered for Killian’s bloodsport now exists in every comment section, ready to elevate or tear down anyone for entertainment.

The film’s prescience is undeniable. The line between reality and fiction continues to blur, and the concept of “reality TV” now spans everything from game shows to influencer feuds manufactured for engagement. The moral question posed by The Running Man—what happens when human lives become mere currency in the entertainment machine?—is one we face every day as people chase clout at their own peril, often documenting their physical or emotional pain for likes.

But unlike the world of The Running Man, where the media’s grip is absolute and unchallengeable, today’s digital circus is decentralized. The players—us—are also the architects. This makes the critique more complicated. Who’s to blame for the state of things? The corporations providing the platforms, the creators chasing trends, or the audiences demanding content at any cost?

Ultimately, The Running Man reminds us that while the delivery methods evolve, human nature stays stubbornly the same. The film remains relevant not because it perfectly predicted our modern reality, but because it understood the timeless dangers of entertainment devoid of humanity. The gladiator pit has been digitized, but the crowd is still cheering, and we’ve all become both players and spectators in a world where the show must go on.

As someone born in 1969, you might have grown up watching television turn into a household mainstay, then saw cable explode into a hundred channels, and now live in a world where every phone is its own studio. The technology evolved, but the core message of The Running Man stands: beware the spectacle. It may be addictive, but it always comes at a cost.

The Mad Hatter at Sea

Being a sailor on a submarine does something to you. Isolation becomes your constant companion. Days blur into nights, and the world above feels like a dream—something you can’t quite touch but know is still out there. When you’re submerged for weeks, even months, your mind changes. You learn to live in your own head, to embrace a quiet kind of madness. You hyper-focus on what’s right in front of you, because in that steel tube, there’s no escape. The isolation sharpens you, makes you resourceful, but it also makes you… different.

Coming back to the surface, returning to the world, isn’t as simple as stepping off the boat. The world feels louder, faster, too chaotic to make sense of. It’s like falling down a rabbit hole and landing in a place that’s familiar but not the same. You’re not the same. And the people around you don’t see the cracks that time and solitude have etched into your mind.

That’s where the Mad Hatter comes in. He’s a little crazy, a little eccentric, but he owns it. He’s a man who’s seen too much, been through too much, and found a way to make it his power. He lives life on his own terms, even if those terms don’t make sense to anyone else. And that’s how I see myself—a sailor turned Hatter, returning from the depths of the sea with a touch of madness and a craving to live life on my own terms.

But even the Mad Hatter has moments when the chaos subsides. For him, that’s Alice. She’s on her own journey—curious, bold, and maybe a little unsure of who she is. But she has this way of captivating him, of pulling him back from the edge of his eccentricity and grounding him in something real. She doesn’t change him; she balances him.

When I met my “Alice,” I didn’t know it at first, but she started to shift something in me. After so much time alone, you build walls, thick ones, to protect yourself. But she had a way of slipping past them, not by force, but by simply being herself. She was on her own path, full of questions and discoveries, and all I wanted to do was follow her, to see the world through her eyes.

Being a sailor changes you, and so does meeting the right woman at the right time. She made me want to be better—not just for her, but for myself. She reminded me that there’s life beyond the edges of my own madness, beyond the hyper-focus and isolation. Together, we’re two travelers, each on our own journey but somehow connected, making the trip a little more meaningful.

I don’t know how far this road will take us, but I know one thing: she’s worth the trip. And in the end, I hope we’ll both come out of this better for it—her with a little of my wildness, and me with a little of her grounding light.

After all, even the Mad Hatter deserves a chance to find balance in the madness.