Hollywood Has Learned Nothing as a New Influencer Gets Her Own Netflix Show
Wake up babe! New Late Stage Capitalism game show just dropped! According to Deadline, social media influencer Haylee Baylee is slated to host Netflix’s reality competition Win the Mall, a show where contestants “are dropped into a living mall where they’ll fight to outshop, outsmart, and outlast one another.”
Sounds like Hunger Games with shopping carts? It probably is. Though the “living mall” aspect gives it a Lovecraftian body horror twist. Cthulu in the food court? Maybe this show will be interesting after all.
To no one’s surprise, the internet is divided on the idea of a new game show where spending money is somehow more gamified than it is in real life. One user wrote, “so basically the 1980s?” — the decade when mall culture was at its peak. Another user wrote, “dropped in a mall and told to outshop everyone? My wallet would lose first.”
If full-contact shopping is what qualifies as entertainment in 2026 America, all of our wallets are losing collectively. Summing up the debate, one user posted an image of a man enthusiastically deepthroating a loaded gun — capturing my personal feelings on the matter entirely.
While Hollywood appears to be gung-ho about once again turning real-life into an episode of Black Mirror, the choice to make an influencer-led game show about combat shopping feels particularly in bad taste. After the cultural eyesore that was Squid Game: The Challenge — a game show that fully missed the point of the capitalistic critique TV series that inspired it — one would think that Hollywood would be loath to follow down the financial-desperation-as-entertainment rabbit hole.
That being said, Squid Game: The Challenge sat at No. 1 on Netflix’s list of Top 10 English-language shows for the first two weeks after its release, racking up 20.5 million views in its first week alone. Streaming money talks, and Hollywood appears to be all ears.
Who is Haylee Baylee?
Known online by her username haleyybaylee, Hayley Kalil is an influencer, model, scientist, and former beauty pageant winner who appeared in Sports Illustrated in 2018. After winning the magazine’s model search in 2017, she’s garnered tens of millions of followers across various social media platforms — her appearance on Win the Mall will mark her debut as a television host. She’s received an unprecedented level of social media growth within a few short years, and has collaborated with major entertainment stars such as Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and Jacob Elordi.
She made headlines in 2024 after receiving backlash for posting a video of herself lip-syncing to the alleged Marie Antoinette quote “let them eat cake,” while wearing an expensive gown near the Met Gala. In a follow-up apology video, she admitted that her initial post “unlocked the rage of millions of people.” Amid rising economic turmoil in the United States, Kalil’s video struck many people as insensitive.
The Entertainment Industry is Operating as Designed
Hollywood has learned nothing new, I should say. It’s making money according to a well-established business model that exploits the financial vulnerabilities of an economically-depressed viewer base for profit — business is booming.
Despite antipathy towards elites approaching French Revolution highs, Netflix has renewed another season of Squid Game: The Challenge. Applications are open, and an industry that markets get-rich-quick competitions to the needy and televises the results — while morally bankrupt — is certain to sustain itself economically, until the economy itself bottoms out. While influencers might survive the fallout, their fans might not be so lucky.
(featured image: TikTok)
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