Reflections On Fat Bear Week

Unbeknownst to me (until yesterday), Fat Bear Week has been a big event for the past ten years. As far as I can tell, it's like a reality show in which the contestants are bears, instead of humans. And unlike some human reality shows where the goal is to lose as much weight as possible, the goal here seems to be to gain as much weight as possible. As with other reality shows, there can be drama between contestants and – apparently because the bears really want to win – sometimes even violence.

Earlier this year – perhaps around the same time that one of the bears in the competition (32 Chunk) attacked a cub belonging to a rival bear (128 Grazer) in the Alaskan wilderness – another group of contestants were competing in another reality show in the Nevada heat. Beast Games is an upcoming reality-competition show which, despite the name, seems to involve human contestants. A few weeks ago, five of those contestants filed a lawsuit against the show's