Hacker Cinema
The Celebrity Apprentice
2004 · TV series · 60 min episodes · 15 seasons
Created by Mark Burnett
The ultimate sixteen-week job interview where eighteen Americans compete in a series of rigorous business tasks, many of which include prominent Fortune 500 companies and require street smarts and intelligence to conquer, in order to show the boss that they are the best candidate for his companies. In each episode, the losing team is sent to the boardroom where they are judged on their performance in the task. One person is fired and sent home.
3 negative8 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
I’m not sure we’re equipped as a society, otherwise why would marketing budgets be so high?
I know adults who voted for Trump because they believed the apprentice gave them an unvarnished view of his character and decision making prowess in the real world. My own grandmother would cite episodes of the show.
Money and name recognition. If it wasn't for the TV show 'Apprentice', it is doubtful that people would have known who he was. That show is what established his (completely fabricated) reputation as a successful, skillful businessman, and he was able to ride that wave all the way to the White House.
Kelly Perdew got famous winning Donald Trump's The Apprentice reality TV show (before Shark Tank). Now he runs Moonshots Capital - I interviewed him what he learned from his life experience.
In typical Vox fashion, that article is really stretching to make a point.
A few examples:
- "Trump Management Corporation" accused of racism, not Trump himself
- Trump pays for ad saying “Central Park Five” should be executed. They were innocent. But apparently that's racist?
- In The Apprentice TV show, Trump said of a black person “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything. That's racist?
- Trump proposed idea for The Apprentice - “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.” That's racist?
- Trump claimed, “I heard [Obama] was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
Poor taste? Tactless? Unpresidential? Sure.
Racist? Not really.
Trump's net worth is actually measurably lower than what his inheritance would have been worth if it were invested in index funds.
Also, while some of Trump's lavish expenses are pretty much just lavish expenses (business jets and the like), some of his superficially ridiculous personal expenses, like gold-plating half of his entire penthouse apartment in Trump Tower[1], don't necessarily hurt his net worth that much because he could always sell the tower with the tacky gold-plated penthouse to someone else who could extract some value by removing the tacky gold plating and having two valuable assets left over: (a) a penthouse apartment in a Manhattan high-rise and (b) gold.
Most of Trump's losses came from a variety of failed business ventures, which isn't necessarily a huge criticism. Some people just like doing a bunch of business ventures and they don't all have to succeed to be a net positive. It's just that if Donald Trump spent the same lavish amounts of money and invested less money in his own ventures and more money in index funds, he would be richer today.
Of course, in this hypothetical scenario, would he become a cartoonish real-life personification of American capitalism, host a reality TV show, get a lot of Twitter followers, and develop the dedicated fanbase necessary to eventually be elected President? Probably not.
[1] I'm not entirely making this up, though my only source is a foggy memory of the first season of The Apprentice, when Donald Trump invites the guests to tour his penthouse apartment.
My ranking of Dragons Den series:
Canada (Kevin/Robert from Shark Tank are in some seasons) UK Ireland
You can also watch the UK version of The Apprentice and Young Apprentice (teens). The US versions of the traditional The Apprentice are a bit old and the Celebrity Apprentice is not worth watching.
You can do it like on the TV show "The Apprentice", and the team with the most profit wins. Simple.
"I asked him about his unwillingness to do what others have done (at the time it was drive faster than the speed limit on an empty road) "
The above (parent comment) as well as your comment "I pulled all the money out super excited about my find. He explained it wasn't mine" ... well, I can't agree that it teaches the proper lesson, even to a child.
Forgetting whether he is even right "it isn't yours" (I could argue against this) I think that's exactly the type of rigidity that teaches someone not to appreciate the nuance that you need to actually make real decisions in life. It just teaches black and white and unfortunately things aren't typically black and white.
I'm reminded of a time on "The Apprentice" where a candidate who was favored by Trump told him something claiming to be honest and thinking it was going to get him ahead and instead Trump "fired him". Forgetting we are talking about a TV show here (and obvious drama) life is full of nuances which you have to navigate. Being "too" honest can also send a message that you are not flexible and willing to consider the circumstances.
As far as "drive faster than the speed limit on an empty road" (the parent comment) the devil is in the details. Driving 56 in a 55 mile per hour zone is not a problem. In fact driving 60 isn't and at least where I live 65 isn't either. Cops typically never give tickets without some slack. And there is a reason for that.
If I interviewed someone and they claimed to not drive over the speed limit I wouldn't give any bonus points for that I'd actually take points away.
To me (and with all due respect to the parent commenters grandfather) when I hear things like this I think something is trying to prove honesty a bit to much and (once again not to imply the parent commenters grandfather is such a person) that is the type of person I actually watch out for sometimes.
You could take it a step further and turn your startup into a reality TV show. Make it something like Jersey Shore mixed with the Apprentice. If you add enough drama and sexual tension it wouldn't really have to be about anything to make it interesting.
I don't know how popular it is, but I've faced it. I now only tend to associate with people in the lifestyle or who have aspirations to work for themselves anyway.
I'm guessing it's a lot less common nowadays, though, simply because entrepreneurship and business have become "cool" thanks to the popularity of the Internet and TV shows like Dragon's Den (Shark Tank, to those of you in the US) and The Apprentice. In the last 90s, though, when I first became self employed, people did react a bit weirdly!
I once heard one of the participants from the first season of the Apprentice speak. One of the assignments her team was given was to take a business taxiing people about via bicycle and make it as profitable as possible.
Most the teams decided to jump on the idea of selling advertising. Her team had the insight to realize they weren't just selling advertising on a taxi-bike but they were selling advertising on a national television show. Needless to say they won that round. This is what the third team sounds like to me. Legitimate.