7/6/2005: Tube: Big Brother
You may have noticed the link to Dingo's HamsterWatch to the right - that's my "Big Brother" site.
I like reality tv in general better than scripted tv - I don't like the elaborate competitions or the sensationalist way it's edited, packaged, and promoted, but I like the fact that it gives us real people reacting to various situations and to other people in the often unexpected ways that real people do. I like reality tv for the sideways insight it gives us into human behavior, and for the weird social experimentation that it is.
"Big Brother" isn't the best reality show, but it is the only one that lets us watch it unfold. We get to see what goes on before the editors and writers get hold of it and hack away at it to give us the 30 or 60 minutes a week that they'd like to present to us. It's also a plus that it's on three times a week throughout summer.
The show is also a bit different than most others in that its contestants run on paranoia, cabin fever, and very little else, especially towards the latter part of the season, and those are good things to throw in when doing a social experiment.
"Big Brother" is not a huge show here in the USA, but it has versions that run in dozens of other countries using the same format: 12 to 14 people thrown in a house together with no tv, radio, music, or outside contact, eliminating each other one by one while being watched at all times. I don't know what it means that the show is much more popular in other countries than here but I am pretty sure it means something. In many countries it makes front page news; in the UK and other nations with legal gambling, betting shops take wagers on BB's weekly & final outcomes right alongside the horses.
The first year of "Big Brother" the 24/7 webcast feeds were free, and I started watching them early on. That's when I discovered how incredibly skewed the edited tv version was compared to what actually happened, and that added a whole new layer of interest for me, that's what hooked me. This is the show's sixth year and the feeds cost about $25 for the summer now. The cast is made up of more actor/model hopefuls every year as opposed to ordinary people, but it's still fascinating for the most part. Everyone's got some insecurities no matter how good-looking or confident they may seem and "Big Brother" always brings them out. Those are the things that make people tick.
It's also fun to watch the liars interact with both the gullible & the distrustful; the backstabbers with the naive; the cocky with the meek. It's like a super-compact demo of Darwinian principles in action, and the fittest are not always who they seem. And sometimes it's just downright hilarious - whether we're laughing at them or with them is irrelevant, and we get equal doses of both.
Last year I started the HamsterWatch site a few weeks into the series, posting pics captured from the web feeds with short recaps of what was going on inside the house each day along with my opinions of why people were acting like they were, and also busting the producers for how badly they butchered each episode's events from what had really gone down. It was great fun and I was able to be as snarky as I wanted since I was doing it mostly just to amuse myself. But it also reminded me how much I enjoyed writing. I had a job at the time that had been slowly sucking the life out of me, and I hadn't quite realized how much until I was doing something creative and fun again, something that got generally good reactions from people, and something that I loved doing. I left that job about two months into the BB season and haven't regretted it at all since.
I'm not proud of this obsession with watching the "hamsters" inside the house (and it is very much like watching captive hamsters in a cage), but I am proud of the work I do at HamsterWatch.com.. maybe one day it'll lead to a nice opportunity for me that will help pay the bills along with providing me with a creative and snarky outlet.
The problem with this obsession of mine is that it'll take just about every bit of time I can find for the next three months. It isn't that it takes all day to put the site together each day, or that there's something happening on the feeds all the time (far from it!) but it's more a question of opportunity: something could happen at any time, and when it does, I hope to be monitoring the feeds so I can catch it. There are also a number of online communities I enjoy who share the BB obsession.. 10 years of being online has given me a pretty cynical attitude about most online communities so I take that enjoyment where I find it.
All this means that Another2cents.com is likely going to slow down quite a bit for the next three months. There aren't a ton of you visiting here regularly, but there are a few of you (and I appreciate it!) so I hope to continue posting links and cams and hopefully the occasional article or review, but regularity here is going to slow down a lot. I'll be back though, and in the meantime I'll still be around at HamsterWatch.com - click on over and take a peek.
