18th August another reset day
Watching old episodes of Big Brother today, slowly after hours and hours of sweating starting to recover once again and hopefully for the last time. Big Brother is a show were people allow themselves to be recorder 24/7 and the public vote who they want to keep in and get out. It aired in the UK.
The clash of personalities in the Big brother house, the displays of temper from people losing it after only tow weeks makes for a fun show to watch. Not only because of the drama, but because there's enough drama. It's the vibe of seeing people react to each other, and though the reality show was edited into narratives, you could also watch the show live 24/7 back then, and the live presentation was not at all at odds with what viewers saw play out on live feed.
Culturally, and philosophically one could write about Big Brother, as a microcosm of society, and dull things like that. The society of Big Brother 2006 is so far away from ours it may aswell be taking place on the moon. Remote enough to recognise, maybe, but a place left to rest untraveled now and not really impressive enough to revisit. Such a waste, I think, reading all this post-modernist prattle about "Reality TV" and the constructed nature of it. In reality TV these cultural writers found their pornography. It's not that it wasn't constructed, or editorialised, I'm talking about the reality TV space, but it really is nothing compared to the mediated selves that we put forth in our feeds. There's more construction and edifice by far in the bios of twitter: "animal-lover, book-reader, feminist, don't talk to me until I've had my coffee." And so on.
Going back and watching Big Brother now what's strange his how much more authentic it is than one might expect. It really puts us to shame. Less intervention, and less narrative peddling, situations are allowed to play out, people are allowed to be who they are without constant fear of "what if this vague harm may hypothetically come from it". The villains of the show are given a fair shake at the end of the show, and some of the heroes go on to become stars in their own right, the mediocre and the boring contestants are thankfully, left to drift out of the publics consciousness. it's the mediocre and boring who should not be given platforms.