Why is it when reality shows become closed microcosms of society only the nasty survive and only the vile remain? I’m now in my eleventh season of watching Big Brother on CBS, and this year, I’m close to packing it in and giving up on the show forever because when vile rats like Ronnie remain — seen below sleeping with one eye open — and all the good-hearted and trusting people are picked off one-by-one by the deliciously vicious… the rest of us are left to mourn what could have been: A fair game about social interaction without producer interference.
There is no doubt the producers play a large role in helping scheme who stays and who goes on the Big Brother set — and it seems each year the producers want the Worst of Us to stay and play and try to win $500,000.00USD.
I watch the show — mainly through live 24/7 internet feeds — because I am fascinated how easily the good people are fooled by the nasty.
Every single year the best people are routinely sent packing by the madding mob.
I suppose it is some everlasting, dimming, flickering, inner hope I hold each year that someway, somehow, the kind will outwit the wicked.
It never happens.
Lies are told and believed.
Backs are stabbed into bleeding rivulets.
Mocking and viciousness always triumph good intentions and naivete in the Big Brother house.
It is crushing to watch good people turn bad — or get turned out of the house — but with the right producers, the opposite could be true by enforcing these examples…
- Reward heroism, not histrionics.
- Provide a penalty nomination for outright cruelty.
- Punish the liar over the lie.
- Let the truth ring.
Yeah right.
“If it bleeds, it leads” is the motto of television newscasts and front page newspaper editors — and on Big Brother, the motto is quite obviously, “If it lies, it never loses.”
Some of us keep hoping the liars will be ostracized while the truth tellers survive against the odds of the human condition to one day win the game and woo our good hearts.
That’s rather unfortunate, David. I wonder if the producers can do anything to make the show better – or perhaps they love all the evil.
I think the producers love the conflict of evil triumphing over goodness, Gordon. That’s the only explanation, year after year, when the goodhearted are so easily defeated.
UPDATE:
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I will, however, respond to a few of your inquiries:
1. No, Dan last year was not a good-hearted person. He was slimy and sleazy and only pretended to be the Humble Pie Religious Boy. He won, but he won without honor.
2. No, Dr. Will is the epitome of the example of vileness we’re discussing and not a good person. He was neither sweet nor cunning. He was a flat-out liar and he played with peoples’ emotions in order to win the game. That sort of purposeful manipulation for money is the definition of cruelty for profit.
3. Yes, I am a fan of Evel Dick. I believe he is good-hearted in his core and he played the “evil game” to become something he was not. That, to me, was a masterful way to show how a kind person can rise to the top of the Big Brother house by beating the nonplussed evildoers at their own, vile, game.