The unbearable agony of watching people fail at reality shows

One of the things currently consuming my life is season 24 of Big Brother. Primarily, there’s no way for this not to consume my life as, even if this season was not interesting (it is interesting!), Zach would fill me in on every single thing happening.

Big Brother is strange for a bunch of reasons, but the biggest to me is how it completely captures the always-online aesthetic of the modern age. Or, maybe just how it shaped it to begin with. There is simply too much Big Brother to consume. It’s impossible to watch every single second of it, unless you happen to live the life of the obsessive hermit or never really get impromptu zoom meetings thrown on your calendar.

Here is everything that exists in the “you must consume this to fully appreciate the storyline of Big Brother”

1. A Wednesday wrapup show

2. A Thursday live eviction show

3. A Sunday show

4. 24-hour live feeds, that go down at various points in the day with little indication of when they’ll come back online.

5. Joker’s updates - a GeoCities-inspired fan site that tracks the major details happening in the house.

6. Big Brother Twitter/Reddit/Tumblr, etc etc. - The hordes of die-hard fans who create masterpieces of complex alliance maps that rival the savage raid diagrams of FFXIV.

While the Big Brother life consumes

all of the house guests, it also consumes all of us—the titular Big Brothers.

Anyway, this season has been a masterpiece of a theory that I’ve been developing around reality TV: people say far too much and should simply stop telling everyone their strategy. It’s also been a wild ride, with dumb, offensive, and outright racist things happening every single week.

A short list of what’s been happening:

• A contestant has a mental breakdown on the live feeds and self-evicts.

• Numerous contestants blame Taylor, the former Miss Michigan USA and overall pure treasure of this season. Oh it just happens that she’s a black woman, I’m sure that has nothing to do with why she’s blamed (the joke is it absolutely does!)

• Week after week house guests continues to blame Taylor for saying something she obviously didn’t say.

• A former cop, (who says that excitedly to a black man from Chicago as if they share some comradery over love for authority) has a breakdown because she chooses to throw a challenge and that’s hard on her “integrity” She goes home. Primarily because her number 1 in the household, Daniel, doesn’t use the veto on her.

• Daniel yells at Taylor because “she knows what she did” while Taylor eats Lays and chuckles, assuming he’s joking.

• The house finally decides that Taylor isn’t an evil mastermind, but is in fact just the victim of the delusional state (and outright lies) of someone who self-evicted from the house after having a mental breakdown.

• An alliance is formed to take down the other alliance, helmed largely by Kyle who is establishing himself as a force of good and powerhouse of the BB house.

• JK turns out Kyle actually approaches (on the live feeds!) two other house guests and pitches them that there might be a cookout V2 (basically saying all the people of color are aligning as they did in season 23)

• Michael (who is having a stellar run) and Brittany sit on this information till it’s most convenient for their game (a fact the other people of color do bring up once this all blows up).

• Kyle has a horrible week where he spends hours in the diary room, apparently threatening self-eviction. His agency drops him and he becomes overnight a villain of the season.

• Kyle has to apologize to everyone on national TV one week, get sent home, and then the next week explain everything that happened to the jury house, which is all filled with people of color.

Some other stuff happens too. Like a contestant breaks her ankle and says too many witty punchlines and one-liners.

But ultimately the most frustrating part of watching Big Brother, or frankly any reality show is when the contestants wax poetic about values like integrity and honesty, and justice. Person after person seem to make the same baseless claim that what’s more important than playing a ruthless reality show game that could win them 750k is that they maintain their integrity.

And sure enough, halfway through the season, some contestant who had no chance of winning in the first place will get up teary-eyed, turn to the camera and repeat some boring line about how they “can’t believe they got lied to.”

This is especially annoying because the whole point of a reality show where the last person standing gets 750k is that every single person there is going to lie to you. Even the people that bring you to the final two or final three (whichever your reality show of choice practices) do so under the assumption they can beat you. Sure, you can form genuine friendships, but to act flabbergasted when another contestant lies to you to secure their own game probably says more about your lack of gameplay than their integrity.

The worst offenders of this are the members of the Survivor jury who spend their limited time yelling at the person who voted them out as if they were personally wronged by such a despicable action. They’ll always get a little red in the face and sanctimonious as they yell at the person (usually a woman) who knifed them in the back and how this proves they’re not worthy of the grand prize.

“If only,” they say “someone would give me the prize for being such a fine upstanding citizen and playing the game the RIGHT way.” In this case, the right way means painting yourself as the physically buff challenge winner on the island who will win more challenges if people don’t gang up and vote them out the moment they have the chance. The shock and awe that comes from these burly men who again and again get outwitted by the person on the island or in the house who are small, frail, and rarely succeeding at challenges, makes you wonder if they even watch the shows they’re applying for.

The only other thing more infuriating than the self-righteous losers are the current players who can’t see everyone scheming against them. These are the people that get dragged to the finale only to have zero votes for them, despite having numerous chances to take out the obvious soon-to-be winner and not taking them. How many times have I watched as a survivor contestant doesn’t backstab the obvious threat, setting them up for future wins, but also establishing themselves (in the eyes of the jury) as a move-maker, a schemer, someone willing to play to win?

Regardless, I’m excited to see what happens next. And, despite knowing how futile this wish is, truly do hope that Taylor manages her way into the final two and wins the 750k she so rightfully deserves.

Extra maybe-related thoughts

• Joseph is decidedly hot, in a way that makes me feel bad about my own body and poor life choices.

• Someone who describes themselves as a “Elvis cover artist” is more-than-likely not someone to build a friendship with.

• One thing you can do when you’re on live TV is actually never say something racist. It’s really easy! Tons of people do it!

• Julie chen moonves (but only after her husband was accused of sexual harassment and stepped down) always seems like she is just here for a paycheck, which is sooooo refreshing compared to their sister reality show: Survivor, where Jeff seems like he desperately needs the love and affection of the cast members and the American public.

• I would not go on a show that films me 24 hours. I could not do it. I do not need America as a concept to weigh in on me or my values.