Why do people ( some normally intelligent well balanced individuals) watch and get invested in this sort of (IMHO) s*1te!
It's not often you see these type of people without their PR to save them, 24 hours a day is a long time to keep acting as someone you are not, look at Roxanne Pallet for example.
What surprises me is my wife is easily in the top 5% for intelligence and she loves all what I call crap tv.
Can honestly say I've never watched it but caught a glimpse once on a report of George Galloway. acting like a cat on his knees, purring at Rula Lenska. Put me off altogether.
I watched one series of it, the first I think, the one with Nasty Nick (who wasn't all that nasty at all really). And I watched a bit of the celebrity one with the racism allegations that the late Jade Goody was in. I found them both interesting at the time as it was different to anything I'd seen before and could be engrossing (and the house mates weren't manipulated as much then as I believe they have been since, which gave a genuine sense of reality). But I never felt like watching it again. After familiarity had crept in and the thrill of the new had dissipated, there was no substance to it. But then there isn't any to football either, the obsession for which many people find baffling.
When it first came out ( 2000 I think) it was shown 24 hours a day, people would be sat in there living rooms watching them sleep at 3 in the morning, looking back that was mental
I think a good show would be a series of treadmills set up around tinkers pond. Kipper jackson, dancing Doris and pennies ask various celebrities a series of questions and for every answer they don't like the sound of, the treadmill gets 0 2mph faster. The winner is the one not eaten by the grandfather pike.
For me when they leave the house t he so called celebrities left in should hear silence then a single rifle shot would ring out, I would watch it then.
They aren't really for me either. Like many I watched the first series of big brother or at least some of it and maybe some of the second as I seem to remember the gay Irish guy winning it but since then no. But there are a few reasons they're so popular. One is they're very easy to talk about to other people at work or school or college or whatever. People watch them and talk to their friends about how a particular person is going to develop, what they're like really and discuss particular incidents or moments. A soap or anything other series is drawn out with character development and storylines dragged out for weeks or months (even if a season is all released on netflix at once it's still expected that it may take a few weeks to watch them all for most people). These kind of shows like big brother etc aren't like that. There's no filler, no attempt to drag the story out, it's just key moment or flashpoint after flashpoint. Argument after argument or relationship after relationship. That makes it much easier to discuss around the water cooler and that creates more buzz and more viewers as people have fear of missing out. If you miss last night's big brother how do you join in the conversation at work today? Miss love island how do you talk to your girl mates at school when they're all talking about it? The second reason is that it's easy TV. It might seem daft that intelligent people want to watch easy TV but if you're stressed from work and barely hanging on to any kind of sanity which will help people unwind easier? A hard-hitting documentary on a paedophile? a drama about murder and crime? Or a celebrity squeezing and shrieking while being covered in maggots? Thats one of the biggest reasons people watch it. It's nonsense, it means nothing and hurts nobody and it's a way to just forget all of your troubles and watch something that you really don't care about at all because in reality there's no substance to it. The third reason, which I think is often forgotten, is loneliness. Watch peaky blinders and you aren't there, you're just watching a TV show. It's good but it's a TV show. Watch big brother or I'm a celebrity and you're watching a real conversation taking place. It might sound stupid but for many it feels like they're part of it, like they're there. Same goes for Gogglebox. They're watching a conversation and in their head they're agreeing or disagreeing with what's being said. We've got a guy at work who is fairly intelligent, very sensible, quite OCD in a way that you'd describe as boring probably, but all he watches on TV is sport or reality shows. I'm a celeb, big brother, Gogglebox, love island, traitors, the circle. He watches every single one of them. I know the reason, it's because he's a single dad who never goes out. Apart from work it's his only 'interaction' with other people even if it's not real. Probably not the simple witty answer you were looking for but I think there's a lot of truth in it and it's why I never look down on people for their taste in TV or music or anything like that. My theory is if it puts a smile on someone's face then it's a good thing. Oh, they're also all ****
Having seen bits of it ( my missus is one of the viewers) one thing I would say that is truly shocking is Sharon Osbourne's head, she looks like the Riddlers my kids used to watch!
This. We all need a certain amount of tripe in our lives. Whether it comes from Big Brother, Gogglebox, or Classic Emmerdale (my personal slice of tripe), it doesn't matter. Brains need time off. I can quite happily spend a couple of hours watching an old Bond movie or a Hammer horror, simply because it's a nice way to unwind. Mind you, I'm not really sure what I'm unwinding from, cos I've been retired 7 years. I'm probably just doing it out of habit.