Big Brother Craze

This morning I stumbled on one person’s report of what the new theme will be for Big Brother 8. The report comes from TV Grapevine, which is a well-established site for reality TV news and gossip.

As I mentioned before, there are always stories and rumours flying around before any new season of BB starts up. Everyone involved wants to get the scoop, of course! Before the All Stars season, for example, there were reports of a private section of the house where those who didn’t make it in to the main house would be sequestered, and they’d have a chance to get into the game through competitions or audience votes. That’s just the very tip of the iceberg.

I do want to point out though that the person making this report is respected in the TV Grapevine community, and wouldn’t make their information public unless they had good reason to believe it was true. Since I don’t want to put spoilers on the front page if I can avoid it, click on the link below to read the details of this report.

The new theme for Big Brother 8, according to sysop at TV Grapevine, is school bullies versus those they bullied.

Now, if that’s all there is to the theme, then I agree with the poster that it’s a very sensitive issue that shouldn’t be brought into a frivolous summer reality show. Especially if they’re pitting bullies against the people that they actually bullied in school. Not only will we end up with yet another season of houseguests that know each other before going into the house, but there is potential for some serious conflict here. Sure, that’s what the producers want, but at what cost?

This is just my personal assumption, but generally when there is a twist of this nature, the contestants themselves don’t know about it before they enter the house. So imagine that there are at least 6 people going into the house, expecting that they’ll be spending their summer with a group of strangers and trying to win half a million dollars. Suddenly they find out that the people who bullied them in school will be joining them and spending the next couple of months locked in the house with them. If this is indeed the theme, I don’t think the BB producers have any idea what sort of reactions they’ll get.

I wasn’t bullied in school myself, thank goodness. But I can only imagine the heartache and self-esteem issues that those who were bullied deal with. I’d hate to see our fun summer entertainment turn into something truly nasty and degrading.

Let’s hope that this report turns out to be nothing but a rumour that will quickly fade away.

Spiffy logo screen cap comes courtesy of Dingo’s Hamster Watch.

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