NOT BDP

What frustrates me about reality TV - and I've watched some shite in my time - is the fact that it has (gasp!) gone downhill. Now, I'm not arguing for reality TV. After all, it has spawned innumerable horrible Z-listers, but I remember the first couple of Big Brothers.

There were people with some intelligence in there, rather than the single token 'boffin', as the tabloids insist on calling them. There were people who didn't shout and scream constantly. There were people who didn't feel the need to show off their genitals, boast about how many people they'd slept with, or try to hump every other breathing creature in the house. There was a guitar-playing Irish lesbian ex-nun, for christ's sake, and I wanted her to win. Oh, I wanted her to win. Because she was nice, she was intelligent, she was musical, she was funny, and I just liked her.

She didn't win. Craig - who I'd originally dismissed - won. And gave the money to a friend who desperately needed an operation, but couldn't afford it.

Now, I also admit to being hooked. Every year I'd watch avidly, despite my original vow of abstinence.
This year, I watched the original show, y'know, the one where we find out a bit about them.

Oh my god. Is this seriously what the British mindset has become? A baying mob more concerned with exactly how quickly a girl shows her nipples than a sight (please!) of intelligent, funny people having amusing and pithy conversations for nine weeks?
It's not like any of them are attractive!

I think this is best described by the fact that 'Sam' (boasted that she had three vibrators and wore them all out. Whoop - de - doo.), having been voted out third, then appeared, over the course of the next five days, in (I believe) five different publications. One in a bikini, two in lingerie, one in a boob tube, and one naked.

Why are people subscribing to the 'cult of celebrity'? And if they're going to, then why pretend that this girl is a celebrity?

ETA that I missed my original point to this... two of this year's contestants BOASTED that they had never read a book. And they weren't reviled! That is all.

Gosh, this post sorted of wandered into a rant. Sorry about that.

On the other hand, a good thing is this book:
Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time by Michael Shermer.
Got it from Amazon today, am partway through. Excellent writing.

I'm a boffin.