What Reality TV Can Teach Us About Democracy

Reality TV was a huge part of my childhood. Starting with the first season of Survivor in the summer of 2000 (which is apparently on Hulu and I am looking forward to re-watching sometime soon, if only to hear, in proper context, that amazing bit in the finale where Sue tells Kelly that, if she saw her dying of thirst in the desert, she wouldn’t give her a drink of water) - from then on, I was near obsessed with that genre of reality-competition show. You know, how normal kids like baseball or whatever.

The peak of my obsession was probably season two of The Mole, a show that no one ever seems to talk about or remember, but which I found absolutely fascinating. (It was hosted, incidentally, by Anderson Cooper. Which means that, sadly, the most attention the show gets these days probably comes from people who, for whatever reasons of their own, are reading through the Anderson Cooper Wikipedia page at two in the morning.) Basically, the premise of The Mole was that one player was actually there to sabotage the group’s performance in competitions (he or she was “the mole”) and everyone else was trying to figure out who that was. There were also supposedly hidden clues in every episode for viewers who were also trying to deduce who was “the mole.” So all throughout season two (which initially premiered on my tenth birthday but then got bumped to the summer of 2002 because no one was watching it) - I recorded every episode on VHS so I could re-watch them, looking for clues. I was convinced that a player named Al was the mole. (He wasn’t.) But I must have watched some episodes as many as ten times. (The summer of 2002 was part of the long drought between the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books, my other great childhood obsession.)

It gets worse. Not only did I watch every episode of shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and The Mole - I was also a very active member of an online community called Reality TV Talk from 2002-2005 or so. RTVT (as it was known) was a message board - pretty much the precursor to social media platforms like Reddit. Now, this is a part of my life that I don’t really think about too often these days, and when I do, it’s with a weird sense of, “Oh yeah, that did happen, didn’t it?” But it was a huge deal at the time. It was at least three-quarters of my social life for a while.

Jeff Probst, reality TV show host G.O.A.T.

I became a moderator. I wrote episode “recaps.” (A few years back, I went to see if I could find any of them, and I did. It’s kind of amazing that no one could tell they were written by an eleven-year-old. Everyone there was under the impression that I was eighteen, which might be the most innocent, pure instance of lying-about-your-age-on-the-internet ever.) I got way too involved in the drama, such as the time when one of the admins of RTVT decided to go create his own message board and the two became bitter rivals. Or when (on the first anniversary of 9/11), it was announced that RTVT was shutting down and everybody scrambled to find or create replacement message boards. Ultimately, it did not shut down, but some of the “replacement” communities lingered and changed the whole fabric of the social structure. Friendships were destroyed.

And in addition to all of this, watching these reality TV shows was a bonding experience for me and my mom. No matter what else may have been going on - at eight o’clock on Thursday night, we always found our way to the living room for Survivor. Sometimes my dad would join us for a little bit as he ate his second or third dessert of the night; when my sister got older, she was occasionally part of the group. (Although she was more of an American Idol type of person, which I watched as well but didn’t love. I remember her crying almost hysterically when her favorite contestant was voted off, though - but right now I can’t remember who that was.) But most of the time, it was me and my mom. We talked only during the commercials - that was a rule - analyzing people’s behavior, developing theories, making predictions, discussing the structure of the game.

So the point of this excessively long overture is that what I am about to discuss is part of a long and complex history of me thinking about this sort of stuff. And I think reality TV is incredibly important. If you were an anthropologist trying to understand American culture in the early twenty-first century, reality TV shows may be one of the best places for you to look. (Don’t forget: ten years ago, he-who-shall-not-be-named-in-this-post was best known as the host of The Apprentice. Coincidentally, that is perhaps the only major reality show that I never really got into, and I am retroactively proud of my past-self for that.)

And despite everyone in the world having made the trite observation that “reality TV isn’t really real,” there are a lot of things about it that are relevant to the real world. Things that reveal or suggest important truths about human behavior and experience, about politics, even about philosophy. Or, at least, things that can be taken as jumping-off points for more substantive discussions. And this is an attempt at doing just that.

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I haven’t watched a whole season of a reality show in quite a while, but I ended up watching Big Brother this past summer. The nineteenth season. Probably because I was at my mom’s house a decent amount right when the season started - and because, since I wasn’t working at all, I had a bunch of free time. I didn’t see every episode - it’s on three times a week and that’s a big time commitment even for someone who’s de facto unemployed in July and August. Certainly, I missed quite a bit when I was road-tripping with my sister from New Hampshire to New Mexico (although I did happen to catch Jessica being evicted from a motel room in Memphis, when we were too tired after a day of walking and driving to do anything but order pizza and watch TV.) But Big Brother is a show that assumes its audience is stupid and reminds you of past events almost constantly, so it’s pretty easy to get caught up.

Here’s a quick summary of the entire season: Paul did everything.

This is Paul. He's in a band that I'd have listened to in 2006.

Usually with shows like this, there are power struggles and shifting alliances and complex social structures. This season of Big Brother, though, was pretty much entirely run by one player, a guy named Paul (who, it blows my mind, is actually younger than me, which makes me feel super old). He had pretty much everyone in the house doing his bidding, and even (not inaccurately) referred to himself as a "puppet master." He got everyone to trust him; he got them to throw competitions for him; he went the entire season without being “on the block” once, without anyone really even considering putting him up. It seemed like the other players found it literally unthinkable to go against him. He manipulated and played everyone. It was the Paul show, pretty much beginning to end.

But then he lost.

If you don't know how Big Brother works, essentially it's the players who got voted out who choose the winner from the two finalists. They are called the "jury." On this season's finale, which aired live on Wednesday, Paul lost Big Brother by one vote (for the second time in a row, actually.) The person who actually won was Josh, an immature but entertaining kid (he’s younger than me, too, so I can call him that) who calls everybody he doesn't like a “meatball” and cries almost daily. But nobody in the jury actually voted for Josh. They either voted for Paul or against Paul. And obviously, more of them voted against.

Instantly after the results were revealed, the internet lit up with different interpretations of the results. (I am pretty sure RTVT is defunct by this point, but its spirit lives on.) There were basically two schools of thought on Paul's loss. One way of thinking blames the jury, saying that they were bitter (or “salty” - isn't it interesting how we now have a different taste to associate with the emotion of resentment?) because Paul manipulated and betrayed many of them. They ought to have looked beyond their emotion and recognized that, objectively, Paul played a better game than Josh and rewarded him accordingly.

The other perspective contends that “jury management” is inherently part of the game. Paul, in this view, neglected this important aspect of Big Brother - making sure that the jury members had a positive opinion of him - and lost because of it. He could not have played a good game, according to this way of thinking, because the purpose of the game is to win. His strategy was very effective at getting him to the final two, but that's it.

It is hard to wrap my head around this debate. Both perspectives seem valid in some ways. I can easily imagine my eleven-year-old self making the case for either of them. Yes, Paul lost because the jury did not vote for him - that is indisputably true. But it is a question of who we blame for that. Whose responsibility is it? That's a judgment, really. In any voting situation, in any democracy - is it the responsibility of the candidate to persuade voters by any means necessary, or is the responsibility of the voters to use the right criteria?

This makes me think of two things.

First, the 2016 election - a topic which apparently I can’t stop myself from writing about, no matter how hard I try. The debate about Paul and "jury management" shows up here as well. Do we blame Hillary Clinton for being a bad candidate, for not going out of her way to appeal to the “white working class” in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, for not being “exciting” enough to get young people and Bernie-bro-left-liberals to show up to the polls? Or do we blame the voters for being unable to put their own personal feelings aside and vote for the person who would make a better President, or for letting things like racism, sexism, xenophobia, and business-fetishization impact their votes? Does democracy mean that candidates should appeal to the base instincts of the voters? Or does it mean that voters have a moral obligation to educate themselves and vote responsibly?

You know, the working class.

And second, student council elections. This year, I've taken over running the student council at my school and I decided to have representatives chosen by elections. (You know, like every other school in the world.) This decision has made me pretty unpopular for a number of reasons, most of which just have to do with small town politics. But one of the objections, which I have heard from both kids and adults,  is that these elections are merely “popularity contests.” Always a pejorative term. But I don’t think they have to be. Isn’t it possible that the voters - the students - could be responsible and reasonable enough to vote for the person who would be the best member of Student Council? Shouldn't we trust their judgment enough? And honestly, in practice, I think most of them did just that.

Hell, I got elected to Student Council when I was in seventh grade - and, as you now know if you didn't already, I was the type of kid who spent hours a day on a message board devoted to Reality TV. Hardly a recipe for popularity. But I also had a reputation for being “smart," which is almost definitely why I got elected. (Whether that reputation was deserved is another question.) And it’s the same reason why a particular eighth-grader at my school received the votes of her classmates. She is smart and they recognized that.

I'm assuming my personal feelings on this question are starting to shine through here. I think we can and should expect voters in any democratic situation to act responsibly. Middle-school kids are capable of doing it. They are capable of voting for the smart kid. And when they don't - when they choose Zack over Cody, for instance (don't pretend you don't know exactly what episode I'm talking about) - that is their fault. It is not the fault of the candidate for not being "likable" enough. The voter is not always right. Living in a democracy should not mean that we have to lower all of our standards. It should not mean constant appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Paul should have won Big Brother this year. Even though I didn't like him all that much by the end, and there were points where I even found myself rooting for Josh, he should have won.

Cody - the supposed "alpha male" of the house, ex-Marine, stoic and emotionless to the point of appearing to hate the show that he willingly auditioned for and gave up his summer to be on - should have recognized that Paul was the real alpha and given his vote to him, despite personal feelings. (But props to the show's producers for recognizing that showing Cody's vote last would make for the most nail-biting conclusion. It sets it up like it's the "deciding vote," even though in a 5-4 decision, every vote in the majority could be framed as the deciding vote. The main thing that keeps me from believing it was all staged is the fact that Paul winning by one vote the year after he lost by one vote, and that final vote coming as a reluctant, strong-recognizes-strong from his biggest rival in the house - that's a much more satisfying story. Any competent producer, trying to rig the outcome, would have done it like that.)

Although I tell my students all the time that I expect more from them than I expect from most people - I hold them to a higher standard for spelling, grammar, coherence, and moral behavior than we hold our leaders to, apparently - that shouldn't be true. We should absolutely expect people to do better, to vote better, to learn about the issues and be responsible and mature in the decisions they make. That is what makes a democracy function. Otherwise, it is all just a "popularity contest."