Let’s Get Real: Social Media Lessons from Netflix’s ‘The Circle’
I’m not a fan of reality TV. I don’t watch ‘The Bachelor’, ‘The Real Housewives’, and I could never get into ‘Jersey Shore’ when that was a thing.
But, after hearing that Netflix’s new reality series, ‘The Circle’, was essentially a social media experiment, the marketing nerd in me decided to give it a shot. The first 30 minutes of the pilot episode were cringey and oh-so trashy but somehow I just couldn’t turn away. They had me laughing, empathizing, and discovering social media gold.
So, What’s ‘The Circle’ All About?
To give you a quick overview of the show, eight contestants move into an apartment building but never actually meet each other face-to-face. Instead, they all interact through a voice-activated app called The Circle. All of the players can choose to enter The Circle as themselves, or they can choose to be a catfish. One of the OG players, a guy named Seaburn, chose to catfish as his girlfriend Rebecca because he claimed that women get more likes on social media than men. (Debatable.)
The point of the game is to interact with other players through private messages, group chats, and app games with the intention of becoming the most likable in the group. Rankings take place every two episodes, and the two highest-ranked…
