CULTURE+MEDIA
My Adventure as a ‘Big Brother’ Audience Member
It was August of 2009. A simpler-yet-still-complex time, where Reality TV hadn’t yet invaded our ballot box
One of my guilty pleasures has long been the CBS reality show Big Brother. An American adaptation of a reality program that originated in The Netherlands, Big Brother has been a summer staple since 2000. Casts of anywhere from 10 to 17 “houseguests” spend the summer isolated together in a large house built on a Los Angeles studio lot. Hundreds of cameras and microphones catch their every word and whisper.
Houseguests vote each other out every week, Survivor-style (although most international versions of Big Brother, alternately, allow the at-home viewing audience to evict the houseguest via online polling or telephone).
The following account is from more than thirteen years ago, when I was still living in Los Angeles. I found myself in the unique position to be part of the studio audience for one of Big Brother’s live Thursday night eviction episodes.
Spoilers for the U.S. version of Big Brother are contained within this article. Also, I want to give a sincere shout-out to Season 8 (which aired in the Summer of 2007) contestant Kail Harbick, who joined Medium…
