It’s a Big Bother again

I haven’t decided whether to ‘get into’ Big Brother this year (the reality TV show where 12 people live together in a big house… blahdiblah). Last year, I kept an eye on the cameras and occasionally ventured into the chat rooms, but this time around, the cameras are pay-per-view, and the chat rooms don’t work properly. What’s a boy to do? Frankly, I’m more into the technology and the sociology than the anatomy.
Nonetheless, I’ve found a more interesting exercise: to watch everyone BUT the Housemates’ reactions to the house, through the online forums on the official website. At writing, it’s completely unmoderated, and there’s a big outpouring of negative sentiment right there on the official website: about the cameras, about the new rules, about the site, about the email updates… Now, I’m all for free speech and everything, but normally businesses who have a huge crowd of people screaming abuse at each other in the foyer make some attempt to remove them, or at least see what the fuss is about. In this case, nothing is being done to stop it, so I’m going to pull up a deckchair for a while and study my fellow man.
Perhaps perversely, I don’t think it’s as interesting watching the people locked in, as it is to watch the people *locked out*.