Big Brother is Fake!

Big brother is supposed to be a reality show, staged in a large comfortable house, furnished with Jacuzzi, Steam bath, large furniture, running water, enough food, alcohol, VIP suite, other luxuries and lots of surveillance cameras to monitor every single movement made by the housemates. Currently ranked as the number one ‘reality show’ in Africa, Big Brother is premised on a group of people who have been handpicked from various African Countries after series of auditions, to mingle and foster relationships in a house where they are isolated and barred from having any interaction whatsoever with the outside world.

The show which runs for almost three months features mostly housemates who are upbeat about fame and how to make it in life by scheming all kind of strategies and plots to outwit each other for the grand prize. Whilst the real objective of the reality show is yet to be known, speculation holds that, it serves as a platform to watch people closely through the lenses of Big Brother’s all-seeing-eye as housemates live their lives.

Apart from the fact that it is a game and sometimes entertaining, most people are wondering what’s in for them since all the fun starts and ends there in the marooned house. Undisputedly, the game if played well, presents a platform for some of the housemates to sell their brands in all African homes and abroad, whiles, some are about finding love by taking their chances. Others are about the fame while some are purposely there for the grand prize which reminds us of choices and preferences.

However, my motivation to write this piece is to dispute the fact that BIG BROTHER is a reality show because whereas the ‘show’ holds true, same cannot be said about the ‘reality’. You don’t congregate a bunch of young men and women in a house and dictate how they should live by telling them what they should do at appreciable time intervals and still call it reality.

Big Brother practically tells them what to wear, where to go and sometimes, what to eat. It tells them when to engage in a task or bath whilst showing their nudity to anyone who cares to watch and I don’t see how these constitute being real with one’s self. 

Reality show is what you see when you enter Makola and Ikeja markets in Ghana and Nigeria respectively. It is what you see when you observe from the corner of the road and see people struggling and shoving each other just to board vehicles that will convey them to their places of work while the snake of private cars honk all through the traffic jam to work.

Reality is waking up in the morning and planning what to do or how to add value to one’s self, not just gossip, chit-chat about everything and anything or saunter around a demarcated perimeter to which anything contrary attracts a stroke and probably sends you packing home. 

I understand people are really living very luxurious lives where they just relax at home and watch the globe turn around without a tinge of a worry about how to feed, but it is different when you camp a group of people with an objective, by feeding, clothing and offering them almost anything basic a person requires to live a healthy and a clean life should at most be a ‘live show’ but not a reality show because we watch live football matches every time but do not refer to them as reality shows.