Thousands of Big Brother fans flocked to the show's 24/7 live broadcast on August 24 to watch Season 25 contestants compete in an intense competition in which contestants had to... hold down a button with their hands. It lasted nearly 14 hours.
Perhaps the only thing more boring than pressing buttons all night long is watching other people do it, but the loyal Big Brother Crown the winner.
Fans watched it all through four hidden cameras, each showing a different angle of the match - including that of a contestant who couldn't attend and had to watch from her living room, bored to death.
"There's nothing else like it on TV or anywhere," podcaster Taran Armstrong, who provides daily live broadcast recaps on the BB version of the Rob Has a Podcast, tells Bustle. "Watching a season of Big Brother while keeping up with the live broadcast, [the regular show] felt inadequate. It felt like I was watching through a dirty window, like I was seeing bits and pieces, but I wasn't actually Know what happened."
If you're not familiar with the "Big Brother" phenomenon, it's kind of like the real world with higher stakes. A motley group of "houseguests" from across the United States are locked in a "house" (a Los Angeles sound stage) and completely cut off from the outside world for nearly three months, with the goal of surviving eviction every week and winning the grand prize of $750,000 .
The 24/7 online live broadcast has been part of the series since its inception in 2000, allowing viewers to follow the contestants' every move, from washing dishes and defrosting chicken wings to doing laundry and even taking a shower (you can only watch from the head up) . Many of the TV show's exciting moves, such as veto compensation that could save tenants from eviction, were not shown on the air. But the thriving BB X community, some of whom call themselves live feeders, wants to see it all anyway.
As they freely admit, a lot of it is boring. “It’s horrifying how repetitive people are,” Armstrong said. "[But] if someone followed my life 24/7, they'd probably hear the same story 50 times." Still, he added, "Even if things are slow or boring in theory, anything can happen at any time. Knowledge will keep you going.”
Behavioral scientist Dr. Josh Klapow has a name for this behavioral principle: "intermittent reinforcement." "Every once in a while, we hear something popular, something new, something controversial, something that makes us laugh," he said. "If something happens every five minutes, I'm not worried that I'm going to miss anything, but you don't know when it's going to happen. So you just have to say once or twice, 'Wow, look at that.' "Now that you're addicted, you'll watch more often."
Armstrong also believes that even the silliest conversations between houseguests can reveal the contestants' strategies as they work to win the affection of others - a key element of the game. "You could have [Season 25 contestant] Cirie [Fields] talking to someone for two hours, just making small talk, asking about their relationship, just hanging out," he said. “But that conversation was a great example of how to play the social game.”
Arguably, interest in live streaming is similar to the growing popularity of “day in the life” videos that have proliferated on TikTok and Instagram. Clarissa Silva, a behavioral scientist and founder of the Your Happiness Hypothesis Method, says "vanity validation"—which plagues many social media users who get validation through likes and comments rather than life experiences— — may lead people to compare themselves to others online. Both "day in the life" videos and BB live broadcasts provide ideal material for such comparisons.
“Vanity validation creates in some people a need to understand other people and the way they live their lives,” she said. "Sometimes it might be out of admiration, sometimes it might be jealousy, or just curiosity. All three lead to a common question: What is it that you do that I don't? Observing someone's daily life can be considered Get a blueprint for achieving your dreams in life, or what is considered not to be done. ”
But unlike videos on Instagram and TikTok, live broadcasts are unfiltered and unedited. "Knowing that you can see what this reality show is really like brings me back to my senses and continues to attract a loyal fan base," Armstrong said of the messages. "It's just a group of people in a house being filmed. But we're human beings and we like to observe other people and be able to see what's actually going on, without any filter or any editing trying to mislead you."
We may not like being watched, but if Big Brother proves anything, it's that we don't mind watching.
