We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The other Big Brother I gather from the front of The Sun on this morning’s news-stands that there is some kind of scandal in relation to the umpteenth series of the voyeur’s soap opera. One of the competitors, an exceedingly pretty young women called Makosi, turns out to be an actress. She may have been acting at some point, possibly in covert collaboration with the producers of the show.
You could have knocked me down with a feather. If they are selecting people for good-looks, exhibitionism, emotional incontinence, and absence of that untelevisual thing, interior life, then surely a crew of poets, pharmacists, dustmen and bankers is more likely than actors? And they are bound spontaneously to generate gossip for gay men and teenage girls without outside intervention. You only have to retell the uproarious stories of the last seven weeks at the office to realise that.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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More interesting even than Big Brother – if you can imagine such a thing – is the seriousness with which The Sun takes such stories. Normally rendered instantly comatose with boredom at the mere mention of BB (to give the programme its full name) I only ventured onto the Sun’s site because of this Samizdata post.
That’ll learn me…
Anyway, such is the enormity of this revelation that The Sun even has an editorial – The Sun Says – about it. After “sensationally revealing” the story its editorial says,
Which shows how little The Sun knows about the motivations of people watching daytime porn.
GM
German Big Brother had Miss Russia, but the TV audience voted her out when she gained 20+ pounds. 🙂
They also put in a couple of strippers, but they were voted out, too. There is no shortage of freelance exhibitionists anyway, they are haveing wet t-shirt constest for example, and some time ago a couple that met in the BB village (a village instead of just a house this time around) had sex for 90 minutes in the whirlpool; you only got to see that on Pay-TV, though.
BB Germany has become pretty hardcore all around. When one particpant failed his ‘challenge’ to climb a 20 storey building using a rope-ladder, they kicked him out of the house he was staying in and had him sleep in the open. The BB moderators refered to him as a clochard from then on. 🙂
Goodness knows what George Orwell would make of this. Ironic, we live in age of decreasing personal privacy, to the point where BB is no longer a useful word in the armoury of civil libertarians and becomes a show where various inadequates, fading stars and wannabee actresses cavort. Ugh.
‘The Sun’ lecturing us all on the ‘true’ meaning of reality? And ‘fairness’?
O temporae, o mores.
Participants in ‘reality’ TV shows are selected, as is everything else on TV, for one reason and one reason only – to improve ratings. ‘Reality’ and ‘fairness’ have nothing to do with it. One would think that ‘The Sun’, with its long history of pandering in pursuit of circulation, would have enough self-awareness not to be quite so ridiculous about this.
llater,
llamas
Oh, it does have self-awareness, llamas. But it keeps its circulation by being very discreet about showing it. Ditto, most of the tabloids.
One of the most valuable skills in life is to appear consistently less intelligent than you actually are and manipulate people through their reactions to that persona.
I think Ronald Reagan was a case in point regarding what Guy just said. I would argue that George W Bush is another. Presidents-wise, the antithesis, of course, is Jimmy Carter, who was dying to impress people with how intelligent and thoughtful he was.
guy herbert – point well taken.
For all their regrettable style and lack of taste, I think that tabloids in the style of ‘The Sun’ actually have a very good track record in political reporting – or as much of it as they do. One may recall, for example, the large role played in the Monica Lewinsky scandal by the National Inquirer, a US tabloid which (as I understand it) has a significant proportion of expats from the Fleet Street tabloids on its staff.
Perhaps there’s something to be said for having your reporters stand at least knee-deep in the more trivial cess-pools of society – it breeds a cynicism and skepticism which seems to serve them well. Connecting to what Verity mentioned, the reporters in the ‘better’ class of newspaper seem to be far too busy trying to impress each other with how intelligent and thoughtful they are – with the result that they seem to have lost the ability to bore down to the truth, and are easily hoodwinked.
llater,
llamas
Big Brother.com have new design… check this site
It seems both Big Brother and Survivor show contest-
ants are sadly confused. “It’s just a game!” seems to
mean it’s ok to lie, cheat or steal your way to the next
level! The Olympics are games-but you can’t lie there.
Card games, board games, all kinds of games are
played HONESTLY. When Mike jumped off the platform
in the midst of the last games, he said, “Hey, Julie, re-member Richard Hatch?” and he cited a game in which
he had saved his energy for the next part. Well it was
not Survivor, and we all know what happened to Hatch!
Julie let Mike run the game! He should have been dis-
qualified the minute he jumped off the platform!!! Sec-
onds later, Janelle was told she LOST that part of the
competition for removing her hand for a second when
Mike distracted her. BB requires honesty on their ap-plications-why not honesty in the game? And winning
should be based on who won the most challenges and
played a good clean game! Contestants have lied with
their hand on the Bible, on their mother’s grave, on
their little brother’s life, broke the promise immediately,
and said “It’s only a GAME!” Mike and Will played the
dirtiest of games, and their mothers were asked by
Julie what they thought of the way their sons were
playing the game. They both thought they were just
HILARIOUS and were proud of them! Well we know
where they got their morals! They throw around words
like ‘strategy’ and ‘alliance’ but don’t know what they
mean! I LIKE the show, but please clean it up! Thank
you! Marie
It seems both Big Brother and Survivor show contest-
ants are sadly confused. “It’s just a game!” seems to
mean it’s ok to lie, cheat or steal your way to the next
level! The Olympics are games-but you can’t lie there.
Card games, board games, all kinds of games are
played HONESTLY. When Mike jumped off the platform
in the midst of the last games, he said, “Hey, Julie, re-member Richard Hatch?” and he cited a game in which
he had saved his energy for the next part. Well it was
not Survivor, and we all know what happened to Hatch!
Julie let Mike run the game! He should have been dis-
qualified the minute he jumped off the platform!!! Sec-
onds later, Janelle was told she LOST that part of the
competition for removing her hand for a second when
Mike distracted her. BB requires honesty on their ap-plications-why not honesty in the game? And winning
should be based on who won the most challenges and
played a good clean game! Contestants have lied with
their hand on the Bible, on their mother’s grave, on
their little brother’s life, broke the promise immediately,
and said “It’s only a GAME!” Mike and Will played the
dirtiest of games, and their mothers were asked by
Julie what they thought of the way their sons were
playing the game. They both thought they were just
HILARIOUS and were proud of them! Well we know
where they got their morals! They throw around words
like ‘strategy’ and ‘alliance’ but don’t know what they
mean! I LIKE the show, but please clean it up! Thank
you! Marie