In general, I don't enjoy reality shows that revolve around some kind of contest, even if some can be watchable. To me, the competitive reality show subgenre seems based on the principles of humiliation and hierarchy. A group of experts evaluate, often in unqualifiedly obnoxious mode, a group of people clearly placed lower than them on a scale of achievement designed by television network executives. The contestants are expected to show deference to the authority of the experts. As time progresses, whether they win or lose, the contestants are meant to demonstrate gratitude for what they have learnt, and share, often misty-eyed, how they have shed their immature selves, like snakes after moulting.
Competition-based reality shows also reek of a get-rich-quick, gaming-the-system kind of air. And the shows are presented to viewers in an ambivalent tone that simultaneously celebrates and reviles the baseness of human nature. We are asked to witness how the lure of money or fame will compel humans to backstab each other, sabotage their colleagues' opportunities, and scheme to emerge victorious from a labryinth of intrigue. What such shows present--aside from any particular competition- is the principle of competition itself. And that too, at its very ugliest.
Soon -- probably within the next decade, certainly within the next two -- we'll be living in a world where what we see, what we hear, what we experience will be recorded wherever we go. There will be few statements or scenes that will go unnoticed, or unremembered. Our day to day lives will be archived and saved. What’s more, these archives will be available over the net for recollection, analysis, even sharing.
And we will be doing it to ourselves.
This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching over your shoulder, nor will it be a world of a handful of corporate siblings training their ever-vigilant security cameras and tags on you. Such monitoring may well exist, probably will, in fact, but it will be overwhelmed by the millions of cameras and recorders in the hands of millions of Little Brothers and Little Sisters. We will carry with us the tools of our own transparency, and many, perhaps most, will do so willingly, even happily.
I call this world the Participatory Panopticon.
