Am I gonna write about Brigette and Eric and Daddy and Cherry? Almost...

Okay, so here we go - here I am, back in Big Brother world. I spent the day, working (yes, Eye needs to make a living, too), branding another company. This involved me sitting down with two very rich people (who have no idea I do this blog, of course!) and explaining to them how I had decided their company and products had to be presented to a target demographic, in order to create a need for this demographic to consume those products (fork out their money for them, in other words). I've never used these products, myself; but that's not the point. Reality has nothing to do with marketing; I'm just finding a way to create the concept that will appease a need in anyone who comes across these products - maybe even you - that is actually just a need my words and images created, in the first place. Nobody actually needs this shit. But, you know... these rich people have to make a living. I help them do that; they rub their hands together; they give me the smallest fraction of that wealth; I pay my rent. I guess everybody's happy. Except the people who buy their shit, perhaps. By then, I don't care. I'll already be selling someone else's shit.

To think that this man - one dressed so nicely, one with such a talent that can be used in all sorts of dubious ways by big businesses - sits down at night to dissect one of the lowest - but biggest - marketing scams in the country, Big Brother! Of course, the marketing I do, very rarely affects society on any greater level than people buying some shit they don't need. That doesn't make it okay - I do it, for as little time as I have to, to make a living - but I've always been very careful never to use my skills in a situation where the public, at large, are ultimately affected on too great a scale by something too negative. That's why I hate Big Brother, in so many ways. It's the professional world I ended up making a living from, alongside my creative work, that I naturally despise having to do, at the most extreme end of everything I hate so much about it. We've had some new people come here, lately, and I suppose some of you haven't worked that much out, about me. I'm an Illusion Maker™, too. If you pay me enough money, I'll make, for you, an Illusion™. I'm quite good at it. I was a starving artiste, darling - a writer, above all - who spent his nights in seedy inner city nightclubs and warehouse communes, and eventually ended up finding financial stability (something many young starving artists never have) because I had this... "gift".

These days, many people write in and say to me, "You understand how human beings work." And in this situation, it's a compliment (well, mostly!). The world of marketing and advertising - of commercial media and entertainment production (which is all about marketing and advertising, at the end of the day) is all about understanding how you think. How you feel. What motivates you. What lies you'll believe. It wants to understand you, to control you. If you can own me - if you can effectively control me - you can control how I control others for you. That's really all it boils down to. And I have been controlled to control, for many years. I left, for a while, and tried my hand in psychology (some seemingly logical plan that this was a better way to use my capacity), but in the end, it was too much effort, and my heart wasn't in it (because it squeezed out my creative side). So, I ended up back in marketing and advertising. Because, ironically, I can do it for minimum time - at maximum wage - and still have the time and energy to do... well... something like this. I thought, throughout the day, I'd be glad to get back here.

I don't know if I am, to be honest. I mean no offense to you, personally, in saying that. We're all drudging through this atrocious season, together, after all, and this blog is a product of, but separate, to the actual show and the absurd fanfare around it. I dig it, and I'll get back on the horse, tomorrow. But after the week that had been - one with so much more "action" than we've had all season, on the one hand; but such vile action, on the other - I felt a bit exhausted by Big Brother world. By the end of this, I always am, I have to say. Brigette's gone. Okay, yay. That was the best plot-twist in all that has happened, in the past few days; I smiled, when it happened, I won't lie. But it's still difficult for me to "enjoy" it. There's still so many rather yucky elements to it - so many open questions that have the diehards on the forumboards still frothing at the mouth over the whole thing - but I'm not sure I care. I'm not sure I want to be thinking about The Little Princess™, or her father, or her... whatever he is, anymore.

And, really, whilst it's another blow to the show - and that's always fun to watch, when karma bites them on their asses - there's still the True Blue Hero Brickie™ in there - just like they want - and I still have to turn on my tv and watch that horrible young misogynist (the other one), Cherry. Cherry sickens me. And, yes, there's still Terri (now tipped to win), and I'm still uncomfortable with the thought of her victory (but I did, can I just say, confess that I thought - contrary to everyone else, at the time - she would come through to the end). And now I'm supposed to watch them frolic around with Pamela bloody Anderson. I'm sorry, but this isn't much fun. I don't mind trashy TV - I really don't - but shouldn't it, at least, be fun? Are you having much fun? Is the misogyny, and the brutality of the fanbase (the threads around Eric's post are a far from endearing portrait of humanity), and the blatant under-the-table deals, and the falseness, and the deception, and the mean spirit of all, something you can say you honestly enjoy? Big Brother is such dark entertainment, at the end of the day.

The other day, that moronic Telegraph journalist, Monty - who, quite frankly, gave far too much away in how close to the bone his reaction was - made the rather tiresome retort (the retort you're having when you've really got no retort) that people like me should all take this not as "seriously". That's the standard disclaimer - the fallback - we've heard come out of so many mouths, over the years. And to tell you the truth, my reaction to it (every time) is actually, "If only." If only I could enjoy this. If only Big Brother was light entertainment! The truth in what they're saying - or, rather, the basis their transparent retort works from - is that Big Brother audiences, as a rule, consume this product without thinking. Not for even a second, do they turn any thought on themselves or the bigger picture of what the experience "is". It's all blind emotion, outrage, obsession, and that horrible human instinct that seems unable to resist the car crash. It's not taking anything seriously, no; but that doesn't mean that the dynamic is "light", and not (if you actually can see it for what it is) "serious." I think the elements of human nature this show elicits, exploits and appeals to, are anything but vacuous. And ignorance is bliss, yada, yada, yada. Some people who email me have actually been quite distressed by this website, because it throws their perception of "reality" off balance; and that can be quite a confronting thing. But, really, I ask you, this: if you really stop and think about how you engage this show, is there anything too "blissful" about it? Why did everybody rock up, tongues hanging out, to the "showdown"? And when it didn't happen, did we not all sigh with disappointment? I smiled, because the minute it was quite clear the Eric vs Albert/BB showdown was pulled, I knew very well what that meant (they'd lost Brigette - the fact that they arranged the showdown shows how cocky they were, and how they really weren't expecting that to happen). But I confess there was a part of me thinking, "Duped!" I bet you were, too. And isn't that... well... kinda off?

The people who make this show - the journalists who hover around it, so desperately (including Monty, who we will soon discuss in greater detail) - are, on one level, a bunch of workers. That's why they're doing this. They wouldn't be doing it for free, after all. Monty attacked a reader, the other day (who emailed me, instantly) by trying to put forward that he does his little blog, just to pass the time and keep himself from boredom.... you know, as opposed to being paid to, by the company who tells him to do it (I mean, really). Gretel Killeen has recently been whining again, because poor little Gretel was just doing her job. And it's a fair enough thing most people should remember about all this - and seldom do - and I've constantly been one to bring attention to it. Largely, this is because the public spend so much misdirected energy aimed at the "faces" - the shopfronts - because they honestly think any of those people are acting autonomously and are responsible for what they're doing and saying. They're not. I was harsh on Gretel Killeen because she chose to stay with the job, but I never expected her to say anything else than what she was saying, while she was saying it. She was working. She couldn't go against her orders, any more or less than you can go against your boss'. If you don't like the clothes on a mannequin in a shop window, you have to blame the shop owners who dressed the mannequin. You don't blame the actual mannequin!

Today, I did as I was told. I was paid for a job, and I delivered. Like Kyle Sandilands tries to do, like Brunero, like Goldman, like all of them. I don't blame them for making a living. It's hard to make a living and stick true to what you want to "do". But there's a line, and you do choose to make what you can out of what you have, and you choose not to make certain things that cross a line. But these people actually aspire to this - at very least, they see nothing wrong with it. And that's because they're not disgruntled with what they're paid to do. And the difference, in the world of Bigf Brother, is that we are entering the tres modern world of the Fame Complex. We're entering a world where people are so fucking screwed up, they're not worried about what they're doing on a greater level - what they're actually "saying" - they are (as I mentioned in an article, the other day)  simply looking for the notoriety, for vague concepts of Success™ that give them self-worth and (so they think) quieten the insecurities and pressures most secretly harbor beneath what we do. Every now and then, I break with the book I'm working on (my "real" project that I'm focused on, beneath this blog), and some rich person pays me to sell their shit. I hate every second of it - I do it, only because my role in it is not remotely public, it's completely detached from who I am. It means nothing to me. It means nothing to anyone but the rich people who are glad I made them money, but will forget about me, anyway, in five minutes. The rest of the time, I'm trying to get my stuff out there, sure. But I'm about the stuff, you know? I'm not about just being out there, so you can all consume me, too, and then maybe I won't feel so bad about the people around me who are more successful than I am, or the people who picked on me in school (has the fame really resolved that, for you, Mr Sandilands? Cause you still seem pretty unhappy, to me), or whatever it is. I smiled, this evening, and shook the hands of the rich people who owned me, today. They left, I lit a cigarette, and turned back into myself, again. 

And then, I turned on my television, and... well... I watched Big Brother. I love what I "do" here, at this blog, but there are moments where I find it very difficult to stomach the experience of this show. This was one of them! I usually only mention it in passing, or on the Your Say page. I never really "give" those moments to you, of course. It's self-indulgent, and everything else I'm aware this is. 

But the thing about Big Brother that makes it such an unpleasant Illusion™ is that everybody is being so damned dishonest! The whole thing stinks of it. And everybody is so aggressively trying to assert their dishonesty as plausible - as "truth" - and perhaps I just needed to come here and vent. I can't think of a better place than Eye On Big Brother! I might as well utilise the space I made, myself.

Big Brother. Big fucking Brother. On one side, is a million people who have been deliberately whipped into a frenzy of the most unpleasant emotion and brutality. The little people have their own anxiety and insecurities, too, after all - if you can offer it something to invest in, you're really onto something. And that's what Big Brother did. It doesn't explore this society, it doesn't celebrate reality, it doesn't do any of those things. It strokes every nasty, desperate part of us there is. In the middle of it all, are these desperate young lambs - empty, naive, frightened... like most young people. And, then, there they are - all the vile people of The Machine™ - on the other side of the cameras, on the stages, typing at their keyboards: an industry of worker bees who are all scamming the best way to make a buck out of exploiting the frenzy the Machine™ works together to stir up. I don't get these people. Well, I do - but I suppose I just don't like them. I come from a different galaxy, altogether. And I don't know about you, but I'll be glad when this whole thing is done.

And that's that, I suppose. Thanks for coming on that with me! I'll sleep it off, and tomorrow I'll get up and I'll stop talking about myself, and we'll get down to the nitty gritty of the final dash for the crown and cash. I'll check in on the Brigette aftermath (I haven't been able to bring myself to see where it's all up to, tonight), and see whether Eric's now apparently an alien from the planet Zoltar, or whatever else has come out about them. We'll never know the truth, of course. But gee, isn't pondering these awful people's lives and laundry fun? 

See you, then. If you're going to put up with the final leg of this thing, it might as well be here. 

PS: For anyone interested, I was recently interviewed for Subjects Of Interest (another blog) about the Bill Hansen scandal. It has nothing to do with BB; although, I did meet these guys as once BB podcasters, so there's actually a couple of BB references in there, anyway! You can listen to this interview, here .