"These are the dreams of ordinary men..."

Dragon

And that was that. With a finale every bit as contrived, absurd and lifeless as we'd come to expect, Big Brother, an eight year beast, finally fell to the ground, laid its bruised, beaten head upon the stage floor (where so many lambs had been slaughtered before it in the name of The Dream™), and closed its eyes. One shallow breath later, and it was dead.

What killed Big Brother? Was it the conservatives who feared it? Was it the intellectuals who despised it? Was it the demanding nature of the bogans who now grew tired of its thrills? Was it a greedy network who pushed it to become the very thing that would end it? Was it the media who raped it, and loathed it, in equal amounts? Was it Gen Y and their newfound means of attaining celebrity? Was it you and me? Was it a cockatoo?

When Big Brother began, with a fresh faced Gretel Killeen, the truth is that all our faces were a little fresher. Nobody had yet dreamed that everyday people would try to define the future of media and technology with such a diverse means of attaining significance. The planes hadn't hit those towers. We thought we were on the verge of a kind of millenial liberation. And we were wrong. We were wrong about most things. And we were certainly wrong about Big Brother.

Perhaps, we should have seen it coming. That's the irritating thing about our culture: it tends to leave us truths that we only ever seem to catch in the power of the hindsight that reconstructs our culture as something "new". It's always the way. And there are those who now say things as bizarre as, "One day, they will study Big Brother in high school, the way they now study Shakespeare!" Um... no. No, they won't. But, surely, they will look back and say something - they will say something, from the power of an even greater hindsight than today, about what exactly Big Brother "meant" to our society. It will be a symbol of the times - if Bert Newtown is still around, he'll happily remember it on "20 to 1". It will mean something - and we won't be looking at this moment we are currently wrapped up in, its death. We will look back on its life. So, sure, "Who killed Big Brother?" and all that jazz. But the more cutting question is, rather; "How did it ever live?" What air did this beast breathe? What dreams did it thrive on? And what did it say about us?

Tim Brunero recently said that the arrival of Big Brother was the wonderful moment our society stopped consuming. Rubbish. Apart from this being an often made mistake on the parts of those who see themselves as "producers" of content and media (when, in reality, most people, youtube aside, are not producing and have been, and will continue to be, consumers), on the contrary, it was a vile moment - the ultimate symbol of the modern consumer oblivion - where people actually started "consuming" reality. Are we that disconnected to the collective experience of being human, that we can only engage reality, if we consume it through the language of pop culture media? Through the language of product? Apparently, we were. Apparently, there were hundreds of thousands of everyday Australians who were so unable to express, or even comprehend, their lives (to themselves or each other), the only way for them to get the effect was to consume it as a contrived product on their plasmas.

And the horrible irony of it all was that in the process - as the poor little dears stood there, everyday kids, now being consumed through the language of product (a distorting, unethical language) - people didn't consume them as reality, anyway. How could they? Yes, those housemates were real people, experiencing something painfully lucid in that house - but by the time they came out of the other end of the camera, like Tim TV in Willy Wonka, they were no longer real. They were, quite logically, product. They were, now, unreal. The souls of these people - most of them just kids, for heaven's sake - beneath the distorted images, were real, goddammit! But the Business didn't care, because these souls were dispensable for the quest to make a product that spun gold. It thrived on the fear and insecurities of the younger generations, who knew nothing else to aspire for then the culture of celebrity they have been raised on.

And so, people consumed them like products. "Reality" had turned into a commodity, and it began distorting the very nature of reality, in return, for those who engaged it. Suddenly, millions watched the most horrifying thing on their plasmas - a group of kids being psychologically broken down - and absorbed it as if there were nothing wrong with taking secret pleasures in the sadism of its content. They treated it as if it were fiction - as if they were watching Law & Order, or Kath & Kim, or whatever make-believe. But they weren't make-believe. They were real. And everyone just sat there, on their couch, thoroughly enjoying watching people under psychological duress - young people who had stumbled into this most vile, exploitative experience, mostly because they were under psychological duress in the first place. And they would attack those young people - spend money on seeing the power of their hatred manifest through the tres modern concept of "interaction" - and it was all in good fun. Apparently.　

Big Brother would become known as the show of the voyeurs. Indeed, it was, by the end. But never forget that, above all, Big Brother was a show for sadists. So, if you don't mind, do you think we could possibly go back to a world where it's not okay to use the empty lure of fame, to capture young people who are to be used as punching bags and voodoo dolls, for disconnected savages who live in La La Land? Cause that's what that all was, you realise. You've got to the end, you're reading Eye On Big Brother... I hope you realise that. And I hope, one day, we look back on Big Brother, and think, "Wow, can you believe they actually did that, and that millions of people actually enjoyed watching them do that, and saw nothing wrong with it?" Because, quite frankly, if it isn't that kind of world, I shudder to think of where we're heading.

I'm optimistic, however. Eye isn't bitter - so many people had that wrong. I never created The Eye as a manifestation of my bitterness. He was a defiant and, ultimately, compassionate (alongside those he was so critical of!) figure of hope. I - Aaron - always was. For better or worse! And I think the story of Eye On Big Brother, and that of the greater tale of this country's turbulent affair with the actual show, is a happy one. The consumers won, in the end. The power of Product is great, my friends, but all you really have to do is... well... stop buying. I've spent years in marketing and advertising, and the one thing that always amazed me - the one final secret everyone should know - is that beneath the horrible dynamic where an industry has hypnotised a people, with perilous consequences, beneath the powerful beast that is modern enterprise, modern enterprise is actually a really anxious thing. It's busy fooling you that it's not, rest assured. But it is. Truth be told, it's terrified. Because, any minute, you might stop buying. It spends every desperate second, trying to make sure you don't - trying to fool you into surrender, maintain your ignorance, supress your ethics so that you are just like it... without any. Big Brother tried. But in the end, too many people stopped buying. Karma's a bitch. But, sometimes, it sure makes you smile.

I smiled, last night. The beast drew its final breath, and I smiled. Are we any better because of Big Brother's ending? Sure. But there's plenty else to worry about, and there'll be more yet to come. Rather, it's not so much because of it ending, but that we ended it. It didn't happily commit suicide, after all - the beast was slayed! If we lived in a world where the Beast could have gone on, well, it would have. But people stopped buying. We forever laughed at the tiresome slogan, "You decide!" But, of course, the final, brilliant irony is that, in the end, we did. Whether we knew it or not - whether we did anything in particular - we made a decision. We stopped believing. We stopped dreaming its brutal dreams, thinking they could offer us salvation. We stopped watching. That, my fellow enslaved consumer, is enough. You're more powerful than you realise. I hope you never forget it.

You killed Big Brother. And that's nothing to be ashamed of. Now, how interactive is that?

Three and a half years ago, I found myself walking across the grounds of Sydney University, towards a large group of youngsters -  hopeful,  determined, ready to dream. Well, that's the youngsters, that is. But, I suppose, the same could have been said of me, that morning. Unlike the self-spun mythology of Brunero, my arrival at the Sydney Big Brother auditions was no accident. I was keen to step inside the Big Brother machine, to explore it, to see what would happen if I prodded it in certain ways, to see what I could see. I spied with my little... well... eye. And, yes, much like Brunero, I wanted to see if I could use it. It had used and been used, all along. The exploitation of Big Brother, between all entities involved, was a powerful chemistry. I did not want to walk onto that stage and hand over my insecurities and desperation for the off chance I might be "discovered", no. I was never that naive. Or, thankfully, that desperate. I was, that morning, a voyeur in disguise. I arrived under a name I was not known by (thanks to a few minutes, years before, when I took my stepfather's name), I was quite prepared to lie, and I was eager to see just how far I could get. I had started writing a book about, of all things, reality television. If you want to really get to know your subject, that can't really happen if it doesn't first get to know you. 

Sometimes, BB boys and BB girls, you don't need the machine to hold out its hand and make your dreams an offer. Sometimes, we are quite capable, all on our own. I went to that audition with one goal: the world of Big Brother was about to meet Aaron Darc. Whether it wanted to, or not.

I can't help but think of that day, now that I write the last words I will ever write, as... drumroll... The Eye - an identity I initially chose, because if it was one thing I quickly learned in Big Brother world, it was that part of the dynamic of the phenomenon was the absolute destruction of an identity through thousands of people's bias. That's what people paid for - they got to act out on their secret fears, prejudices, resentment and beliefs, on these poor sods who had been carefully constructed as sterotypes that would elicit people's fears, prejudices, resentment and beliefs. Ironically, if you could somehow place yourself in Big Brother world as an entity that could not be "pinned down", then, I thought, you could have a chance of surviving and, more importantly, breaking through to a large cross-section of its audience. If I was going to explore that brutal judgement at the heart of Big Brother, I had to make sure I escaped it. I was not to be judged - I was to be the one doing the judging, thanks very much. Give the BB kiddies any bullets, and they will load them in an ignorant, impulsive gun, and happily blow the brains out of your stature. I wanted no gender, no age, and certainly no name that could be traced. I was simply a perspective - a view - I was, somewhat simply, The Eye.  

That morning, however, I was still Aaron (albeit, with a different last name). Just. And here I was, smack in the middle of the Machine™, where Dreams™ were being cast in half an hour flat. I lined up with the other hopefuls and began answering the first question sheet. "Are you single?" I lied, and said "yes". "Do you smoke?" "No. Only the occasional crisis management ciggy during moments of insecurity." Another lie, but it's good to use any opportunity to give something more and stand out. "Why do you want to on Big Brother?"

At this question, I realised it was already time to keep my thoughts also on those around me, those who had very different reasons to being there, than I did. This was the question I wanted answered. Why would they do this?

"Do you have a pen?" I heard a young male voice ask. "Mine's run out."

His name was Duncan, and he had turned 18, just a fortnight before the audition. I gave him my pen, and struck up chit-chat, in the hope I would begin to understand the excitement and tension that was so palpable in the air. In the end, it came to an "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" scenario, and we swapped questionnaires. Why did Duncan want to go on Big Brother?

"I'm 18, and I want to live."

"That's catchy", I responded, flatly. "Is it true, at all?"

And that's when it hit me - I'd reacted, naturally, not as the Boy against the Machine, but as a man that had worked for various machines, for years. I thought it was a nice bit of copy with a strong hook for a concept! Duncan had no idea about these things. He laid on his single bed - the sounds of his overprotective mother cleaning the dishes, in the background - and he braced himself for his life. For his own life. Not so different, I suppose, to the way I did, when I was Duncan's age. But I was now nearing 30 - adulthood having come and brought with it a few crashing ideals -  and "I'm 18, and I want to live" was now a catchy slogan to me. But Duncan really was 18. And Duncan really wanted to live. Of course. Because Duncan was real. 

"But how will this make you live?" I asked. "What role does a TV show have to play?" But I still didn't get it. There was even some narcissistic part of me thinking maybe Duncan was an aspiring writer, but if not, surely he was a wannabe TV personality, or a journalist, or something to do with TV and celebrity. But, no. 

"It will get me started, I suppose," he said.

"Started at doing what?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "You know, I'll be on Big Brother. That's a great start."

"But to what?" I persisted. 

He didn't know. Just to... you know... "life". He'd be on TV, after all. Everyone would know him. Big Brother 2008 carried on an awful lot with its contrived "angle" of Generation Y, but it didn't even come close to touching the truth at the heart of it. Duncan was Generation Y. And all he knew was that the goal of life was to be known. It didn't have to be for anything in particular - this is no longer the good old days, where people became famous for something. It's just about being known. That is living, isn't it? What else is there to aspire to?

"What will you do, if you don't get through?" I asked him.

He shrugged, and a distinct tone of fear shimmered, for a brief moment, across his face. "I don't know. I'll worry about that, when I don't get on Big Brother!" He forced a chuckle, but it was undeniably anxious.

"You really want this, don't you?" I smiled. I felt for Duncan. And even though underneath I pitied him - that was the truth of the matter - I wanted to help the poor kid. He loved my answers on my own questionnaire, so I offered to rewrite his for him. 

"Wow, how can you write such great answers?" he asked.

"I'm an advertising copywriter," I sighed.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I know how to take your sincerity, and replace it with deliberate functionality." 

He had no idea what that meant; but he smiled and pretended he did, and happily handed me his sheet.

I gave him some pointers on how to conduct himself, padded his ego to get rid of his nerves, and even gave him a lesson in pointing out the people with the power. 

"See that guy who keeps coming out, and scanning the crowd?" I asked him.

"Yep," he nodded, sighting the tall, thin man with greying hair and glasses."What about him?"

"That's the Executive Producer. That's who you need to convince."

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"See his security pass and ID?" I nodded, gesturing towards a laminated pass he so "quirkily" clipped to his trouser belt. "Nobody else would do that. The little people here are too proud not to hang them round their necks, and plus, they're not allowed to. That man has the power, and he wants to use it, because underneath he thinks he's undersold doing this job, anyway, so it's a nice way of expressing the thinking artist that his commercial work has quelled. And hey, he's the boss, he can hang his security pass anywhere he fucking wants. And the shirt - it's not even tucked in, properly."

He scrunched his face, and looked bemused.

"Trust me," I assured him, "That's the guy."

In the end, he believed me, because he duly noted that my intent to get the Executive Producer take note of us was working. "He keeps looking at you," he'd whisper, excitedly. Well, of course he did. I was a 6 ft 3 guy in his late 20's, wearing emo glam punk with an Elvis Presley tie. I was chain smoking and probably looked like I'd just come from a warehouse party - which I had, as it turned out. Yeah, I kinda stuck out, against the backdrop of kids dressed from General Pants Co with fresh, clean faces and embarrassing smiles of hope and (for some, doomed) innocence.

In the end, the time came, and we were filed inside. Having now been singled out as friends, we were separated into different herds... sorry, I mean "groups". His group was led in before mine, and as he began to walk off, he turned to his temporary BB friend.

"Good luck," I smiled. "Remember - dominate - don't stop talking - don't get nervous," I nodded, supportively.

"See you on the TV!" he joked, waving goodbye, the adrenaline now twinkling in his eyes. His future - so he thought - was coming.

"Likewise," I grinned back. "Through television, dear Duncan, you shall live!" I winked.

I never saw Duncan, ever again. Certainly, not on my television. I secretly smiled to myself, when I finally - after successfully getting through all stages - shook the hand of that tall, thin man with the glasses, who was, as I assured him, the Executive Producer. I hoped Duncan got far enough to see I was right! And when the show finally aired, four months later, I would keep an eye out for Duncan. But, no. No Duncan. 

I thought of Duncan, this morning. I wondered if Duncan was one of the 165,000 people who came to Eye On Big Brother. It's a lot of people, but still only a tenth of the overall audience. Maybe, he did. Who knows? If he did, he wouldn't have had any idea who he was reading, anyway. He probably found it easier to blame his misfortune on my ill advice, for all I know. But as Big Brother finally decayed - a dead, fallen heap upon the stage - I spared a thought for Duncan. And I hoped that, three years later, at now 21 years of age, Duncan had, indeed, "lived". Without TV. Without celebrity. Without notoriety. Without the distortion it nearly always ruins those who attain it with. 

Of course, many lived, if not on the TV, then through it. And today, they can live through this particularly experience, no more. I hoped Duncan had long since laughed at the idea that he would even attend that audition, where he met that strange writer, all those years ago. I hope he found much better dreams.

The thing is, our kids can only dream, as to the hopes and values we give them. The end of Big Brother is not the end of the problem, because the problem is the culture of media and advertising that is now dominating our experience of being human. Big Brother tried to tell us what being human is. It tried to tell us what we should dream for. And it never really had the right.

But what else did Duncan know? He had been left completely disconnected to his parents' generation - a generation that really do not understand the vast gap that technology has placed between them and their children. He grew up in a world where there was, instead, a different set of values and aspirations. He grew up in the false world of pop culture - of TV, of music, of film, of internet. He grew up in one big, long ad. He was conned by the promises that this world smiles and offers to young people like lollipops. It's not Duncan's fault. He was a young man, goddammit. He wanted to live. That's his right. There'd be something wrong with him, if he didn't.

So, after my pages and pages of analysis, and advice, and arguments, what's the last thing I want to say to the Big Brother audience? I want to say that there was, in Big Brother, something very wrong with the dream. There was, in the show, a business who would stoop to horrible lows, in order to rape these dreams for cash. It's a dark story, that of Big Brother. As I said, I hope we one day look back and see it for the dark story it was. 

But that you dream, my BB boys and BB girls, is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It is to be human. We all, like Duncan, want to "live". And most of us, like nearly every one of those housemates, do not feel that we truly are. That's worth thinking about. It's worth doing something about. But you have to be careful where you put those dreams, my friends, and who you choose to believe can deliver them. Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes, it could very well come true. But, by all means, keep dreaming. There's nothing wrong with dreams... so long as they're yours. Otherwise, before you know it, you're the victim of someone else's imagination, and you've only your own to blame.

So, farewell, my friends. It has truly been a pleasure. I now turn back into Aaron Darc; but certainly, there will always be a little shade of Eye in everything I continue to do. I hope we meet, through words, again. I'll miss you. Well, most of you. Because despite all our differences, we are all, in part, fellow Dreamers.

May we also be Doers.