A generation gap

I've been watching Finnish Big Brother again, as I have done every time they had it. The first season was interesting, the second season was so boring I stopped watching, and the previous one was also somewhat interesting.

SubTV showed several seasons of Big Brother UK years ago, before Finland had its own Big Brother, and that got me hooked to the format. The older UK seasons were interesting; they'd actually got some characters to live in the house and it was interesting watching them interact, form a social network and tackle the challenges.

I'm sad that the organizers of Finnish BB are apparently convinced that the way to get interesting stuff to happen is to get people drunk, and as a consequence everyone on Finnish BB gets wasted every weekend. The last few seasons the entire series has revolved around four days of waiting, one day of partying, one day of hangover and eviction day. I'm sorry, but that's boring.

I watch the show for a few simple reasons. It's interesting to see the contestants enter the house, because as you're introduced to them, I make a snap judgement on all of them. I try to determine, during their introduction, what kind of a person this particular contestant is and whether they're going to be succesful. I then watch the show to test my judgements. It's an interesting experiment to run on your social observation skills.

Other than that, I'm generally interested in the show as a social psych experiment. Putting a dozen (give or take a few) people in an isolated place, on a competitive reality show, is interesting to observe. Everyone, as they go in, chooses some kind of personality that they want to project and some kind of strategy for winning. They create a public persona that they use to interact with others.

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I seem to recall it was Sandy Stone, whose lecture I was priviledged to see a few years back, who said that we're becoming very good at "avataring" ourselves. I believe we are, too, as so many people of my generation already have several different identities we use. I have one identity that writes this blog: a fairly strictly defined "public persona". Another identity of me is a Wikipedia editor, and I prefer to keep that public persona anonymous and unconnected to anything else I do. Yet another public identity publishes articles in magazines; a fourth one is on Facebook.

In addition to these faces, I have still another when I study, and yet another when I work. Most of us also unconsciously, or perhaps consciously, adopt different identities when interacting with different people. That's a lot of avatars to keep track of!

I find this whole process immensely interesting, and I believe Big Brother is one arena where it can be viewed in action. Also, it's fascinating to see how the competitors face up to stress and frustration. I won't mince words: from my perspective, practically all of the Finnish BB contestants have been spoiled little children who throw tantrums every time things don't go their way. The sight of (nominally) adult people begging Big Brother for more alcohol, or their cigarettes back, or whatever, is, to me, unbelievably pathetic. It's interesting, and almost funny, to watch them try to cope with a world in which they're not being pampered.

When I was doing my "alternate service", i.e. the punishment I'm allocated for not serving in the army, Olavi Sydänmaanlakka gave a talk to us during our basic training. He's been a youth worker for ages, and he talked about his experiences with young people in general, and their problems. His thesis was that the most important thing parents can teach their children is how to cope with adversity. When things are going badly and everything isn't working out, children look to their parents to see how they should respond (is mom having a temper tantrum?), and their parents also control the ways their children respond directly (are you allowed to throw a tantrum?).

These days, that's exactly what parents don't teach their kids. With the advent of quality time, parents try to make their children's lives perfect and see to it that they're never sad. Also, the going thing for over a decade has been parents who try to be their children's friends, not their parents. I've heard first-hand accounts of parents who will ask preschoolers whether it's okay with them that they do something or go somewhere. I don't know about you, but I think that's taking things a little far.

The end result is people with poor impulse control who can't face adversity. The kind of adults who have a hissy fit the minute things don't go the way they want. In short, the kind of people Finnish BB is mostly populated by. Based on his behavior so far in the house, Niko this season is the outstanding example.

Of course, taking publicity-hungry spoiled kids and making them really face up to adversity would be an excellent reality show. This season kicked off with Big Brother announcing the housemates are going to be living healthy, and their cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine, sugar and meat products were all confiscated. Predictably, nearly everyone was enraged, disconsolate and heartbroken, and it seemed like it would make for some excellent TV.

But no. This lasted for a week, and now they have their smokes and drinks back. I find that just criminal. There are a lot of smokers in the house; if Big Brother helped them kick the habit, it might actually save someone's life. But they wussed out.

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This is undoubtedly because the party they had last weekend showed what this season's theme is: sex. If I had to guess, this year's criterion for selecting contestants was whether they'd have sex on live TV. And apparently nearly all of them will. This Monday they all got drunk (for the second time), got their tits out (for the second time) and several of them paired up to, erm, as an American cop would put it, engage in activities of a sexual nature.

If anyone reading this still remembers, the title of this blog post is "A generation gap". That's what exists right now between myself and the TV screen when I watch Big Brother. I don't know if I'm exaggerating, but the way these people are carrying on on live TV is totally alien to me. Something like half a million people watch the show over the first couple of weeks; in fact, this season has already broken records. You're getting your tits out in front of 10% of the population of your country. You're getting drunk, acting like an idiot and having sex in front of every tenth person in Finland.

What is wrong with you people?

I seriously cannot relate to this. Are there people like that in our generation, and were their ambitions of making an exhibition of themselves in front of the nation simply unrealized? It seems incredible to me that people will do what they do.

Part of the answer to my question (WHY?!?) was provided by the mother of one of the contestants. Cheryllin äiti BB Extrassa: Olen ylpeä Cheryllin tekemisistä talossa! She describes her daughter as a "full ten". Remember, this is her daughter who gets drunk and gets her tits out in front of 500,000 people on live TV. She then abandoned a guy she'd been all lovey-dovey with for several days to take (the obviously closet homosexual) Mr. Tampere up to the suite and have sex with him on live TV. Mom says she's proud of her daughter!

Geez. No wonder the kids are like that.

I'm exaggerating the whole generation gap thing, or at least I think I am. I'm only a couple of years older than BB-Cheryll, and there are people in that house who are older than me. It just doesn't feel that way, though. How did I somehow get cross-attached to an older generation that didn't want to show their genitals on Finnish television?

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In closing, Mannerheimin lastensuojeluliitto has some good stuff (in Finnish) on bringing up children here. Remember to be good parents, everybody!