7/12: Big Brother cast member ousted [thx Dagnabit]
 

[IMG]pictures/justinknife.jpg[/IMG]

Dag sent me this image of the Big Brother contestant "Justin" and what he did to be kicked out of the household. Yeah, I would say that's a bad idea - holding a knife to the throad of another contestant?

What's cool about this image is that it really hasn't shown up in the mainstream media. After Dag sent it last night, along with the explanation of what happened (which I'll leave to him) I had a look around to see what the wire services were doing with it. They had a story and one "posed" image of the guy, and the details were very light.

Meanwhile, this image was captured directly off the live cam, and WHOA!

Reality Television
 

I think they got a little too much reality in their reality television. Frankly, I never entirely understood the whole reality tv phenomanon... I want to sit perfectly still for 30 minutes while watching average (but very pretty) people work out their absurd personal drama. Then again, I'm not a big television person, "reality" or otherwise.

argh, that was supposed to reply to the previous thread, not start a new one. Sorry!

No problem, I'll just move your posts into the thread.

Just from that image alone, it doesn't LOOK serious. It looks like the contestant is playing along. Of course, what do I know? I don't follow the show. ;)

What happened
 

this guy (Justin) was a psycho to begin with and was provided with a ton of alcohol. Plus a moron-level IQ. Plus an atmosphere where the whole group was encouraged to be crazy for the ratings. Earlier that night he urinated on one of the windows, and, got a near-bj from a woman they were trying to recruit into their group for voting purposes. This guy is really bad news. It is amazing that he passed their psych test. He should be in prison. But that probably didn't matter, they just decided to get the most screwed up contestants they could find. Just so they would do wild things and get good ratings. But it does mean very entertaining live feed viewing, especialy late at night, as long as you don't get shocked by language, sex, near-violence, sex, language, whipped cream, misogyny, suggested sex and pure pure evil.

and I forgot, Sycamore yes it's true that he was kind of joking when he did that, he wasn't really going to kill her, this was the chick that he had just hooked up with. But it shows still that he is one screwed up guy. That is his idea of humor. He was warned many times by the producers that he would get kicked out if he did anything else violent or psycho.

Re: What happened
 

I got this from a Reuters story, it basically explains what was happening at the time.

"According to a CBS account taken from a transcript the encounter between Justin and Krista, the two were intermittently kissing and talking in the kitchen of the house when Justin picked up a large knife and put it to her throat and said, ``Wait, hang on. I'm going to slash your throat. Would you get mad if I killed you?''

Without appearing to react, Krista replied, ``No, but I want some water.'' Moments later, he repeated the question, ``No, seriously, would you get mad if I killed you?''

At that point, the producers spoke up over an intercom, instructing Justin to leave the kitchen and speak with a staff psychologist in the ``diary room,'' a chamber in the house where contestants occasionally communicate with producers on camera, a CBS source said.

CBS officials said producers never physically intervened during the knife incident."

Alcohol
 

Oh, and the article also said lots of alcohol was involved.

here's a link:

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/va/20010711/099490287700.html

we are posting at the same time dynamo! Yes, there definitely was a lot of alcohol... it makes the houseguests do wilder and crazier things for even better ratings. And they have a wild, alcohol-soaked party atmosphere just about every other night, but, we on the east coast have to stay up very late to see that. I was watching that night but I had to go to sleep, I think the knife thing happened at about 1 a.m. pacific time so on the east coast you have to be up until 4 a.m.

Reality Tv and where it leads down a slipery slope always scared me. Series7

Damnit...now you make want to almost check it out. ;)