How Reality TV Houses Are Built to Break People
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- Опубліковано 31 жов 2024
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_Special Thanks_
Evan Montgomery - co-production
_Description_
This video explores how the architecture and design of spaces in reality TV shows influence participant behavior and viewer perception. Beginning with the 1973 series "An American Family," it examines how the physical environment-from ordinary homes to specially constructed sets-plays a crucial role in shaping narratives and emotional dynamics. The discussion includes shows like "Big Brother," where the house's layout creates psychological stress through constant surveillance and manipulated living conditions, and "Love is Blind," where isolation pods and communal spaces are engineered to foster intense emotional connections and conflicts.
The analysis extends to "The Circle," highlighting how technology and minimalist apartment designs contribute to social isolation and digital manipulation. By comparing these different settings, the video sheds light on the psychological impact of spatial design in reality television. It underscores how architecture can control information flow, create power imbalances, and affect participants' emotional states, ultimately influencing the dynamics of the shows and offering insights into human behavior within constructed environments.
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Architecture with Stewart is a UA-cam journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
_About Me_
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
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University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture: arch.uic.edu/
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Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images, Storyblocks, and Shutterstock.
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
#architecture #urbandesign
Thanks for this tutorial on how to make new houses in The Sims!
I take it that you like torturing your Sims.
A benevolent god you are not.
@@fredericapanon207 "No recall or intervention works in this place, there is no escape!" - the doormat.
😂😂😂
😂😂😂
The house is a pool and there are no stairs.
“its almost like a dystopian nightmare“ Well it is called Big Brother lol
Ikr like everyone on the show is aware they are a contestant. And all look forward to playing the game
@Toxodos we have a philippine franchise of that TV show bares that name, its called "Pinoy Big Brother"(PBB), its very popular here and just recently Aired its 11th season last july.Lmao
@@ALEX.TV.JoshandjoshAnd then almost all of them have these fake breakdowns where they're so shocked and amazed that they haven't seen their friends and family for a few weeks. I watched a couple seasons of Big brother when it first came out and the only people I could respect were the ones that actually treated it like a game and didn't try to pretend like they were going through some major emotional crisis simply because they were on a 3 or 4-week vacation.
Exactly! The show has no illusions about what it is.
Big Brother was first used in George Orwell's novel "1984"!
Love Is Blind specifically also did a lot of questionable shit in Season 1 that amplifies all of this. He mentioned there's alcohol everywhere, and some of the contestants said that food and water wasn't readily available, even though the alcohol was. The sleeping quarters were communal bunkrooms that no one wanted to use, which led to people sleeping on the couches in the communal space, or falling asleep in the pods during their "dates". It's up for debate whether these were intentional choices made to create more drama for the show or simple negligence on the part of production, but either one sort of seems like a crime.
water not being readily available is pretty fucked up omg
100% fully intentional. The more exhausted and uncomfortable the contestants the more irritable they get and it helps make fights
You know, as fucked up as this was, stripping aside all that, when I think about the amount of thought and studying and observation that went into planning some of these houses... it actually gives me a new appreciation for architecture and psychology. I didn't realize how big of an impact that sort of thing had, and then intentionality of the sets themselves.
if you like this stuff, I would highly recommend Dami Lee. she's an architect here on youtube who talks about the intersection between social engineering/social psychology and architecture, often in sci fi and fantasy works as well. she's fantastic, one of my favourite youtubers 100%
Not only architecture, but design in general. I studied graphic design in college, and a significant portion of my classes were dedicated to analyzing the effects on human behavior. I read a whole textbook on the psychology of colors -- still have it on my bookshelf to this day.
Adding onto the recommendations, watch Dear Modern, the funny Feng Shui guide, which he goes over the practicality of the arrangement of furniture and the effect on people.
@@bananawitchcraft Could you share the name of the textbook on the psychology of colors, that sound really interesting.
The bit about hidden spaces in the house that you're supposed to ignore reminded me of servant's passages in feudal mansions and such concepts.
yes those are the same consepts its also the way Ikeas are built.
at least with those it was an intentional choice to ignore them
Same predatory system we've had for thousands of years now heh
I have never watched any of those shows, and this video proofs why. I can't imagine the psychological damage caused in the name of Entertaiment.
The circle isn’t that bad. Those participants tend to become a friend group after the show. Almost every season, everyone one ends up sharing a personal story that depends their connection to someone or several other people. He didn’t really give the circle an accurate description
@@sbigjordan This could be because they have all undergone a highly traumatic experience together and that is why they have a lasting bond. It does not justify the original experience.
Lmao you nerd that’s the fun part! You’d love fishtank live
According to some Survivor contestants they would have PTSD after shooting. Having anxiety and paranoia that anytime people aren't with them they were plotting against them.
Well, the participants are getting paid.
If you are a credentialed researcher and you tried to do one of these "social experiments" as an actual social psychology experiment to further understanding, the ethics board would laugh you out of the building before planting their collective boot up your butt.
But be a producer with a Bachelor's in communications, and do the same stunt on TV with minimal (or non existent) oversight, and certainly no furthering of scientific understanding human behavior, and you're good to go, so long as the sponsors are happy.
And to think I left a Communication Arts program to get a doctorate in Research Psych...
good point!
I did the same thing (left an ad-focused communications program for research-track psych!), and you're on point about the ethics. This is abusive.
Psychopath gonna Psychopath yo!
There is very, very minimal ethics in marketing
@@jordane8526 Actually, I also considered going into advertising. Creativity and all that.
But I liked the concept of being able to live with myself.
Reality TV should have died in the early aughts, but here we are. It's more insidious and uninspired than ever. Thanks for the interesting insight into something very niche.
It is niche, but the design techniques are universal.
is reality TV still going on?!?! I'm stunned it even is. I thought it died off in 2010 or 15. But I guess that's around when I cut the cord. (not that I watched it then either, was just tangentially aware of it).
@@colinstu Here in Australia reality TV is still a major part of prime time programming. Just look at Married at first sight it pulled in nearly 2.5 million viewers on this years season debut and it arguably is one of the most predatory shows on TV at the moment. Every couple (in this years season) apart from two ended up separating.
@@stewarthicks add in its sudo successor the "Drama Shows" Dr Phil, Maury, Jerry Springer. Oh, and the TV Court Room Shows like Judge Judy and The People's Court... Just think of Don Henleys song "Dirty Laundry", "It is interesting when people die". I am genuinely disgusted by all of these types of shows.
@@stvkayeah but even Australians don't watch Australian TV
My sister and I read Prince in Disguise, a work of fiction about a younger sister stuck on her older sister's reality tv show. It definitely explored some of these ideas, although not through the lens of architecture. It also made us think about YT "influencer" families, at least kids on reality tv have some rights as "actors" and contracts, but on a free platform the kids are entirely at the whims of their legal guardians and what they want to share with the whole internet.
Thanks for the reading rec!
I legitimately think it should be illegal to record children without their explicit permission through an ad litem. Children are at the mercy of their parents. When their parents choose to exploit them they have nowhere else to go. They have no way of saying no. And that should be 100% illegal to do to a child!
Sad part is kids in reality TV shows often have no more control than on 'influencer' YT channels. It's all too easy for parents to exploit or manipulate their child actors, especially when the whole family is being filmed for 'reality'. One of the books written by the Dugger girls of that huge family reality show goes into this. Took her years to get control of her life and minimal financial compensation for work right through into adulthood.
i never paid attention consciously
but one of the reasons i never watched these shows back in the day
is the weird, stage-like layout of the rooms. it was always very annoying.
None of the interactions are natural just like the Stanford prison experiment there's too much intervention so that the producers get the result that they wanted. This is also the reason of the rise of youtube people want authenticity and not to be manipulated
At this point I feel architects and interior designers need a Hippocratic oath. These sets are terrifying.
Imagine going to school for interior design and specializing in reality tv torture houses 😭 how does one even get into this??
@@baefarmto be fair - most of the designers for reality tv sets are educated from theatre/set design programs over interior design programs. Most all interior design programs are either residential/general commercial/or healthcare based.
@@baefarm The same reason Psychologists give advice to game companies on how to make games/apps more addictive.
Because those gigs pay a lot more than standard work.
They are created by prison architects and neo nazzzis there is no morality here. Max security lockups are more humane then these designs let that sink in.
@@Drawfield Oh... maybe that explains why the designs are so colorful and visually atrocious. They were taught to design something that would stand out on a stage, and not something people would have to live with on a daily basis. (Of course I wouldn't be surprised if that were intentional on the part of the shows' creators, since they seem so devoted to making the places unliveable in every other way.)
The Big Brother house reminds me of the Panopticon concept, which is based on the concept of always being watched, even for the brief periods of not being watched. It originated as a model for getting inmates to police themselves. The concept of panopticon has reached to other parts of society.
Has parallels with a social media based society!
@@termiterasin and the ubiquitous cameras and AI facial recognition used in China, and "social score" based on your behaviour.
so you're saying our prisons need giant lightning bolts all over the walls and food shaped furniture?
right? I thought about that the moment he talked about the crew spaces all around the house 😂
Your phone is watching, listening and logging 24/7
It'd be interesting to analyse how alcohol is used (and abused?) in the settings of these shows in order to destabilise the participants and push them into psychological vulnerability. As you mention, alcohol is omnipresent in some shows, which is 100% intentional and I think adds to the cruelty of the game.
I've always wondered about Survivor, those "shelters" that leave the sides wide-open to wind-driven slanting rain. I can't be the only one who wonders why they don't just weave the same palm screens for the sides as for the top. Could it be that they are forbidden to build walls?
It could be that building slightly more adequate shelter would obstruct the cameras too much. It definitely feels like the show cares more about entertainment and making money from viewership than the actual health of the contestants.
@@locsoluv94this is also why they’ve never done a season in a cold/temperate environment. The host (now one of the executive producers) and the rest of the producers have gone on record saying that the contestants would be less likely to strategize in the cold. And also let’s be real, because the more physically attractive contestants wouldn’t be able to show as much skin than in a tropical location.
But yeah from what I understand the contestants are instructed to give production a certain level of access to themselves while on the show. Don’t know if there’s a restriction with their shelter building necessarily but I imagine that the producers would intervene if anything they do would make filming difficult or impractical.
I'm a big Survivor fan. In addition to camera obstruction, walls on more than 1-2 sides of the shelter would be a safety hazard. There have been times before when the roof on the shelter has collapsed; if you add walls into the mix that could fall in on the people inside, someone could end up getting legitimately injured.
@@ryanammenheuser4788 An interesting point. However, the danger of the roof falling comes from the wooden beams holding up the palm mats. Walls would simply consist of palm mats leaned on or lashed to the pre-existing stud boughs. would not increase the danger.
@@DoloresJNurss If there's one thing that I learned from Gilligan's Island is that it's just the wooden bits that hold people back, the mats do nothing to stop people from coming or going through them.
It's wild how many of these observations overlap with your prison architecture video...
It's not super surprising, I'm sure that whatever insights they are gaining that weren't already known are going to be used in prisons. I mean, the panopticon and rotating jails were a thing previously.
"They're trying to build a prison ... for you and me"
"Just act like normal, like we're not even here"
*me furiously whacking it on the couch*
Cameraman: 😮
cameraman starts doing the same
Truly the hardest part of the show
Don't do than on a European show, they might just show your meat to the world
me: whips out the latex and leather horse gimp suit
They'd have so much footage of me sleeping and opening the fridge.
As soon as you introduce a camera the dynamic changes
Big Brother Brasil is bigger and more influential than ever. The prize hits around 2 million reais, participants achieve celebrity status in only a few days and Twitter goes absolutely wild about it. At the same time, its participants leave every edition more psychologically damaged
Appropriately terrifying topic for Halloween. The drive for money, power, and fame... God, this world can make you feel hopeless sometimes.
Such beautiful, detailed work on a virtual corkboard and someone went and wrote "lightening bolt"
That screamed at me, as did "Isolated Intamacy"
Given the collective decline in spelling and grammar, next season will just use an emoji instead ⚡
@@thatjpwing I sympathize because graphics don't go through the spellchecker and when you do so many it's easy for things to fall through.
I remember discussing these type of reality TV shows twenty plus years ago with friends. Our focus was on personalities, and we were sure that the producers always chose at least some people who already had issues to begin with, and one of these shows was actually dependent on that one hand picked person: The Mole.
the first season of Real House on MTV had Puck and his character was so successful that they've been trying to replicate it ever since
@@catherinesanchez1185 That was the 3rd season. But, from what I can tell, he was far harder to live with than even the depictions on the show were, and that was a show where there wasn't a particular incentive to win a specific prize like some of the more recent shows. I remember the Miami season they had money to start a business if they could agree enough to make it happen. I don't remember them actually managing it.
They only want cluster b personalities.
@@MrTwinkieeater Sorry - I don't know what that is/means.
@@CIS101 narcissists, borderlines, sociopaths, psychopaths, and histrionic. The "dramatic" personalities.
I don’t watch reality TV, but I find psychology very fascinating, so I clicked on the video thinking that I wouldn’t watch the whole thing. The quality and delivery of your content is really impressive! New subscriber!!🎉
I'm chronically homeless and study public health of chronic trauma populations like mine, and thus I'm all too familiar with the short and long-term impacts of denial of privacy. (Protip for fellow carlifers: Rig curtains ASAP. They're not just great insulation, but also vital for your sanity, especially if they fully block out the outside world so your environment can feel consistent.) Anyway, it's quite fascinating how corporate America can exploit this science to mess people up, but corporate (and non-corporate) America also simultaneously avoid acknowledging this science when it comes to the "buhbuhbuht whatdoyoumean being homeless CAUSES physical and behavioral health problems? No surely that must be backwards" lmao
I’ve found my dog can’t relax and go to sleep until I cover the windows, even if we are in the middle of nowhere. It definitely has a huge impact psychologically. I do reflectix with one side spray painted black. 👍
@@AndreaC_303 Clever idea with the spray painting! I use polyester fleece for my big thick layer of winter curtains, and I recently added a layer of cotton canvas for summer curtains/optional double curtains (LOVE IT, now I can have privacy without blocking light and airflow lol) and it's such a huge quality of life upgrade. Wish I'd done it much sooner. My dogs also love it, except when they want to bark about something, which is why I designed the curtains to easily fall down out of their clips so they don't get damaged if my girls move them around and wind up stomping on them by accident XD
Oh no your trauma! Only you have had hard times... poor victim
@@yesterdayseyes Wow, you're really reaching here just to project your own whininess onto my perfectly cheerful comment. I hope you feel better soon and recover from whatever issues motivated you to lash out with such obvious resentment like that. Your life must really suck if you're that triggered by use of the word "trauma" (as a medically specific term, no less) and/or bitter about (maybe envious of?) the outspoken confidence of some homeless chick on the internet.
I'm dead serious btw, this is not sarcasm; I'm sincerely sorry for you. As my family like to say, "I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no class."
Good luck to you
Folks like you are gold and your comments are too.@@ItsAsparageese
Absolute containment coupled with absolute exposure? And he didn't even mention the panopticon?
I get why, going into prison design then would have taken the essay in a different direction, but the parallels are clear.
For sure!
Maybe those who designed sets for these shows took some cues from panopticon.
I have a coworker who I am genuinely very friendly with, but she keeps trying to get me to watch Big Brother and I'm struggling with how to say that I am literally *morally opposed* to the show's existence. It's not just that I think it's "trashy" TV, I think it is WRONG to do that to people. I'll watch a trashy soap opera, because I know that no matter how awful the characters are to each other, they're just playing characters. I don't want to watch real people get humiliated and abused for my entertainment. I wish that were a more common sentiment.
Omg this perfectly words how I feel! Thank you!!!
Just tell her. She needs to respect your boundaries, and understand that not everyone is okay with it.
I’ve watched every season so I feel like I can agree with your thoughts for the first half of the show, where it seemed like normal people thrust into difficult heartbreaking situations. However, recent seasons - everyone who is on the show is a megafan - they’ve watched every season and come super excited to dominate the game and plan out their strategies. People have a mutual understanding of making game decisions, and are less heartbroken with betrayal. BTW contestants are also paid $1000/episode and launch a career out of it. Sure the premise of the show is archaic and orwellian, but today the show is only alive bc of the fans and the “crazy” contestants the show finds. - I’d recommend just watching one of the recent seasons!
why don't you try the truth? i hear that it can work despite being out of favor now.
@@tiffanybaby13 I don't think stating "they know what they're getting into" is a strong defense of these types of shows, since we shouldn't be encouraging that type of sociopathic behavior just for entertainment, nor should it excuse the manipulative, voyeuristic elements just because they can find some willing contestants. Also, I question how prepared the contestants can truly be. I watched the cooking game show Cutthroat Kitchen, and later seasons had contestants aware of the show, arriving with strategies, etc., yet you'd often hear them say just how drastically different the reality of the show was compared to watching it on TV. And if those people were unaware and unprepared for a single day of filming of a half-hour game show, it seems like nobody would truly be ready for the experience of 24/7 filming for weeks on end in a manipulative situation and environment.
if houses are intentionally designed in this manner, imagine what else is architected to work against us and break us down.
I KNEW IT! Thank you so much for this video.
At first I thought the drama invoking lay-out of those sets were ingenious. Then I started to empathize with all the crying and disturbed people on my tv screen. Now I can't fathom how the producers withheld to pull the plug on their cruel creations
Not having watched big brother before it occurs to me that it represents modern society. Unequal power divisions, leading to unstable alliances with the purpose of division.
you JUST discovered george orwel? no ones never 'not' heard of 1984 and Big Brothers two way screens.......you have to be lying lol.
@@TheVRSofaGeorge who?
Do you have autism? @@TheVRSofa
You seem antisocial and with no reading comprehension, your comments borders on nonsensical
I'm always amazed at the sheer number of these types of comments in videos like this. I mean, as long as you *understand* that your comment is at the same level of insight as, "It occurs to me that this painting of a tree represents an actual tree, with it's brown wood and green leaves," then I suppose we're alright...
So I realized something about my own childhood and living home. I have no privacy and feel anxious and my self esteem is rotted to the core because I have no where to hide or to express myself or to cry when I need to cry. I’m exposed and the sounds around me cause me to flinch because of the echoes and how open everything is.
Windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows windows
If you counted how many times I put it in windows, that’s how many Giant door sized windows are in the house I grew up in as a kid. And having a backyard with a fence where strangers can see me and watch me from the inside from a very public park.
My childhood room being an echo chamber and having to whisper very quietly so people couldn’t hear what I say, what I think. The bathrooms also being echo chambers. People can hear everything. The walls are like paper thin and easy to hear others through them. So everyday when my parents yelled and screamed at each other I could hear them. Every time they did things I could hear them.
My older siblings room right next to mine was the only room where I couldn’t hear what they did or said but they could clearly hear what I did or said in my room. I’m not sure why it works like that in my parents house. But the hallways are open for strangers to just look and peer and no curtains or blinds that I would love cover them up. It makes me fear what I do. I never had true privacy in my room because my parents didn’t put curtains or blinds over the huge windows in my room as a kid. Locked me in my room for hours at a time when I cried over something a kid would naturally cry over, like wanting to watch a cartoon but never being able to. It makes a lot of sense that I’m still so anxious in my own living space. Unable to cry in my own room now. Unable to be sad and depressed in my own room without fear of someone telling me I need to stop when I start. I have to not cry and it hurts because I’m a huge cryer. I have reflections and even though I have mirrors in my own room I don’t even look at them because I’m afraid to see the ugly person. I have always been afraid to see it. It’s the scariest most ugliest adherent person. Just disgusting. And I have to see it everyday when I glimpse at my own reflection. I just wish I didn’t need to eat so much so there would be less of my body to see in the reflections.
I relate a lot to a big chunk of this. Part of the reason I stopped gardening outside was that cars would slow down and stare at me every single time. It scared the hell out of me. I live in my childhood home with my family and my house has the same problem with the walls. I've stopped singing and playing instruments because of that.
I don't eat enough because the kitchen is this narrow hallway between two of the rooms where people watch videos loudly and will try to talk to me.
I don't take baths as much as I should cause I can hear the TV blasting from my parents' room. There's only one bathroom and it doesn't lock.
My room didn't have a lock either. I had to go at it with wood carving told to install a new door knob cause people wouldn't knock. My room has a big window facing the street. It doesn't have blinds. Every morning, around the time I'd be getting dressed, a school bus would be outside the house. I would have to crouch down and hide. It's exhausting!
I grew up hearing my parents yell and argue about me. To this day, I can't stand the sound of yelling, even on TV, even happy yelling. It makes me nervous.
I have my own space now- not an apartment, but a place I can spend most of the day, usually by myself. I worked really hard for it and stress myself out a lot figuring out how to earn the money to keep it. Still, I get to sing so loudly there while I'm doing my work, all day until my throat hurts. It's freeing.
I used to hate how I looked but it's something that gets better over time as you try different things. I cut my own hair and took a few years figuring out how to style it well. I got glasses that I liked better. I figured out the clothes that made me happy.
I blame dumb beauty standards for making me hate my curly hair. I blame them for so many people hating themselves and suffering. These concepts of beauty have changed so drastically decade by decade. They're trends created by celebrities. I heard someone say that no matter how bad you think you look, someone out there's into that. Someone out there loves all those details you think are ugly. Someone thinks faces and bodies like yours are cute. You might just not be your own type.
Stay strong, write about your feelings, open up to friends and loved ones who you feel safe with. It's up and down for sure, and even if you don't know what they are yet, you've got a lot of good moments waiting for you- life brings lots of surprises, both good and bad.
And by stay strong, I don't mean not to cry or not to feel things. To me, being strong is being introspective, processing your emotions and learning to understand where they come from, so you can feel less afraid of them. You deserve good things, just like anyone else in the world. Life is hard as fuck! The more we learn about ourselves, the more equipped we are to take it on.
Also also! Losing weight can be good for longterm health, so I do get that, but some ways that people go about it are really unhealthy and damaging. It should be an opportunity to explore! Try different healthy foods, match the flavors of things you like to healthier options: like when you're craving vanilla ice cream, have some vanilla yogurt. Drinking more water helps a lot too! You can add things to the water to make it taste better. I like to add a little bit of juice.
Hating your body will exhaust you. It's our culture of unhealthy food that makes it so hard. Junk food is everywhere. Companies make so much money off it being addictive, they don't care that it hurts people. Some people also have a harder time with weight just because of genetics and hormonal imbalances, too. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.
Wherever you are and however you look, it's always important to work towards loving and forgiving your current self, just for the sake of being able to get through life more easily. Treat yourself as if you're your own child. Sometimes we need to take the role of supportive parents to help ourselves heal. What would you say to yourself if you were a separate person taking care of you? Rina Sawayama has a really nice song about this called "hold the girl". It's like a fun pop song, but the message really stuck with me.
Search for plus sized models and influencers online. We don't get to see enough pictures of happy people living their lives in a variety of body shapes. You can grow more comfortable with who you are, while at the same time, working towards change. Both are good. We are all a work in progress and that's beautiful. My boyfriend is chubby and I think he's really cute and I love him. Treating yourself with kindness and forgiveness, even if you don't yet feel like you deserve it, will give you so much more energy to explore and find those good moments.
My thought is, even if I don't like the hand I was dealt, it's the only one I've got, so I'll try and seek out whatever good I can get.
@@sensorymode6261wild assumption to make about their weight just based on their original comment
@@sensorymode6261 thank you very much for the super kind words and long replies. I appreciate all the time and all the advice here.
And, I do agree with it all. It’s nice knowing I’m not alone but I’m sad to know others have similar experiences growing up as I have too. I feel for others that grew up like this. And I’m inspired that you seem to be in a better place. I want to get there too one day with myself.
There’s something so damaging to the brain about growing up like that in my opinion. Being fearful of living in your own home everyday. I’m sorry you also had that experience too.
And I do agree it does get better with age well better and worse for me. Mania and paranoia is worse. General anxiety is better. Also, I honestly never felt like I matured too much only that it was much easier to hide and tell myself to just stay silent all day about my constant crazy thoughts and numb about the pain I was feeling and only talk silently to myself to the voices in my head about it.
Like my own terrible bubble of self therapy and help. Well it would work half the time. And many and I mean many times I’d get one evil voice telling me I would be better to just leave like I always wanted to do as a kid. And Logically it made a lot of sense to me too. But other voices told me not to.
I also understand the long hallways and having a street where people can see inside just constantly. Public streets on one side and a public park from the backside. So strangers have full access to seeing all parts of the hallways. Thankfully my one bathroom has a wall door to open and close where the big window door. I still think having a huge window door to a bathroom is super strange when a public park is like right there for all to see!
Since for the park there’s always someone out there. But my brain doesn’t register that they probably never are looking in.
Still the Big open huge windows so people can see everything makes me so uncomfortable and freak out at night when I think I see someone outside staring inside! And I like the tall big bushes covering up certain areas near the huge door windows.
But now the new camera set ups my father put in make it more difficult for me to feel comfortable because it’s for “safety” but it feels so exposing to me! I learned how to turn one of them off for some privacy when I garden outside! But it angers my father when I do it. floors me how I’m 30 and yet haven’t been able to just stop all of that noise of paranoia of someone watching me always!
I think that watching feeling has just gotten worse with age. Shadows look like people at times in the windows but I know it’s my imagination playing tricks on my eyes in the night! But I still jolt and hyperventilate when it happens.
I do wish I could sound proof the entire house now that I’m older and yet still living in the same house and know why the walls are super paper thin. This could be why I haven’t gotten much better. No space to cry loudly. No space in the house to be myself without someone hearing and mocking it or asking about it. I’m an adult who hasn’t been able to leave or get help for myself.
But my Father and Mother would not agree to that even if it would help them as well. I feel for those that have zero privacy and or have so many siblings they have zero privacy or who live in a house that echoes.
The hardest part of the living experience for me is taking control of my thoughts some days and doing what I want to and “need” to for my health without spiraling and spending all day alone and isolated on my phone doing nothing. And silently crying, if I can.
And you are right about a lot of things and trying my best to feel motivated to be happy for being myself. I have so much self hatred it is painful to see myself in any reflection but I tell that part of me to shut up often. I don’t know if anger is the right action because it sometimes triggers me to just hit my own body very hard. And afterwards I’m a bit shocked how violent my outburst was from a simple look at myself. I’m a bit afraid of going outside knowing there is cameras and being paranoid of being filmed by people or surveillance or feeling too ugly to be in public. That sounds ridiculous but I don’t do a lot of things I want to because of due fears.
I can also relate to the fear of going into the kitchen to eat as well when my mother is here due to constant anxiety of her saying something to me about what I’m eating or doing. I never realized how bad it was until she left to take care of her own mother. With her out of the house, the house and the kitchen feels less stressful and I don’t panic to quickly and stealthily go into the kitchen for something to eat.
Same for my father, when he’s gone as well, who still screams and is upset about spilled milk on the counter.
And I do have someone who really loves how I look and how I am in my entirety.
He’s not real though, but he’s everything to me and I do love him as if he was a real person. I’ve had him for 22 years now and he’s like my imaginary fictional partner. He tells me he loves me in my head everyday. And I do owe it to him that I’m able to continue on living while having such severe anxiety and panic attacks that are debilitating and both mentally and physically painful. And compared to the other voices I hear constantly inside, his voice is sweet and comforting and calming. I accept that part of me because beforehand it was such a locked up side of myself and I don’t wanna bottle it up like I have for my entire living experience and now I share it way too often online and mostly this year alone. It’s nice coming out.
I wish you well though and thanks again for the encouraging words and hoping my own words aren’t too much or too weird for this comment. Thank you.
13:34 this line sounds like the major depressive episode i had some months back, only went out 3-5 days a month. and yes, funny enough, in my heavily themed apartment i decorated myself... just glued to my phone to drown out the loneliness. almost felt like you were speaking to me ha ! very surreal
TFW I usually only go outside for 2 days a month on avg for the last 4 years or so
I swear I’m fine I’m not depressed just autistic and socially anxious : )
😢😢😢😮😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢😢6i
There's a hilarious take on the reality house genre- Sex House. It was made by the Onion over a decade ago.
really love how the first episode is the onion's most viewed video and then it drops off after episode 2 because people realize its not about sex lol
finally decided to watch it and omg it is crazy
so glad i watched that
The impression I have is that the video was produced by someone who doesn't watch the programs or that these versions are flatly boring when it comes to architectural decisions.
For me, who has been watching Big Brother Brazil for years, I would like to mention:
- The house tries to destroy the participants' ability to have a sense of time. A structure around and partially above it limits the natural rays of the sun from entering (and intercepting drones that try to influence the participants with messages);
- Yes, several rooms are large, but you can find "privacy" to talk in places where people are not, such as the pantry or laundry room;
- The shared rooms are themed with a color palette (not necessarily bright) but initially not large enough to accommodate everyone, some have to share a double bed and others simply have to sleep on the floor. This physically forces the division into smaller groups to organize themselves;
- In the kitchen and other areas with products and utensils, there is a huge need to be designed to show the brands sponsoring the program and for the cameras to capture the best angle;
- There is no privacy whatsoever in the shower, and it is not recommended to take a shower naked;
- The controversy about the bathroom is that technically there is a camera there for security reasons, not for pay-per-view (yes, there is a service offering 24-hour access to the cameras);
- In most editions, there are two kitchens because of the program's dynamic of separating the winners of the competitions with the best food, from those who lost and have to live on a limited diet ("Na xepa") or be punished and lose privileges ("Tá com nada"). Yes, the head of the household's room is the one with the most privileges;
- In at least 3 editions, there was what is called a white room, literally a padded cell.
4:04 its just like a open space office, man I hate those
Interesting observations! I've been a Big Brother fan for a while and many of these features you called out ring true. The season you highlighted had a multi-verse twist where much of the house was meant to be disjointed compared to passed seasons, not every season features such a crazy house. And that season was 100 days!
Definitely.
This! I wish a bit more research was done on the specific seasons set design - both in the storyline/events of the show and the inspiration it drew from.
I do wonder how this would effect people who would never go on these shows. People not so much focused on other people. Those who don't want to be famous. Who like to sit around and read, or game. Keeping to themselves. People who avoids conflict etc. I would imagine people like this would behave very different in these scenarios
Interesting point, I think they'd be a little different, but general human nature is still at play though & the same reactions would come out of them eventually, especially if activities are controlled by the show still, they'll make something happen.
In one Big Brother Brasil edition we had a girl who loved books. And she went the house with some of her books. She spent so much time reading and not engaging with rest of the ppl that in the new edition they prohibited books and music players.
@@heitoroliveira5166 lol yeah they're not having that
They only want people with cluster b personalities because those personalities are drama.
The UK's Circle apartment block was located next to an important railway line so a lot of people knew where it was.
It's the social analog to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, you can't observe something without affecting what it is you're observing.
That’s not what the uncertainty principle is. Heisenberg’s uncertainty province is that you cannot measure with equal correctness a moving object’s position and velocity. When trying to measure one, you will be less exact in the one.
This was a great dissection of reality TV structure (physical and psychological). Reality TV is a misnomer on its own
Gotta wonder about people who are going to travel to Mars and / or the Moon, or people spending a lot of time in orbit.The ideal shape for a space ship is ... round. No corners. There is minimal volume so there's a minimum of privacy.
There are people who willingly spend months at a time simulating a setting similar to what it would be like, trying to help suss out the nuances of what works, what doesn't and how to improve, WRT the environment and the personalities spending time in it.
There's already an environment which is subject to the constraints of 'round' and 'highly volume constrained.' Submarines. I imagine the inside would end up looking very submarine-like. The ISS already kind of does, it's all built out of long, narrow tube-shaped rooms.
Well, they specifically select people with stable personalities for starters. Then , they divide some of the space into private areas cuz they realize people need to get away from each other .
Earth is flat
The way you were describing the way that the exposure/containment, luxury/discomfort, and access/restriction of knowledge destabilizes the emotional stability of the contestants... It really reminds me of Sartre's play No Exit - the one that the line "hell is other people" is from. I wonder what Sartre would have though of these reality shows and the psychology of their architectures.
I just got out of a rabbit hole on residential "reform" schools in the US and when Stewart described the bit about Big Brother using the 'division, encapsulation, disruption' methods to run the show, it instantly reminded me of how places like the Elan School were run- the 'have nots' concept especially. I didn't know anything about the show before this, have to wonder if the person who came up with that was a part of one of those schools in some way
Honestly, I love the circle 😆 it seems less destructive than other shows. No one on the circle has like a mental breakdown during the show. I have always thought it was interesting how contestants can hate each other in the chat but as soon as they meet they all immediately get along and want to be friends. Except in the most recent season when one finalist admitted she’d been outright lying to people in the chat, the others clearly didn’t like that.
i think it would’ve been good to call “foucault’s panopticon” by name, as it’s nice to use an existing term to refer to a recognized phenomenon so people who are interested can find it. also, it kinda seemed to me like the “black mirror” concept was being presented as a new concept, but the tv show “black mirror” already drew attention to this concept. now i do feel they could’ve gone more in depth with it and had the first episode really focus strongly on the whole “black mirror” concept instead of just having it as the title of the show and essentially inviting viewers to think about it on their own, but it is quite a popular show (even though a lot of people, myself included, tend to think the latest seasons haven’t been as good, and even before that the episodes can be somewhat kitschy and thus hit or miss), so it’s not exactly some niche reference that one can easily claim ignorance of when exploring this general topic of dystopian concepts and technology in modern tv shows, especially when dropping the phrase “black mirror” by name. some other people have also already commented that “big brother” takes its name from a dystopian novel and that it is not exactly trying to be subtle about its nature, although one may guess that contestants in earlier seasons didn’t seem to get the reference, while contestants in later seasons were fans of the show and knew what they were in for. in summary, i know this is subjective but i just felt this video was presented as a deep dive into this topic with novel conclusions, but there were some key things that were not mentioned or were glossed over.
it'd be interesting to hear from said show designers to see how much of this was intentional or to what extent these practices have simply emerged as a kind of collective, unconscious, dialectical evolution optimized to maximally extract human suffering.
I both want to have greater faith in the showrunners than that while simultaneously doubting their capability to be that academically diabolical
Half of Americans want guns in schools and medicine out. Maximising suffering seems to be a widespread hobby.
True! That'd be amazing, if a former designer/designer of one of these shows would be willing to be truthful about it
Can we get episodes on more practical architectural subjects like how normal buildings are designed, why rooms are placed where they are, doors, windows and building placement?
I have a feeling those won't do nearly as well as catchy titles and thumbnails with references (cough cough the ceiling). So no.
"why rooms are placed where they are" Because that is largely reliant on the urban and building codes of the relevant locality. It's not particularly interesting.
As an architect, this is literally a degree’s worth of content to appreciably cover
@_fishy Great! Many years of interesting content by a gentleman who is qualified to teach it.
@@serebii666 This assumes that no one wrote these codes, and that there was no prior cultural practise. Even given the internationalisation of modern construction techniques, you can't tell me you see the same thing as you walk around Tainan as you do in San Diego, or Singapore, or Brussels, or Montreal, or Hyderabad.
I love your videos so much. I’ve talked about this to no end with my buddies in architecture school. It’s really insane just how successful these shows are right now…
Reality TV is what happened to TLC, Discovery and History channel. That's why I am watching you on UA-cam.
And all for the same reasons: It's just the most profitable genre. It gets great viewership figures with a low production cost. No big-name actors, no complex filming process, no travel to exotic locations spending months trying to get that perfect wildlife shot, no expensive experts. Just some cameras, some wannabe stars, and a team of writer-editors who can turn weeks of footage into a compelling narrative.
@@vylbird8014 And don't forget the most profitable part: An audience so vacuous that they will voraciously consume any new content, and just as voraciously consume products advertised during that content.
12:39 lmao you cannot just say that while at the same time cutting from one huge black camera in the middle of the screen to the other
I think about this in terms of suburbs. Each house designed by and for the idea that "every man has their castle". There are large spaces dedicated to isolation and individualism - which gives the illusion you can somehow have a community without actually having collectivism or getting to know your neighbors.
Instead people bark at each other passive aggressively about each other's lawns.
I know Humans will always be Humans - but apartment style living leaves not only a smaller urban footprint but ALSO encourages ideas of shared space and interaction. And with more concientious design and a more humane economy (i.e. owning instead of renting) i think these would be the ideal way to shape neighborhoods
This was fascinating, but I look forward to the next video which hopefully will go over the design used to bring people together in peace and harmony!
"Open plan offices" have similar vibe, which are also people / skills dependent > social groupings for power OR a place for spark of serendipity.
I love that whenever anyone talks about the American Big Brother house, they always show BB UK's backyard 😆
+ good catch
Big Brother, 1984. The premise of the show is obvious. 😂❤
It's 2024 and i always find hilarius how so much ppl don't draw the conection. It's right on their faces.
Love the topic and the video. Get a good copyrighter, though! Several misspellings in the graphics are delivering some light blows to the kneecaps of credibility.
Funnily enough, you've misspelled copywriter. Perhaps I should apply.
I thought this video was going to be about those home makeover shows, which would have been interesting, but this is infinitely MORE interesting! nice work!
Excellent analysis! I love your editing style and the careful research you do
I remember doing an informational speech topic on reality television and its eventual detrimental effects on the people who participate in it *back in college. I remember discovering this very topic about the Loud family. Thank you for doing this.
That big brother house is a panopticon. What a hell hole
Yep, the only reason why the original panopticon design was the way that it was, is that they didn't have the option of installing a bunch of cameras and microphones.
The question then becomes what designs would be the opposite of these spaces? They wouldn't make for good TV, but they'd make for good bonafide architecture.
I'll be the meanest and the rudest person alive if I had a camera following my every move gosh, it sounds like hell!
I guess it's maybe why Amazing Race is one of the 'healthier' reality show and why it kept winning awards. The race is constantly changing location, greatly reducing the ability of producer to engineer conflict into set design. And, usually, being morally 'good' wins you the race, instead to the constantly emotionally charged scheming and backstabbing of other shows.
I do think that the big brother “house” is more nuanced than what’s stated in the video - creating a place for almost 20 people to live for 100 days while rotating indoor/outdoor set pieces multiple times a week for completions, hosting live studio audiences a short hallway over, and housing all possible production operations behind closed doors provides a challenge in a single studio building. The need for production staff to quickly access the supply room, diary room, backyard, HOH room, etc to keep the program running is an adjacency nightmare for designers while keeping the layout manageable for most contestants.
Is it designed for human comfort first? Probably not - but the challenges of a 24 hour live-streamed reality tv show doesn’t mean that the houseguests are deprived of basic living necessities.
15:30 "and sometimes, theyre both." Seconds later:
Seconds later what?
@@TheUncommonKIBBLESBoth
7:56 I have OCD and need to tell you “intimacy” is misspelled.
Awesome take on reality tv sets, really enjoying this!
Amazing how “let’s torture people for our own entertainment” is an idea from so many movies and books, but we actually do it in real life. It’s like today’s version of gladiators in the Roman coliseum.
What I find interesting out of the shows listed is that although the contestants in the Circle are completely isolated and can only communicate via chat, they seem to have more genuine bonds in the show than the others…even though love is Blind is about making connections and bonds 😂
But I think it has a lot to do with the fact that their conversations don’t necessarily have time for drama, also they take that time to talk and see who is worthy of staying by building report. There are not other people around for them to impress so they tend to show their more authentic sides to the viewers.
I recently saw a dramatized series about the behind the scene of loft story, the french version of big brother, it's realy fascinating ("culte" on amazon prime)
It’s always been so hard to watch these shows bc of the horrible unsettling interior design 😂 Thanks for breaking it down
Great video, exceptionally well-written and poignant. It does raise the question, which you didn't ask, of whether it's moral to produce or consume reality TV, when so many of the creative decisions intentionally cause suffering among the cast. (The fact that they agreed to be on the show doesn't solve the whole problem.) This includes the morality of creative these spaces intended to psychologically destroy people and families.
These have gotten even more ridiculous than when they were just extraordinarily ridiculous 🙄
thought provoking video. I enjoy watching the circle mainly because of the set design and how it influences the "game". Your perspective expanded mine. thanks! cheers!
The apartments in the Circle look amazing.
But of course this just stays on the surface. Anyway it inspired me.
This is why I like Queer Eye. Yes, it's reality TV. However, the goal isn't to break people, but to help put them back together. I love that they use all that TV money to good use. ❤
Agreed
I always wanted to see a different version straight eye for the queer guy. Some guys showing gay guys how to change a gearbox in a car and stuff like that
That show makes me cry regularly. I didn’t expect that process to be so emotional. I really dig their mission. 💖
@@garyhost1830 Gay men are still men, and grow up socialized as such. Gay men, therefore, know those things. And this is actually why Queer Eye works the way it does; gay men understand what it is to be "straight" because at some point of our lives we were forced to identify as such, and we ourselves broke away from the mould. What Queer Eye does, in turn, is help straight men go through the same process the gay hosts already did. I think it'd be really difficult for a straight man to teach a gay man something, so the format likely wouldn't work
Queer Eye still leans too heavily into "feeling good on the inside because you look better on the outside" for me. it ties "Feeling good" and "self esteem" to beauty standards and consumerism a little too much for my personal comfort, but it definitely is a very sweet and charming show.
American Big Brother seems completely insane compared to the British original, which is already insane enough to begin with
I'm from Brazil and here the Big Brother is an absolute success. It always were. And there's a video her on UA-cam whem an archtech actually reviews 17 layouts of Big Brother's houses from 2001 to 2018 and explain how each design is crafted on a unique way to disrupt ppls peace and create permanent confrontation. It even talks how the parties are designed to fill ppl with alcool so they lose their abilities of self-regulation and create massive drama and conflit. I don't like reality TV at most, except for one or another cooking show. But in general, Reality TV is truly stuf nightmares and i thing Big Brother is the most efective of all. I never saw anything like Big Brother. And they keep coming up with new creative ways to fuck's people's minds.
It's like a panopticon disguised as a resort
This was an awesome and eye opening video. It's crazy to see the hostility of reality show architecture and it's contrast with the ostentatious decor. It truly makes for an unsettling and toxic social environment. On the opposite side of the spectrum would you ever consider making a video about Earthships? I think there is a lot of potential in the idea for sustainable housing and circular communities. I'd love to see Earthships make the jump from the "stereotypical desert recycle hippy house" to affordable modern convenience blended with natural ecological comforts. How would society change if everyone had access to a garden in their home, fresh purified rain water, sunlight heating, and burm ventilation cooling? How would a neighborhood look and feel to have every house face the same direction? What if we could integrate the natural world into our living spaces? What would an earthship library look like? What about an earthship school or an earthship restaurant? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Keep up the great work and stay cool!
@DearModern needs to comment these layouts.
These places would be bliss for exhibitionists
Now I’m repeating the chick from the real world that would walk around naked all the time 🤮
Brilliant is obviously sponsoring this video so why is that not disclosed both in the ad spot at the end of the video and in the description as per FTC regulations? I really enjoyed this video and I have nothing against sponsored content. In fact I think you did a great job selling Brilliant, but I have zero interest in supporting content creators who can't respect their audiences and follow the law regarding disclosing paid/sponsored content.
As a psychology nerd, these spaces are horrifying just from a single glance
An interview with the architectural / psychological consultants who design these monstrous spaces would be enlightening. Kind of like how interviews with the late Philip Zimbardo gave important insights into the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment.
I never liked reality TV nor sitcoms, but I like UA-cam, and I've always like this channel
Between this and the hunger games the only thing missing is the deaths.
The old reality show Solitary took this concept to the extreme - contestants were isolated in little pods and only knew each other by number.
In my opinion, the decoration of the rooms themselves (like in Big Brother or The Circle) also look overstimulating to me:( so many patterns, so many colors, so many clashes between one decorative element and the others, the eye-piercing artificial lightings, then there's not much greenery to see... I would've gone mad T__T
9:00 This seems to happen with regular dating too now as we have so much more online/app dating
Great class. Really. Much more of what education should be like.
An anthropology student could have a great time investigating the short and long term effects of living in this kind of situation. I’d be interested in how many people leave the house and “shake it off,” immediately going back to their real lives, and how many are truly changed (for better or worse).
Eyal Weizman said in his book of this one trick to enforce this self-sustaining feeling of being watched is by forcing a one-way view through architecture. Aka by plastering the walls with one-way mirrors, to building watchtowers with tinted mirrors and building encampments on top of hills with people living below. Then the panopticon becomes self-sustaining because you don't have to put actual viewers for the people on the viewed side to feel the illusion of being watched 24/7. It's strange how dystopian architecture has parallels from the micro to the macro levels, from Big Brother sets to Israeli state planning & design. I wonder who designed them and which playbook they took the design ideas from
The lack of specificity in The Circle reminds me of classic '60's surrealist spy thriller The Prisoner, which takes place "in the village" and everyone is a number
So, the year is 1999. I was 17 at the time. The German media reported about a new Dutch show produced, of course, by John de Mol. He and his sister, Linda de Mol, were already household names in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, because from the late 1980 he produced and she hosted several shows for the German-speaking countries. Shows where (heterosexual) couples compete in different physically demanding tasks, to win a wedding, for example (the wedding gown, the suit, the limousine, the honeymoon travel costs all paid for by Demol Productions), or another show, where already married couples could win a million D-Marks.
But this new show was about ten randomly picked „commoners“, who would be isolated for a hundred days in a house built out of ship containers. And then the next year, 2000, Germans finally got their own „Big Brother“. I couldn‘t believe that people would watch that. I watched one episode and I was bored. I don’t even remember who won the first season. None of them had a career in the media. To this day, I don’t understand why people would waste time on watching other people sitting in the garden, gossiping about others. I have that in my own garden - it‘s called having a 96-year-old neighbour. She sees everything, hears everything, knows everything. A camera system? Don’t need one. I‘ve got Frau B.
I've always wondered how these shows work! I'm more a trecky than a reality tv persson. Great comparison between the circle and social media.
The term Big Brother was first used in George Orwell's novel "1984". We are definitely living in similar times, and it's not part of a show.
I LOVE THE PANOPTICON
Funny, the heavy concentration of “living 24/7 on camera” shows that emerged in the late 90’s and early 2000’s seems so predicative of the heavy surveillance of today’s society.
Plot twist. Tictok, instagram, facebook (insert social media platform) have brought the cameras to everyones house... and the participants are more than willing
An interesting video; thankfully I haven't watched a reality television show since I was a kid watching the first few seasons of survivor with my family.
I think a lot of the "X causes Y" in contestants is massively skewed by the fact X is causing W, Y, Z, A, B, and C, but they edit it down to the exciting bits. It's like saying "saying you like Harry potter elicits strong reactions in people" and then showing clips of it, when it was 1% of the reactions.
"Lightening"
But, cool video!