Category: Blog

Every week this season we’re looking at posting some blogs from you – the users of Behind Big Brother. If you feel you have the gift of the gab and can express yourself well through words, please email your Big Brother Australia related blog to [email protected]. Each week, we’ll choose a few to post here on the main site. This week we’re publishing the work of molloch and thebitchyprincess.

molloch – The Beginning

So here we are yet again at the start of another BB year. Seven years! Who would’ve thought that when a young enthusiastic brothel manager bum danced her way onto our screens that we would still be watching this show 7 years later.
Sure some of us have become a lot more cynical about the whole experience, but most of us have yet to give up on this show we love to hate. And why is that? Well for the most part we human beings are voyeurs. Why has Funniest Home Videos lasted so long? Because we love others misfortune, triumphs, sadness, glorious highs and the lowest of lows. We love watching the housemates enter the house for the first time. We first make our assumptions based on their looks. Too thin, too large, slightly odd looking….unusually perky breasts. Then we hear them talk and we hear the first lies come out of their mouths. “I’m in it for the experience.” “I’m so crazy, zany and loud”. “I don’t let anyone tell me what to do.”
HA! We’ve heard it before Elise. Those that brag so much as they stand there on the stage ready to enter the house do tend to let us down. They are never as controversial as they make themselves out to be. And yet we cannot drag ourselves away. I’d say most of you, like myself, form first impressions on those wonderful housemates and some of you may already have your favourites. This is why we stay tuned. While the tasks and games that BB plays with the housemates can be entertaining, it is the housemates themselves that keep us coming back time and again.

When Rachael began singing in the garden and had those wonderful fights with Dean I had to tune in to see what she would do next. Same with good old Sara-Marie. Her antics kept us all entertained. I will never forget her and the frozen fish fingers. Max was a joy last year and so easy to watch, but then you also have your Turkan’s and Carlo’s who you’ve really had enough of but can’t actually bring yourself to tear your eyes away.
These people are the reason we keep watching BB every year. The reason we keep coming back to bbba to find out any new goss and to read and reply to everyone else’s views of the housemates on the forums. We are a passionate lot and seem to fight to the death to defend our favourite housemates no matter what they’ve done. And some of us will fight our fellow forum users just because someone else has dared to besmirch the character of our beloved housemate.

We can relate to some of their experiences. We empathise with issues that they may have. We see ourselves in some of them then we also see what we may dislike in ourselves in others. And this is why no matter how many of us bitch and moan and carry on about the repetition of the show and the stealing from other BB’s, we will (mostly) remain fixated to the very end. Because for most of us, those housemates that get towards the end are people we have identified with in some small way. We like them because they remind us of someone we know, ourselves even. We want them to succeed as we’ve shared their journey for three months. We’re pretty much guaranteed to run the whole gamut of emotions with the housemates as they struggle to become the people they are on the outside or to suppress those parts of their characters that they think we may like.

So BB I ask you this year, with all your wonderful ads that say so much yet really give us nothing at all. Do you realise what actually makes your show work? Why we gullible fools tune in year after year and waste precious dollars in sms calls? It’s not your “new dimension” (though if you actually put up a Skylounge I think I will not be able to stop my sides from splitting through laughter), it’s not your “promises”, it’s not your opening night that will be talked about for days, nor has it got anything to do with you and you lame punishments that never really seem to be followed through (hello Jamie and his 3 strikes). It is simply about the housemates. That’s the crux of it. Give us some great housemates and we’ll watch for however long you want us too. We want ones we love, ones we don’t understand, ones we can hate, ones we can talk and bitch about for hours on the forums. The Vesna’s, Reggie’s, Tim’s, Dean’s, Rachael’s, Max’s, Michael’s and Perry’s of this world, they are the ones that keep your show going and keep us interested.

So I say again BB, please don’t fail us this year. I hope you’ve made your list and you’re checking it twice. Cos we’re gonna need housemates who are naughty and nice.

thebitchyprincess – Still hopeful but not expecting a lot…

So here we are again… Another year, another set of dodgy ads that get our mouths watering and our brains ticking. Will there REALLY be something under the table this year? If they dig up the backyard will they REALLY find a secret so special it could blow even the most cynical big brother mind? Will it REALLY be a more interesting place to live??? That really is the question I find most BB fans pondering. Those on the fan sites, forums and chat rooms are already devouring the details with glee, chewing them up, spitting them out and waiting for the next sliver of information. Gretel keeps popping up every 3.5 seconds to warn us that this year, big brother will live up to his promises. Gretel A La – Secret Agent Man. I wouldn’t want to be able to be identified either Gretel.

We will be talking about the opening night for days – She assures us. Well sure. Good or bad, people are going to be on here picking it to pieces and leaving its rotting remains for all to see all over the World Wide Web.

The house will be a more interesting place to live – They proclaim with exclamation marks. With all of the new ‘sexual harassment’ clauses this year definitely has to promise something. After all, they won’t even be looking at each other sideways, fully clothed sitting on the couch, let alone having a Mike/Dave rendezvous in the bathroom, a turkey slapping good weekend or a revealing bath in the rewards room.

A greener place to live – Well that’s not special mate. Most of the population is trying to go green. Our ears are bleeding from the overuse of the terms carbon neutral and water restrictions.

The housemates will reflect all walks of life – Well duh. Perry was so well received last year that they realised they may have stumbled upon something original and popular to the viewing audience. Better keep that going until its so overdone even Gretel can’t plead its fabulousness anymore.

The grass will be greener on the inside – Of course it will. The rest of QLD is brown and doesn’t have unlimited SMS voting funds to waste on crap like green grass. That is not a hard claim to live up to.

The house will be a life – changing place to live – Thank goodness! Someone is listening to the loser housemates from previous seasons and warning the housemates before they go in that they really won’t be famous, but forgotten exactly 37 seconds after they are ‘evicted’. Except of course if you are David Graham who won’t be forgotten no matter how hard we try.

Friday Night Live… Winning is everything – Really? Hmmm. If you read Mike’s (from last year) blog then you would really know that winning is poorly handled with bad service and crap trips. But whatever. We will still be watching. Wishing, Hoping, Waiting for someone to crack it so bad they have to be wheeled from the arena on a stretcher.

I’m just waiting for the ad that says. Big Brother – Mind numbingly boring, not very creative but brutally honest.

This leaves me with ‘The Golden Key’ promotion. I shall just say this. This could be a very interesting concept. As long as they don’t use half assed knock offs of other ideas. Just like a $5 pair of knock off sunnies. These will fool some people, but the rest of us know that they are poor imitations and you’re a dodgy tight ass that wouldn’t cough up the cash for the real thing. We all know that you’re reading the forums, chatrooms and fansites. Keeping your finger on the pulse and we honestly wouldn’t mind if you ripped off the half decent ideas BB fanatics have. At this stage I will say, I’m hopeful but not holding my breath.

For those of us who have stuck by BB through the good and the bad. Bum dancing blonde girls, plastic boobs, turkey slapping and people bathing in kitchen sinks. We say god speed to the producers. Break a leg to the housemates and sorry to the people truly expecting something new from Big Brother 07.

Finally we’re within sight of the launch. In just over a week, who knows how many housemates will have entered the house and Big Brother 2007 will have commenced. I’m looking forward to it, but as has been the case the past few years, I’m weary. I’m weary because I can easily see this series turning into another horrible one. But hey, we haven’t started yet so I’m trying to remain upbeat and keep the negativity to a minimum!

The ad campaign. It’s been another shocker from where I sit. I feel that they’ve completely contradicted themselves with the ads, two in particular. Back on the 29th March, we got a new commercial saying “Big Brother Promises, nothing is guaranteed”; one of the latest ads is Gretel standing at a press conference announcing “What Big Brother promises, he delivers.” What the….?!!!! I think thats got my point across anyway.

The golden key promotion. Yeh a great lot of advertising for Starburst. When I travel down Punt Road they have a great huge billboard for the promotion, and it tells you how many keys are still out there. I drove past last week (so two weeks before launch) and of the 100 on offer, 61 keys still needed to be found! So this promotion has obviously worked extremely well. From what I can gather, there is no key inside the packs, just a unique code, and you *of course* have to sms the code to even figure out if you’re a winner. No wonder they haven’t got 100 people yet. Secondly on this issue, even if you are one of the lucky ones, you still have to be ‘vetted’ again by producers and there is another culling of the entrants before we the public get to decide. I know we harp on about BBUK, but they’re golden ticket promotion just had the people line up and a lottery was conducted to find the lucky housemate. How easy!

Finally, yesterday we got our first glimpse of the house from an overhead shot. The backyard, minus a paint job and some new turf, looked exactly the same as the previous year. Really not a good omen to begin the year on. However, we’ve got Gretel on Rove tonight to come, so perhaps she can turn my negativity around. We’ll see :)

Dave!

The season hasn’t even started yet but it feels like we’ve already pretty much given up on it and consigned it to the rubbish heap – so for my first blog of BB07 I thought I’d concentrate on the positives.

Then I realised there actually wasn’t any!

Well, except for this place I suppose – Behind Big Brother is probably the best of the best wnen it comes to Big Brother fan sites – but that’s probably because we judge the show for what it really is rather than having an undying loyalty to Gretel and co.

But as for the show itself – well, there must be a serious problem if I can’t think of a single positive to take away from it.

My expectations couldn’t be any lower this year – especially having seen the same tired old promo campaign wheeled out for about the fourth year running.

Even if BB07 gets off to a great start, based on the last few years I wouldn’t expect it to last past the first month before we settle into the same predictable routine.

And if that’s the case – well, it might be best all round it gets off to a bad start so we can see from the beginning what we really should be expecting – promises or no promises.

Brekkie Boy.

P.S. If anyone can comes up with any positives, please join the discussion on the forum

That’s right folks….. I said it…. bbo7 will be the best…. series…. of big brother…. we have ever seen in Australia. Quote me on that, because I have a good feeling about this year, I can feel it in my bones.

Anyway, my name is Rilly and I am here today to blog about big brother. Seeing as the show hasn’t started yet I’m going to comment about the advertising campaign. And guess what! I actually like it

Mainly because we are yet to see the word “twist” with the words “biggest” or “world first” surrounding it, lol. The text based ads are grey, sleek and minimalistic and the use of simple, iconic, imagery are either a first year graphic designers portfolio, lol, or a coded message for us to ponder, either way, they make for an intriguing little precursor to the greater campaign that will infect our screens over the next week and finally die with the launch show on April 22.

The political silhouette ads have been passed off as a parody of genuine political campaigns (unless they are going to let us sms our choice for bb announcers?? lol) and the sleek, dark, Gretal being driven to the press conference at the white house type ads have added to the atmosphere being created with the cryptic text based ads. All in all, I’m pretty pleased, no big promises, no bullshit threats about the “evil” big brother and an interesting atmosphere pre-show.

Love,

Rilly