• 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 🏆@yiffit.net
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    7 months ago

    They jazzed it up with fake scenarios specially to boost ratings. Haven’t you seen the movie? That was more of the point than just the fact he was being filmed. His life was all Hollywood bullshit. His own father was “killed off” when he was a kid, but the man didn’t actually die.

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    7 months ago

    hypothetically, there was also the literal world building around the kid. the enormous ‘set’ would have taken years to build. i can imagine a chunk of early broadcasting demonstrating the build and subsequent soap drama of all the actors to fill that void.

  • Luke@lemmy.ml
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    7 months ago

    Have you (rhetorical you) seen the ridiculously boring and shallow shit that people watch nearly 24/7 now, though? Video platforms are filled with useless nonsense and people eat it up.

    There are people who will have a show playing in the background every hour of the day, showing the “news” or soap operas or reality shows or game shows or movie reruns or etc etc, just soaking it up subconsciously forever until they die.

    Go to any doctors office or bar or restaurant (in the US, anyway, maybe it’s different elsewhere) and there’s a high chance they’ll also be playing some nonsense drivel on a dozen TVs strategically positioned so you can’t sit anywhere in the place without being subjected to a view of one.

    Society loves giving attention to the most inane shit available, even if just for background noise.

    The idea of there being an audience for the early years of the Truman Show doesn’t seem at all like an unfathomable stretch to me.

  • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    The first few seasons of Big Brother UK had nighttime episodes where you could watch the contestants sleeping. They were very popular, and even had catch up shows so you could see what you’d missed 🤷🏻‍♂️

    • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Same here in Germany, but they weren’t sleeping. People were watching because of all the trash whispering and waiting for the first touchy situations inter the covers.

      They even had a time where one channel was broadcasting live nighttime. I think that stopped after a few seasons.

      Those first seasons were pure trash, but so naive, compared to what it mutated to over the years.

        • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Yeah the format was invented by two Dutch guys. Made them very rich when they licensed the format world wide. And years later one of them created The Voice.

          Also this guy, John de Mol, made Fear Factor. So you can probably blame him for keeping Joe Rogan relevant when he was a washed up actor/comedian

        • kamenLady.@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          It went on for 13 seasons until 2013 and i just found out that season 14 has been running since March 2024, gasp!

          In between there have been things like Promi Big Brother, the celebrity version.

        • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          In Lithuanian one (they called it the Aquarium, but the idea was the same) two people fucked under the sheets and they broadcasted that on TV, causing massive uproar because apparently the audience wasn’t really ready for that.

          • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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            7 months ago

            In Australia there was a huge uproar during the early seasons because a guy held a woman down while another guy slapped her face with his dick on the livestream they were running. Everyone in Australia learnt the term “turkey slap” that year whether they liked it or not.

          • Ricky Rigatoni@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            If Lithuania want to keep their position as the heirs to Rome then they need to get freaky how the romans did.

            • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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              7 months ago

              TIL about Lithuania just straight up lying about their claim as heirs to Rome, and ya know what?

              I respect it. It’s honestly the most Roman thing possible, just fucking lying to fuck with people.

              • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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                7 months ago

                To be honest it was probably an attempt to appear as a legitimate European country instead of a gang of savages that the Teutons were trying to paint them as.

              • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                7 months ago

                Honestly, are you even a European nation of you don’t claim to be the heir of the Roman Empire?

  • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Being lightly scripted, drama would be easy to add:

    Oh no, the mom put the baby on the counter near the stove with boiling water!

  • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Keep in mind his birth was live. They said by random chance in the film, but I suspect they induced labor and this was something like a post-Superbowl event that was hyped up.

    So even if the show got boring, everyone would have been aware. So maybe you are just flipping through the channels (as was the style at the time), if the baby shows up you might watch for a few minutes just to see what it’s up to.

    Remember Reddit had that hotdog in gelatin? I’d want to check in on that every few months.

    The first few years were probably inexpensive and eventually things would get interesting.

  • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I went to work for a cable company in 2007. This old timer there told me about his cable TV dog turd theory. His theory said that you could put a camera on a dog turd in your yard and leave it on for a month. When you switched it off there would be hundreds of calls about why this channel was off. There would complaint after complaint that there was a fly that was about to land on the dog turd and they missed it.