The Circle

So at the moment in the UK, there’s a reality TV show called “The Circle” (which I’ll be honest is totes a guilty pleasure)

The idea of the show is simple - a group of people live in an apartment building, but are never allowed to meet. They are only allowed to communicate through a social network called “The Circle” and this is all they ever know of each other. Words on a screen.

Some have chosen to be themselves, and be honest. Some have chosen to be somebody completely different in an attempt to catfish their way to a £50,000 prize.

Apart from being trash TV, I’m finding this fascinating as a social experiment. Watching how people react to words on a screen and the emotions they have is genuinly fascinating viewing.

Would we have ever dared to question being anybody else if it wasn’t for the internet?

I work in social media, and day to day I can see the impact it has - it’s created clones of people comparing themselves to the unachievable.

Has social media made being real a rare commodity in this day and age?

*Discuss*

My TV can't pick up Ch 4.

if anyone ever knew who i really am, nobody would ever speak to me.
that is why sociol media is a lifeline for many.

making a competition from it would be very troublesome though.

I will provide prize money

Now how would you know that’s on channel 4

I don’t deny it’s a lifeline for many people - myself included. However I can’t help but feel that being real is a rarity these days. I think it contributes to more suspicion than you would have in real life.

(FYI I can’t contribute prize money. I’ve got a button and a can of pop to call my own )

Paranoia, suspicion and insight would have still existed without the internet to highlight their uses and impact: some people just know when it is being faked. Pre-internet the best way to become someone else was to make yourself that: all those Roman Emperors and Senators making themselves the big name in Rome; the internet just makes the process more easily accessible and easier to use.

I think social media has killed the average, the clam, and the content: social media seems to be little more than a hyperactive unending quest for the next amazing experience, where if you are not living life to the full then you are not living. Making the quieter more insular folk more likely to get depressed and demotivated by the go-getters. Yet in balance social media is excellent for finding other people who share that passion or hobby nearby or across the world, meaning that there is a snug for just about everyone on the internet, even if sometimes those people are putting on a different face and voice to make the snug into a stage and performance.

Says the guy who is far more eloquent in typed text than in speech, and gave himself a 'title' and persona. Though then it is just a case of the ego and superego and all that jazz: the internet being a suitable platform for helping present ourselves as we wish and aspire to be. Which is fine, so long as it does not belittle to make others small.

Miss_Sub said:

...(FYI I can’t contribute prize money. I’ve got a button and a can of pop to call my own )


I don't know, can you throw in a length of string?

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