Big Brother 2014 – Friend Or Foe?

It’s not what you know but who you know! Relationships in the Big Brother house are vital to the longevity of a housemate’s stay and can either make or break some people.

Cliques
It’s natural that cliques form and I have already touched upon the playground mentality in previous posts. Well it has come to my attention that these are the things that can turn a potential winner into a panto villain.
Yes the individual and their quirky personality is the reason why they make the cut to enter the Big Brother house but once they are in it is a whole different ball game. If they are smart enough to pick the right clique – generally the one with the least amount of members – they could ensure they stay true to themselves and stay away from turning into a playground bully. We have seen it before, the more dominant clique in the house is generally the most aggressive and least popular with the public. Why? It takes just a few or even one strong character to drive the dynamic of the group and the rest begin to follow suit.

Maybe it’s the survival of the fittest mechanism that kicks in and makes some people latch on to these strong characters, who quickly turn into confrontational tyrants. They mirror their behaviour under the illusion that this will befit their chances of staying in the house. I don’t know for sure, I’m not a psychologist, but one thing I do know is that it doesn’t work in their favour – quite the opposite, in fact.

Housemates
It’s hard not to harp on about Helen when her behaviour has sparked so many complaints and debates online. So let’s take Helen for example and the people closest to her within the house. Pauline and Helen got on famously, she’s the reason why Helen is there until the final – thanks a bunch Pauline great choice! Pauline was once the favourite to win but that quickly changed and she became the second housemate to be evicted. Next up is Toya who became more and more argumentative as that clique grew stronger and despite being loved by housemates was tipped to go this week until she began to break away from that group – good move.

Ash has had his eye on Helen recently but since then Ash’s popularity has dropped drastically. He was up for eviction in week two and the closer eviction that day got he stupidly announced he had feelings for Helen in a last ditch attempt to stay. It worked and he, along with Christopher, were saved after receiving the least amount of votes. So Ash got closer to the new apple of his eye and quickly followed were the arguments and nasty comments, like calling Jale a ‘maggot’ for nominating him – its Big Brother Ash you are going to get nominated: suck it up. Now Ash is tipped to go on Friday and has lost a lot of his fans and, maybe I’m being premature, but his place in the Big Brother house looks uncertain.

Romance
In the beginning we loved to see romance blossom and it did make some housemates more loveable: think of Helen and Paul (BB2) and how we revelled in watching these two crazy kids find love on a reality show, but cut to a few years later and you have Nikki and Pete (what was that) or Ziggy and Chanelle. It gets old, we are on the 15th season now and it looks as though a romance in the Big Brother house is a big no no if you want to go the whole hog.

The moral of this rant is if you want to succeed in Big Brother choose your friends carefully and that it is ok to be isolated from the ‘popular kids’ because they are always the first to fall.