Big Boss Season-11 ended last weekend with Shilpa Shinde winning the show this season. I am one of those dimwits who followed the show this year, no kidding. While we often hear that a major part of these reality shows is scripted based on the show-makers' idea of what the awaam wants to see, there must still be the larger part left untouched as most of it perhaps looked unimportant. And often, scripting is not as efficient as natural course of events in increasing the overall entropy - and so by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the shit you see gets more chaotic than intended and more in line with nature. You see how matured and scientific my analysis has become after watching this shit!!!😄😄😄
This post is to point out specifically to one task which was assigned in the 1st Jan 2018 episode. The housemates were supposed to discuss and arrive at a consensus on who stands where in the show; and then accordingly stand on the steps marked with the ranks - 1 was the highest and 6 was the lowest.
Out of the 6 guys, 3 -Shilpa, Hina Vikas - were so-called celebrities, and 3 - Puneesh, Akash, Luv - were so-called commoners. Now let me tell you about how the personalities of these 6 contestants appeared to me in the show; and you may disagree with me. Vikas - rightly called the mastermind, was always very calculative, strategic in his actions and decisions, and mature in his conversations. Shilpa - the oldest of the lot, was very hard-working in the kitchen, very natural in her behavior and presented an innocent disposition that was very difficult to not fall for. Hina - proved repeatedly that she had limited intellectual abilities and wisdom, and yet she thought the fame and face she carried justified her self-importance; and because of her profile, even the audience burdened her with lot of expectation. Luv was an average good-looking dude you see in posh areas of cities like Delhi. Puneesh was a rich desi kind of guy, not a huge show-off in his mannerisms but confident enough to take on anybody. Akash was a total nutcase, part-crazy, part-psycho, and eerily delusional about himself. These are just impressions these guys left on me during the show, and may be far from reality.
Now... the task! Arriving at a consensus on where one stands is a tricky task, especially when you are in front of the camera, and at stake is winning the show, while everyone has his/her own ideas on what would be perceived by the audience as "good" behavior in such a situation. I am sure each one wants to go on top, but then, if one wants to be seemingly "good" as well, one would not necessarily be rigid about wanting to be there for the task. So, as the task began, everyone eyed the number one spot. But as the process of consensus started taking shape, they took different approaches. The biggest idiot - Akash - made the loudest noise about being on top, and he wouldn't listen to anybody. The rest of the weaklings - Puneesh and Luv - tagged along as they saw an opportunity to somehow make it higher. The stronger 3 let them move up, perhaps coz they were or wanted to seem:
The more I think about it, I realize we come across this task in various forms and its outcome very commonly in our lives - companies, families, societies, democracies, ..., everywhere. We tend to let the crazy and incompetent guys go up, just to avoid being bothered by their tantrums, and end up having much more competent people taking orders from them. The reasons may be the ones listed above, and more.
I hadn't thought of this before, but it occurred to me just now as I was writing the previous paragraph - a similar observation, although more in the corporate context, was made by Scott Adams who went ahead and defined what he called The Dilbert Principle, which states that "companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing". There is much more to the Dilbert Principle, and I'd strongly recommend the book of the same name by Scott Adams, where he has expanded the principle in very funny and thought provoking ways.
This post is to point out specifically to one task which was assigned in the 1st Jan 2018 episode. The housemates were supposed to discuss and arrive at a consensus on who stands where in the show; and then accordingly stand on the steps marked with the ranks - 1 was the highest and 6 was the lowest.
Out of the 6 guys, 3 -Shilpa, Hina Vikas - were so-called celebrities, and 3 - Puneesh, Akash, Luv - were so-called commoners. Now let me tell you about how the personalities of these 6 contestants appeared to me in the show; and you may disagree with me. Vikas - rightly called the mastermind, was always very calculative, strategic in his actions and decisions, and mature in his conversations. Shilpa - the oldest of the lot, was very hard-working in the kitchen, very natural in her behavior and presented an innocent disposition that was very difficult to not fall for. Hina - proved repeatedly that she had limited intellectual abilities and wisdom, and yet she thought the fame and face she carried justified her self-importance; and because of her profile, even the audience burdened her with lot of expectation. Luv was an average good-looking dude you see in posh areas of cities like Delhi. Puneesh was a rich desi kind of guy, not a huge show-off in his mannerisms but confident enough to take on anybody. Akash was a total nutcase, part-crazy, part-psycho, and eerily delusional about himself. These are just impressions these guys left on me during the show, and may be far from reality.
Now... the task! Arriving at a consensus on where one stands is a tricky task, especially when you are in front of the camera, and at stake is winning the show, while everyone has his/her own ideas on what would be perceived by the audience as "good" behavior in such a situation. I am sure each one wants to go on top, but then, if one wants to be seemingly "good" as well, one would not necessarily be rigid about wanting to be there for the task. So, as the task began, everyone eyed the number one spot. But as the process of consensus started taking shape, they took different approaches. The biggest idiot - Akash - made the loudest noise about being on top, and he wouldn't listen to anybody. The rest of the weaklings - Puneesh and Luv - tagged along as they saw an opportunity to somehow make it higher. The stronger 3 let them move up, perhaps coz they were or wanted to seem:
- Giving: As the weaklings were all commoners, it would look nice to let them take the higher spots for the task, as this probably couldn't mean (they thought) that they would actually win the show.
- Avoiding ugly fight: Akash was in his craziest avatar. Although everyone else is equally capable of ugly verbal fights, they wanted to avoid fighting with the mad man on this, as it wouldn't have looked nice at this stage of the game, more so just for the spot, which may have made them look selfish. Interestingly Akash didn't think that way.
- Under-confident: This might have been the reason to some extent, and they perhaps didn't want to seem stupid by pushing for something which may be the audience didn't think they deserved.
- Unwilling to compete: One may not be sufficiently powered to compete, especially when the perceived stakes aren't too big. This can easily happen in a constantly competitive environment, where competition fatigue sets in.
The more I think about it, I realize we come across this task in various forms and its outcome very commonly in our lives - companies, families, societies, democracies, ..., everywhere. We tend to let the crazy and incompetent guys go up, just to avoid being bothered by their tantrums, and end up having much more competent people taking orders from them. The reasons may be the ones listed above, and more.
I hadn't thought of this before, but it occurred to me just now as I was writing the previous paragraph - a similar observation, although more in the corporate context, was made by Scott Adams who went ahead and defined what he called The Dilbert Principle, which states that "companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing". There is much more to the Dilbert Principle, and I'd strongly recommend the book of the same name by Scott Adams, where he has expanded the principle in very funny and thought provoking ways.
