Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "the traitors" video.

  1. When I was an older teenager, I attended a residential weekend with my youth club. One of the, “youth workers,” decided that it would be a good, “social experiment,” if he persuaded my two older sisters, the rest of the staff, and all those other young people in attendance to completely ignore me as though I wasn’t there for the first 24 hours. Sounds like a small thing, when I say it in a short sentence like that. I will never be able to describe the utter psychological harm that did to me. I never spoke of it for more than 20 years, and even then, I told it as an anecdote about something that happened to someone else. The shame and pain of it was so traumatic. To suddenly and inexplicably become completely insignificant to the point of none existence, in a set of new anxiety invoking circumstances was a shock to my system that still, to this day, causes me to catch myself arguing out loud with ghosts of my memories, like a mentally ill person, expressing the rage I want to pour out on the person responsible, who was completely unfit for his position of power. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment, though I have not seen the show, nor will I. I think it was after the first season of Big Brother that I stopped watching what I called, “Hate TV.” And ever since then I’ve watched the popularity of Hate TV gradually grow. It is the same form of manipulation and deep psychological scarring that people cannot comprehend until it’s already too late, being committed to a public screening, judging from the trailer I just watched for the sake of context. There is something of the anxiety dream, such as the one you described about the loss of your mother, about this dystopian vision we seem to be sleepwalking into. I keep thinking of the film, Gladiator, and Derek Jacobi saying, “He will give them blood, and they will love him for it.” The producers will be careful to avoid breaking any laws, but reckless about breaking people’s spirits.
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  2.  @neilwarren4573  : And at the heart of that squalid pit of vipers will be the producers; the silent assassins, who spread gossip, whisper in the apprentice’s ears and tell them, “You should not stand for that,” or something to that effect. I saw a documentary looking at how the producers of the Jeremy Kyle show worked from the shadows, skilfully and with experience, manipulating the weaknesses, fears and vulnerabilities of their, “guests,” with such aplomb that they could send them out onto the stage like emotional suicide bombers, giving maximum, “entertainment,” value at the cost of every day after for the rest of the participants’ lives. Real sociopaths. If I met someone in a bar, who introduced themselves to me as a producer on such a show, I don’t know if I could be responsible for myself! And if I did allow myself to slap them (involuntarily, of course) I would feel as though such a dangerous manipulator cannot be left to avenge themselves on me, with all the resources and zero morality they command, so I would have to dispose of their remains somewhere quiet. Of course, I’m not serious. But my contempt for such people, informed by my own damaging experience of manipulators, stirs such dark feelings in me, even now, that I would have no sympathy for any one of them, should they meet such an end at someone else’s hands. That’s awful, I know. And I should be ashamed of myself. But it’s honest.
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