why we watch

So we're going to have to have a little bit of an interlude here. With the recent developments in the house, a lot of crazy stuff has been going on out here. People are venting their frustrations with the HGs on family members, and some of the personal attacks between fans are rivaling the HGs' attacks in degree of nastiness. We've been through this before, and I always say that's wrong. Family didn't sign up for this, and they can't control what's going on in the house anyway. (Though I do have to say it's not surprising that people are making comments to Dan's wife when she's sending out tweets hawking his book, or sharing the notes he left behind specifically for her to send out while he was inside. You can't expect to be the Press Secretary and not have people tell you how they feel about the President.)

But that's not what I'm climbing up on my soapbox for today. It has always made me laugh when people start bitching about the show or the feeds or whatever and say if they don't get what they want they're going to stop watching. I get as upset as the next person about a lot of this stuff. It drives me crazy when they block the feeds for extended periods of time, or for unnecessary stuff. It particularly irritates me when they block for days near the end, and even more so if that deprives us of an endurance comp. I get frustrated when HGs I don't like seem impossible to get rid of, and I get disappointed when ones I do like get kicked. I expect a certain amount of DR manipulation and producer interference, but I'm still not quite over the bouncing back of Crazy James in BB9 (though I just might finally forgive them if they save Janelle tonight).

But no matter what I'm not going to stop watching. I'll admit when seasons are boring, when I don't like most of the HGs and especially if they're just not very nice people I don't watch quite as much. Or more accurately, I don't listen quite as much. I've spent much of the last 4 days with the feeds running on mute, just tuning in when it looks like an important game chat is going on. And as much as I don't want Janelle to leave tonight, I do see an upside. If she goes, a lot of the fun goes with her, and I'll probably get a lot more sleep. Plus, I won't really care who goes each week, and as I've said, not caring is the safest way to retain sanity.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week, but I bring it up now primarily because hamsterwatch has gone on strike. Now, this site is certainly no hamsterwatch; I don't get a tiny fraction of the traffic that they do, but I don't mind. I started doing this because it was fun for me. It is a bit of an obligation, and there are some nights when if it weren't for the fact that someone, anyone, out there might read what I write, I probably wouldn't bother posting. But at the end of the day I do it because I enjoy it. And if it turns out that someone else is enjoying it too, well then I'm just thrilled.

So if anyone is reading this, thanks for visiting, and I hope you find my ramblings interesting and fun. And if you're disappointed with what's going on in the house, just remember, it's so much easier when you can hate them all. (©Dr. Will)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming....

P.S. On the DR leak....it's not the first time it's happened. A couple of weeks ago they were talking about one of Wil's DRs being leaked. Apparently it was pretty much the whole thing, though they could only hear the questions, not his answers, and it was just soundbytes on a comp, nothing strategic or revealing. It was a similar situation to today, where the audio was only coming into the one bedroom. I've also heard them mention that when they get called for early DRs, instead of the recorded "So-and-so please come to the Diary Room" being announced through the house, the producer comes on the loud speaker in the room where the person is and just asks them to come in. My guess is that they're pushing whatever button to get piped into the room and then failing to turn it off. Definitely incompetent production work, but I really don't think it's malicious/deliberate. I happen to disagree with dingo @hamsterwatch that the only way to save Janie was to out Dan. I think the way to save her was to flip Dan. Of course, just because I think that doesn't mean the prods do. But if this was an attempt to out Dan's double-dealing, leaking his DR into a room full of people who were in on it was hardly the way to do it. But what do I know?