BBB 23: Accused of ‘hijacking’ program, engaged fans scare content creators

BBB 23 (Globo) came to an end, but while a portion of the public celebrated Amanda Meirelles’ victory, another used social networks to complain. For the latter group, the result did not reflect what most of the public wanted — even though the doctor from Paraná garnered 68.9% of the approximately 76 million votes in the final.

The explanation would be in the voting system of the reality show, which allows each person to vote as many times as they want. In this way, the most ardent fans are the ones who end up making their will prevail, even if it does not necessarily reflect the will of the viewers as a whole.

Many netizens have pointed out that the program is being “kidnapped” by these groups of fans, who organize themselves to carry out voting campaigns in an attempt to make their own will prevail. It has to be agreed that this is part of the dynamics of the game, but for some content creators who have been following and commenting on the program for years, the thing extrapolated this year.

In the final stretch of BBB 23, members of Amanda’s fans (as well as actress Bruna Griphao, who came in third place) were denounced for alleged attacks on anyone who said something about their favorites that they did not agree with. Organized actions would include blocking pages, offensive comments and large-scale profile denouncements, so that accounts are deleted.

One of the commentators involved in the action was Lucas Paiva. Owner of the @paiva profile, he has followed the BBB since he was a child, but he started making comments about the program on Twitter in the 2010 edition — he still uses the network today to share his opinions about what happens in reality.

“I always make innocent comments, I never cursed or offended any participant, but the way the fans condemn it seems that we [criadores de conteúdo] we committed the biggest crime in the world,” he says. “In the past, the BBB was just a TV show. If you rooted for someone and the other person didn’t, it was to each his own. There could even be a small discussion, but it wasn’t like it is today.”

For Paiva, the change in the behavior of the fans would have started to escalate in 2018, when the administrators of the participants’ pages started using emojis to define the fans. “These emojis, like the cactus for Juliette’s fans, and the bread, for Arthur Aguiar, create a sense of belonging in people who share the same idea or desire. The rest of the population has things to do with their lives and ends up not even wanting to. vote when you see these idle crowd reigning.”

He says he believes that this unconditional support that fans give to a particular participant is bad for the program as a whole. “A final with 76 million votes, the lowest in recent years, is very bad”, he assesses. “Only the spectators of the finalists voted, the people who supported a participant who did not reach the final did not participate in this decision.

The content creator questions whether he will continue to follow the next editions of the BBB. “Next year, if I’m going to follow it, it will only be for editing and hardly for pay-per-view. And silencing everyone to be happy in my bubble”, he adds.

IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THAT

While surprising to some viewers, the fact that a portion of fans are responsible for sealing the fate of the entire show is not new. Who counts is Bruno Campanella, professor at the department of cultural studies and media at UFF (Fluminense Federal University). For him, organized fans have always existed at the BBB, they only became more evident with social networks.

“In the first editions, in a pre-social media phase, eliminations were decided by a combination of internet and telephone voting. And telephone voting had a different weight, it was worth more. The people most passionate about a participant voted for phone and spent hours and hours calling the participant they wanted to leave,” he recalls.

Author of the book “Os Olhos do Grande Irmão: Uma Etnografia dos Fans do Big Brother Brasil”, he says that, at that time, comments and debates about the reality took place on blogs, some of which had more than 10,000 comments per days. “It’s a program that has always been very engaging,” he says.

Nowadays, however, this dynamic has focused on the Twitter and Instagram of participants and those around them, including page administrators. “These pages have gained importance, Instagram becomes an important element in these disputes as a space for fans to join and follow the participants. The participant profile itself has changed, today you already have people connected to this internet world.”

For Campanella, one of the changes most cited by fans of the programs on social networks, that of limiting the number of votes that each person can cast, would not necessarily bring benefits. “As much as voting multiple times brings support, I don’t know if limiting the number of votes helps, it takes away the energy of fan engagement”, she evaluates.

As a tip for the BBB 24, the researcher says that the production of the program should bet on the good old interaction between the participants. “That’s the soul of the program: it’s finding participants and creating a dynamic that creates this tension and makes the board manage to create and generate discussions and buzz”, he says.