betrayals

 

I like to be fashionably late to a party, unless it is an actual party, in which case I like not to go at all. And so it is that I watched the third series of The Traitors, having not watched the first two (even then, I didn't pick this one up from the very start).

A couple of quick takeaways.

Firstly, people, even people who believe themselves to be en vogue, are incredibly change resistant. This series saw a couple of twists, variations on how the game was played in the first two series (in part to keep the game fresh; in part, I'm sure, to generate exactly the kind of response it achieved) and a whole lot of viewers were up in arms. Even though this is a game of twists, we want the format to remain unchanged. We like the pretence of being in control that knowing the rules of the game gives.

Secondly, collectively we enter into an agreement to play the game. As far as I know (though I admit I did not go looking and so I may be wrong) the media respected the format. That is, although the series was filmed some time before it was broadcast (and was broadcast over a much longer time than the game took to play) the media did not report who had won (at least, even if that information could be found somewhere, you could engage with the media without finding out). The news media took the traditional roles of reporting, for the record, what had taken place the day before (the day before, in this case, being a conceit, but still) and offering editorial thoughts on what might unfold next; as opposed to the more usual current role of informing us today what someone in the public eye is going to do (e.g. leaking extensive content of a Prime Ministerial speech a couple of days before they deliver it). And this meant that we were all in a traditional and now increasingly unfamiliar role as consumers of media, held in time (not real time, as the series had already been filmed, but common time). If you chose not to watch an episode as it was aired, or if you had no choice but to catch up later, you had to avoid finding out details the next day that would spoil your viewing; but you were essentially in the traditional place of a newspaper reader who only got their newspaper a couple of days after the events it was reporting. This agreement, this holding of common time in a world of on-demand media consumption, also gives us a sense of security, which is illusionary but an effective placebo.