They literally just harass people at random and film it as entertainment.
I was not the target, but I was stuck behind her in line trying to get a refill on a cup of coffee. I was logged into the BBS while it happened.
I don’t know if they’ll be able to use the footage since I didn’t sign the release form. Their insight into the fact that fucking with people in front of a hidden camera is still fucking with people was zero.
I’ve watched this show, and it’s basically a way for people to feel good about themselves for doing the right thing that anyone should do.
[1]: http://www.radiolab.org/story/smile-my-ass/
Actress customer pitched a fit, actor barista failed to make her happy or make her leave, apparently the producers expected one of us muggles to yell at her or get rid of her or who knows what. In a public accommodation isn’t two customers fighting with each other the last thing you ever want?
I had seen the video crew skulking around but I was still surprised. This was a neighborhood place I had been many times, and it didn’t occur to me that the proprietor would give somebody permission to subject his customers to distress and humiliation on purpose.
The scenario I endured was not nearly as interesting as anything on that list. There was no racial or gender subtext, and no physical violence. It was just a generic entitled rich lady being shitty to an incompetent service worker, with plenty of other staff standing around. Fixing the problem was obviously not our job.
I’m back at the same place right now. I forgive them.
Until you find out that they used donkey semen instead of milk. Cause y’know. It’s a prank bro!
Srsly though, my faith in their integrity would be shaken by this kind of thing but not as much as it would be by some of the stuff on the wiki page you posted.
One thing about yesterday, they were not just baiting people into intervening in a dispute, Bad!Fake!Customer was actually preventing us from getting our goddamn drinks. She kept interrupting the mark while the mark was trying to pay for her tea. And then the cameras came in.
Some kind of cultural voyeurism stops us from perceiving the whole project as unethical when it’s all just words on a Wikipedia page.
Beyond even the ideals of ethical treatment, which I do agree with, this sort of thing makes for poor pragmatics as well. What they are doing is trying to encourage people to over-react as entertainment, instead of actually teaching useful skills such as patience or conflict resolution. The best reaction is often no reaction - but isn’t entertainment supposed to be based upon misfortune and people doing dumb things?
I’m not sure how to articulate what I’m trying to say here.
This actually happened in my actual life, and at the time, Bad!Fake!Customer’s self-evidently inappropriate and offensive behavior did not somehow become less inappropriate or less offensive to me just because I subsequently discovered that it was also disingenuous and literally part of a conspiracy.
That just made it all worse.
And yet culturally, I think I am supposed to look back and regret that I passed up the opportunity to be on television, which is supposed to be the greatest of all possible things.
