Who wants to be humiliated

I remembered a Dilbert cartoon where Dogbert says to a man “I will give you $10,000 if you roll in this puddle.” The next frame was the man rolling in the puddle and Dogbert saying, “I can’t imagine how rich people can ever get bored.”

This is true, if you have money or something that the other person needs, you can make them jump through as many hoops as you like.

A very good example of this is the TV. There are so many shows that are exploiting the participant’s hunger for money and fame.

You have these so called reality shows. They call the participants and then in return of prize money they get them to do horrendous things like eating earthworms and bugs, lock them up with roaches and rodents and make them jump on a running car from a helicopter. The organizers are ringmaster and the participants are the animals of circus. I guess since the animal rights activities are pressurizing the circuses to stop the shows of animals, these people can be employed there to do the acts that animals used to do in circuses. Only the people who are organizing these shows are not responsible for it, some responsibility of it falls on the participants as well. In the greed of money, these people are behaving like prostitutes. They are ready to give up their self-respect and dignity and are ready to be mistreated in return of “chance” to win some money. (The emphasis here is on chance, there is no certainty).

The humiliation does not stop here. Following the reality shows are those TV shows where the prize is a role in a TV serial or a movie. This is happening in India as well as Hollywood. You have young people swarming these shows like locust to be exploited by the TV channels and for what? TV rating and the popularity of the show. You can switch on the telly and see a girl crying because she has not been selected or a man in tears after failing to get into the next round. Their faces are plastered on TV as losers on countless ads that are bombarded for that show. I am not sure if a chance to work with Salman Khan or to be the tormented bahu in one of these saas-bahu serials is worth all this humiliation. Publicly humiliating hundreds and rewarding one is something that came out of a sick mind but again, it’s not only the people who are making the shows who are responsible, the people who participate in those shows are equally guilty.

Just imagine going for a job interview that is videotaped and then telecasted on national TV and you are portrayed as a loser who couldn’t get the job, as he’s too dumb and clueless. I guess that is going to be the next thing in the reality show. “Kaun banega naya employee”