Big Brother

The new season of Big Brother started last night. I know this because my housemate was watching it. She says she's sucked in.

One reason I don't like Big Brother, is because I think it is an example of what 1984, the source of the original Big Brother, warns us about.

In 1984, The Party enforce the use of Newspeak, a simplified version English, in which the vocabulary is always being reduced. The Party's aim in enfocring the use of Newspeak is to make it impossible for people to express or imagine dissent.

In a similar way, Big Brother is resulting in the simplification of vocabulary and meaning. It is making it harder to communicate the ideas presented in 1984. While the phrase 'Big Brother is watching you,' was once widely understood as a reference to a book about totalitarian society, now a lot of people understand it only as reference to a television show where heaps of people are locked in a house together and are on camera twenty-four hours a day because they want to win lots of money.