Is reality killing fiction?

Things mentioned in this podcast

• Scripted dramas are not dying out
• Ranker article on the ‘Dumbest Reality Shows of All Time’
• Vox on the rise of reality TV

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And this week, we're discussing the online spat between Kanye and Drake. Chris, kick us off. I have to say, I don't know anything about this spat.

In the unlikely event that our listeners also aren't aware of what we're talking about, maybe you could explain a little bit.

Yeah, no, I can fill that in. I mean, the reason I got drawn into this story, first of all, is because I vowed when I was a teenager, and there was a sort of late 80s, early 90s revival of James Brown. And I got quite into James Brown. So I asked my parents, you know, what do you remember about James Brown? To which they responded, who's James Brown? So ever since then, I thought, right, I got to keep on top of, you know, these popular cultural... So you don't want history to repeat itself, and your children come to you and say, Daddy,

who's Kanye?

Yeah, and then exactly, I need to be able to fill them in. So I followed, my main source of information about this stuff is still the BBC News, and they happen to pick up... So you're probably about five years behind what's actually happening. Anyway, right, there was this spat, and I found myself getting drawn into it between the sort of young, well, I mean... Are they both rappers? They're both rappers, yes. One of these hippity hoppity gentlemen. That's right. And so for context, Drake is like younger, but massively successful at the moment. And in his history, he was very influenced by Kanye. Eventually, they started sort of working together and collaborating. And in fact, Drake's sort of kind of breakthrough came in when he was freestyling over a Kanye record. So Drake is a kind of Luke Skywalker figure in all of this? Very much so, yeah. And this is why I got drawn into it, because it's very Shakespearean. There's this element of the protégé usurping the master and so on. But effectively, they kind of had this relationship, but then Drake himself has a kind of nemesis, a guy called Pusha T. Okay. And... The plot thickens. The plot thickens, exactly. Kanye had done some collaboration with Drake, and now he collaborates with this guy, Pusha T. And Pusha T, in that song where they were collaborating, sort of dissed Drake, and suggested that he used ghostwriters for his lyrics. But not only that, in another point in one of his records...

Do you mean his rhymes? He used them for his rhymes?

His rhymes, that's right, yeah. Yeah, his ill rhymes. Although that might be 20 years... I think we're already off the cringe scale, so we might as well dig ourselves deeper. So, yes, he sort of revealed, this guy Pusha T, that Drake had an illegitimate child with a former porn star actress.

Okay. Is that good or bad? That sounds like it's maybe a cool thing if you're a rapper.

Yeah, well, I think it was not sort of portrayed in a positive light in the song, I believe. So there's this element of illegitimate children. It's got all the kind of hallmarks of a great piece of drama. Anyway, at some point, Kanye, who is, I believe, diagnosed as being bipolar, so you've also got an issue of mental illness going on. It's like Caligula or something like that.

Sorry to interrupt a second. Is it Kanye who's mates with Trump?

Yes, that's right. So I don't know if you've seen the really strange, bizarre footage of him in the White House. It's very uncomfortable watching. So anyway, you've got all of these ingredients of great drama going on. And then Kanye goes on a sort of epic Twitter rant against him, threatening him and his family and saying he spoiled the sale of a brand of trainers, which he endorses by saying something rude about them in one of his songs. And it all spirals out of control. Sounds great. Yeah, exactly. So I started by thinking, why is everybody obsessed with these sort of non-entity celebrities? And then I got drawn into this huge kind of Shakespearean drama and thought, this is actually very entertaining.

Our rappers in the 90s, when they had a falling out, they'd shoot each other. Well, that's true. What's happening? Millennial rappers. I know, it's these snowflake rappers who just take it all out on Twitter. Moaning about trainers. Yeah, exactly.

So I think we're sort of edging towards why we want to talk about this. So carry on, Chris.

So I think that's about all we've got time for. Tune in next week.

Yeah, we'll be doing the Kardashians next week. But the point is, basically, it seems to me that our obsession with celebrities and the reality of their life has taken over from, you know, in sort of popular lowbrow culture, has taken over from what used to be drama, soap operas and so on. And, you know, you've had a real dwindling of soap operas and an upsurge in this sort of reality TV and, you know, interest in social media, you know, YouTube stars and so on. And that just struck me as interesting, why that's happening and what that's about.

So, for example, what, 25 odd years ago, people of a certain age would be very familiar with what's going on in Neighbours, for example. And that's kind of gone right off the radar, I think, but there will be now that perhaps back then they wouldn't perhaps know quite so much what's going on with the rappers of the day. No. Whereas now that's in reverse.

So that's over half the country and that's just TV sets, right?

So it's even more than that, probably. Now, obviously, well, obviously, no, no. So not 30 million TV sets, but when they do their estimates of viewing figures, they take into account.

What was the big story for that?

That was the divorce between Angie and Dan.

Angie and Dan break up. I mean, the thing is that when this Biggie Smalls, what's it called? Kanye West. That's the one. When that has been long forgotten, people will still remember Dan and Angie. Angie and Dan.

It made celebrities of some of them dolphins.

Then you had Strictly Come Dancing again about celebrities and their lives. And then you had I'm a Celebrity. Then you had the One Love concert in Manchester. Broadchurch at number five is the first drama. But 11, only 11 million viewers.

So is this the so you're talking about Christmas viewing or?

No, top 10 throughout the year, the most viewed things. Then Britain's Got Talent and yeah, you know, other various things. So drama features not much now TV viewing figures in general. So the Bodyguard series that was on this year or last year now that was, you know, highly viewed and seen as big was 14 million viewers. Now, that's that's half what, you know, those soaps would would be getting in there.

So there's so many more channels, so many more channels, so many fewer people watching TV.

But the point is, even relatively reality, reality shows and reality. Well, yes.

So I think so before you before you come into Nick. So I just mean, in some sense, this is well trodden ground in as much as the fragmentation of viewing and how we view stuff and entertainment channels and all that. And so reduced figures and and less of this kind of national experience of watching something, all that kind of we're familiar with. But I think what's interesting that you've picked up on here is this the idea of, oh, but hold on, it's dramas have sort of were once the thing, whereas now the drama is real life stuff. Exactly. Yeah.

And not only that, that that celebrities come from reality, you know, rather than coming from something else. So, you know, you like in this year of Strictly Come Dancing, there was a YouTube guy. I can't remember the guy's name now, Jack something. But he was a YouTube celebrity going sort of crossing that that bridge into mainstream. That's right. Yes. And, you know, that's the fact that, you know, partly it's being technology driven, but reality is the new the new drama.

And just when it comes in, I just want to try and focus. So we've commented on that. We've observed that. Well, what's our point? What question do we want to answer? What do we want to investigate?

I don't know. First of all, I just want to talk a bit about the data. I'm not sure. I totally I'm not sure the data unreservedly points to the fact that there's been a sort of qualitative change. OK, I agree. There's a lot of all kinds of quantitative changes going on. But when you look at actually what is reality TV, everything has a precedent. I mean, there isn't anything really which doesn't sort of which you couldn't find an example of, you know, 40 or 50 years ago. It is just a quantity. So what was reality TV? Well, exactly. I mean, there's things like dating shows where, you know, we used to blind date. Yeah, blind date. And now we've got, you know, things like The Bachelor and Love Island. But it's that's just, you know, a kind of slightly more higher budget version of blind date. You know, there is a difference, though, in it. So something like that goes on for much longer. I mean, it's much cheaper to produce large amounts of footage. So, you know, just but the underlying concept is the same. Well, but they would in the space of five minutes try and get over someone's personality and you would peer into their life. Yeah, no, that's true. Over the space of five hours.

One thing that is different, though, is sorry to interrupt your flow, but the kind of programs you get now where they kind of just switch the cameras on somewhere.

Well, it looks that's what they want you to think is good.

And it's still a structured situation, still a controlled situation like Big Brother, for example. But you just get hours and hundreds of hours.

You know, that's why things were scripted and you film things in studios because you and why they threw away all these, you know, sort of golden archives of, you know, episodes of Monty Python or whatever, because they needed the film or they didn't have space to store the stuff.

So I don't know. I mean, I don't disagree with Chris. I'm just saying maybe it's slightly it feels to me like it might be slightly over exaggeration. Yeah, it's not quite as simple as we're stating. Yeah, I mean, it's not a qualitative change. What I'm saying is just like, yeah, no, no. And I think if you look at the numbers of new TV series, right, new scripted drama series, it's increasing all the time. So it's not like they're forced. Is that does that take into account the burgeoning channels that I said that they're going to be a smaller percentage of a much bigger sort of pool. But but I'm just saying it's not like it's forcing out drama. You know, if you if you're a drama hound, you've got more to choose from now than you did 10 years ago.

I mean, I think I think for me, one of the interesting things and this is partly an issue of, you know, atomisation of of our sort of cultural experience. But previously dramas drove a lot of popular consciousness, you know, so like Angie and Dan, you know, it was a it was a thing. Now people I don't think would coalesce around drama in the in the same way as, you know, not least because it's not the same viewing experience. You don't all sit there on a on a Sunday evening to watch this this thing as a family and then talk about it with your mates.

On the other hand, it's probably easier to find fans of the thing you're into because of the Internet. I mean, just say an appropriate subreddit, which is dealing with, you know, EastEnders and probably be able to liaise with loads of other EastEnders fans more easily than you might have done.

I still have water cooler conversations, though. So I quite recently talking, I overheard people talking about something that was sounded quite dramatic. And I thought, I bet they're talking about this. And sure enough, they were talking about there's a series on an American series on Netflix called You, which I don't know if you're familiar with. I've heard of it. It's about a sort of a stalking boyfriend, essentially. And two people I don't know particularly well at work were talking about it. And I heard about it said, yeah, I'm sort of talk. I'm watching that as well. And it's a drama. So it kind of is out there.

And also since since really the wire and HBO, you know, kind of becoming a powerful creative force in television, you know, particularly American dramas have kind of lifted their game. And the whole Netflix model of, you know, 24 was another one that blazed that trail of of effectively the the box set concept, which is now, you know, what used to be you buy all the CDs and watch them, you know, in two over two nights, but is now, you know, binge watching via streaming services. And that is broadly drama driven, I would say, you know, most of the big ones are sort of walking dead.

I mean, I think we've touched upon this in the past, right, in these podcasts, which is we've talked about why do humans love stories, right? And we do exactly as you've just said. I don't know if I have the answer. I suspect.

Surely a large part of it is, you know, the vicarious pleasure is is just that it's like it's like watching your fellow tribe member sort of walk across the frozen ice and, you know, you're effectively learning from their experience.

So, yeah, I'd say I think of it as an adaptation, you know, it's it's it's the ability to suck up the experience of lots of other people, whereas you yourself only have one one life, you know, so hearing stories about what other people have done is massively helpful. So it strikes me as, you know, it's not it's not something we need to explain particular. I mean, it seems really kind of evolutionarily obvious, but I don't think, yeah, it certainly doesn't feel like that. People don't sit there and think, well, I've got an evolutionary urge to watch this. You know, we just enjoy it. But the point is that there must be a reason we enjoy it, because actually it's pretty puzzling when you sit and think about it. So I would say it's almost, you know, drama and reality TV. It's sort of like fast food. It's like, you know, and and our consumption of it is sort of like obesity in that there are no constraints.

You know, it's got so cheap to produce and broadcast. Well, and also just taking it one step higher, but also bringing us back to the very beginning where actually there's nothing structured. Well, I don't think there is or produced about this spat we talked about between Kanye and Drake. Maybe our guys.

OK, maybe there is. It's been massaged a bit, let's say. But ultimately, it kind of looks like it just kind of happened. But it's probably it probably emerged in our consciousness because it had that it had a pleasing structure. Right. Whereas, whereas, you know, there's lots of other Twitter spats you don't hear about. So there's a kind of evolutionary race between Twitter spats, you know, to try and get our attention. And the ones that do happen to resemble, you know, what we think of.

I guess it's not. Is that technology and X with the first time in a long time or ever? Perhaps we've got accessibility to that kind of spot amongst these famous people whose music we love and trainers we buy.

I think the difference is, right, obviously, the Victorians and, you know, probably well before that sort of, you know, a court intrigue and all of those kinds of things. But the Victorians, you know, with things like Vanity Fair and, you know, the Oscar Wilde sort of, you know, controversy and imprisoning. And, you know, those were those people were obsessed. All of those gazettes, you know, there's kind of true crime gazettes. Yes. With murderers. Yeah. But so so they you know, that was the technology they had available to them then I think the difference is now is everybody can broadcast at huge volume. You know, you can whereas you might get a weekly or monthly periodically periodical previously. Now it's it's watching it live happen unfold before. Yeah. So I feel like we don't need to explain why why this is happening.

Actually, it's just driven by we have an insatiable urge to consume drama and it's it's reality is cheaper than fiction. And and so that and, you know, that explains really why there's so much more reality in terms of our drama consumption.

But Fraser's trying to you're trying to wind this up and I'm not I'm not going to let you because I'm winding you up instead. Yeah, but we have. By the way, I like where you just coined a new phrase rather than reality estranging the fiction. Reality is cheaper than fiction. Well, there we go. I think you put that write that down.

Just to say that's quite tall for a dwarf. But anyway, go on.

I should maybe maybe they should be sort of middle sized groom. Yeah. But maybe he's tall, dark and handsome in the dwarf world. Mr. Personality is my favorite because it's so incongruous. It was a program hosted by Monica Lewinsky. And a woman wearing a dress. A woman had to select a husband from 20 bachelors. But the twist was their faces were covered by masks throughout the show. Brilliant. So that she could only decide who she went for on the basis of their personality rather than their looks. So anyway, I thought they were they were really good. I mean, there's sort of things that if someone like, you know, Stephen King or Philip K. Dick had invented them, you'd think that's so far fetched, it'll never happen.

I love the voice is the best thing. And the great thing about great expectations is that when Pip was a kid, he had a Cockney accent like this and he was always asking Joe, what's going on, Joe? And then as he's become a gentleman, he's gradually transformed into a sort of RP posh London chap.

So you get to your range. So I gradually, I gradually changed the accent, you know, imperceptibly. That was my favourite bit about it. If anyone from RADA is listening, we've got a candidate or a coach in touch with my agent. But one thing I'm also maybe saying is often the hero. So you give voices to all the different people, except for the hero who has a natural Nick Hare voice. That's right. Yeah. Kind of implanting this into your children.

It's more that the hero is usually a cipher for the reader. Right. So I don't want to distance the hero from the from, you know, who I'm reading it to by making a good putting on a funny voice. Yeah. But I do want to associate yourself with heroism. Plus, yeah, that's a natural.

And yeah, I read a lot to my kids. And we'd also often would make up a story. And the story was always involves the same characters who are called, because I've got three kids and the characters always called Harlow, which is near where I live. So Harlow Sorbo, which is where I do live, Sorbridgeworth Sorbo. Harlow Sorbo and Mongrelina is the girl, which is our nickname for my for my daughter when she was a fetus, because she was a bit of a mongrel because she's half Brazilian, half English and mix of all sorts of stuff. So we used to call her Mongrelina. So those three always get into an adventure. Yeah. It's got great peril. And they somehow managed to escape. And the moment where they're able to get away always involves the same plot device, which is Harlow farts at whatever. It could be a shark attacking them or something like that. And that's how they always get into danger. Okay, so we'll wrap up there. And all I can say is I hope you all live happily ever after. Sleep tight from the Cognitive Engineering podcast. From Uncle Chris, Uncle Nick and Uncle Fraser. Good night and goodbye. Bye bye.

God, they sound like a terrifying set of uncles. You wouldn't leave them babysitting your kids.