My British Television Debut

Not sure what you're doing with your lives, but I was featured on British national television tonight.

Don't be jealous, I swear I'm still pathetic. I have this awful vice where I'm addicted to the show Big Brother. Not the US version, I haven't even seen any of this season's episodes yet, but Big Brother UK. It can be a pretty boring show, especially because they air an hour show every single day, but part of what fascinates me is that it features a lot more simple conversations and the mundaneness of life than your usual reality fare. Clearly I know something about the mundaneness of life since I'm devoting several hours a week to another country's reality television show that I have to seek out on the internet. It has such a profound effect on me that sometimes I find myself slipping into a British accent. My friends assume I'm doing on purpose, but really I'm just being subconsciously influenced by the media I'm consuming. I retroactively forgive Madonna: secondhand accents are real.

Anyway, one of my main gripes about Big Brother UK is the public's sexism/racism. It's not overt, but any time one of the black female contestants is nominated for eviction, the public will vote her out, regardless of whether her personality is vile. Such was the case today with Ife. Granted, she was up against two other fairly nice people, so it wasn't exactly criminal for her to be the public's least favorite, but the public unjustly reamed her. They booed Ife upon her exit, an act generally reserved for awful people, while Ife came across as slightly dull at worst. I felt bad, since I considered Ife a sincere, funny person, so I was motivated to tweet in to the show and let her know she's not awful.

My tweet: @bb_bigmouth Please let Ife know she is funny and beautiful and well-loved. If she weren't up against two equally nice people, she'd stay.

It was in the heat of anger that I typed that, I just felt like someone should stand up for the lass. I don't normally gush, and I can't even claim to be a big fan of Ife's. Generally I watch reality shows to hate on the people's deplorable actions, so this was an uncharacteristically nice moment for me.

So within minutes of me sending it, some bald guy read it aloud on Big Mouth, Big Brother's after show. I hated hearing it back, because it doesn't even sound like I wrote it, but I did it in the hopes of being one positive voice for a woman who was undeservedly booed by the public at large, so mission accomplished.


You can watch the segment where I'm quoted at the 6:23 mark of this video.

Notice how he kind of shakes his head when reading my name "KevinBabbles" as if it's ridiculous. Bite me. And then when a few people in the audience gently say "yeah" to my comment, he dismisses it with a slightly mocking "aww." Then he reads a more nasty comment directly following mine and the crowd erupts in cheers. Go ahead, hate the well-intentioned black woman like you always do.

Oh well, looks like I couldn't conquer racism by tweeting to a reality show. Maybe next time. But more importantly, I'm famous. Only in the UK though, so fortunately I can still walk the streets here in LA in relative anonymity.

In all seriousness, the number of new Twitter followers I've acquired after my televised shout-out: Zero.

But that's okay. I tweet only random throw-away lines that aren't good enough for a Facebook status (is it sad that I have a social media hierarchy?) so I'd actually deem you a bit of a sucker for Twitter following me. You've been warned.