Heidi and Spencer, I wouldn’t have watched those monitors

If you’re not watching Celebrity Big Brother, this will mean little to you, but if you are, it should hopefully make sense.

I’ve just watched the show, and the explosion as the couple returned to the house. As they did, I said to my husband that they were stupid to have watched the monitors and that I’d have covered the screens with blankets and refused to participate.

Granted, it’s incredibly tempting to want to know what people are saying about you, but in reality, do you really want to know?

A few years ago, someone showed me some pretty hideous things that another person had privately written about me.

It made me feel sick, made me angry, made me question how other people perceived me, and started a chain of events that would rock the world around me for a while.

I quite happily live in a deluded world, where deep down I’m sure people have opinions about me, but as long as I’m not aware of them, I can live in my bubble of life, bimbling away with the trivialities of life that are important to me.

I’m not one for gossip. This is well known, to my friends and family.  I have far more important things going on in my life than to add in someone else’s dramas! But would I have been like Gillian Taylforth, sitting on the fence, or like Claire Richards, inadvertently offering an opinion whilst joining in a general conversation?

I most probably would have walked away from idle bitching, I’ve done that many times, and I don’t think Claire was being deliberately malicious, just perhaps a little naive.  After all, even if they weren’t in the basement, Heidi and Spencer could well have been watching on their own hotel suite tv screens!

But would I have reacted as they did if I had watched people talking about me? Would I have come out angry and spoiling for a fight? Would I have been submissive and allowed them to wonder just how much I’d seen?

In truth, I’d have probably gone through a whole host of emotions, just as I did a few years back, and if I’d been watching the monitors on my own, I’d have crept quietly into the house.

However Big Brother chooses the most volatile members of the house, pairs them up and subjects them to what amounts to humiliation. 

It’s humiliating to hear people’s opinions of you, to hear the things you never want to hear.

Magnify that with 2 people viewing, bouncing thoughts and vitriol off one another and you’ve got one hell of a time bomb on your hands.

So my advice to anyone who is offered the opportunity to hear/see/read what people think about you is say ‘thanks but no thanks’ and walk away.

I live my life quite happily thanks, without knowing the negative things people may think of me.

That’s not naivety,  that’s self preservation.