How much does your online self match up with who you are in person? The brand new Channel 4 reality show, ‘The Circle’, is hitting small screens this week, and it’s interrogating the ins and outs of how we control our digital identities.
Presented by Maya Jama and Alice Levine, the show is about social media, and aims to highlight the differences between our online and IRL selves.
It’s been dubbed as a cross between ‘Big Brother’ and ‘Gogglebox’, but taken online. It sees contestants living in the same apartment block, but are only able to meet each other on an app and communicate via the internet. The app they will use to interact with each other is called ‘The Circle’ and was specially designed for the show.
The aim of the game is to be the most popular of the contestants, and not get blocked. Players will rate each other every few days, and the individual with the highest rating at the end of the show will win – and the lower your rating, the greater your chance of getting blocked.
Contestants are free to represent themselves however they want to others – whether that’s warping how they look, what they’re interested in, or what their personalities are like – whatever they think will win the game for them. There are also no limits on the extent to which you warp how you present yourself – it’s even within the rules to completely catfish other contestants.
Players will likely bond, flirt, and fight, all via either group chats or private messages. They get eliminated when they’re blocked by others – at which point they also get to meet and reveal their true, IRL selves.
Whilst popularity is at stake, the winner also takes home £50,000.
The show has, however, already sparked a degree of controversy, with Danny Bowman, Director of Mental Health at the think tank Parliament Street, telling the Telegraph that: “It seems to glorify being something that you are not to gain likes.”
He continued: “I feel that sends the wrong message, especially to young people. The show is making entertainment out of a very real issue.”
Host Maya has nonetheless said that the show will shed a light on what people are truly willing to do to gain popularity.
“Social media is such a huge part of everyone’s lives – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook – there is no escaping it nowadays,” she said. “I’m so excited to be a part of the first ever reality show which plays around with this.”
‘The Circle’ will debut at 9.15pm on Channel 4 on Tuesday 18 September.