There's at least one whole thread devoted to what HMs are doing now, and I don't think I've ever seen it suggested that the thread should not exist because what they're doing now is none of our business.

Sorry. I wasn't suggesting it wasn't ok to talk about it just that it didn't seem especially relevant to whether or not he was cocky and arrogant. To be absolutely honest I feel a bit disappointed that he doesn't seem to be working because I would think it would help him get his life back to normal after BB.

Again sorry I wasn't aware of this. I'm guessing you mean the break-up of his marriage. I wasn't aware that a thread on this had been deleted.

That's letting Luke off the hook a bit too much, I think. Although he didn't personally get involved in the dispute he did take sides, to the disappointment of those who thought he should have stayed neutral. Hence those who felt let down accusing him of turning arrogant against them. I would imagine that's the position the person discussed in the OP is coming from.

Is it arrogance though or simply not behaving in the way someone would have liked? I don't think we're qualified to say how he's changed, for the simple reason we didn't know him before BB. (As with every single housemate in the history of the show.)

We're not shown these people as fully rounded human beings. We're just asked to judge them on how they cope in an extreme, artificial situation contrived to test their emotions to breaking point. We can admire or condemn how they handle the situation and we can relate to them as people. Away from their families, friends, jobs, hobbies and other distractions though, there'll be parts of their personalities that are exaggerated in the house, parts that never surface and parts that just get edited out to suit the storyline.

I can't imagine someone going through BB without it changing their outlook on life in some way and I don't think we should have any expectation a HM's personality would be the same in the real world as it is in the house. But only those people who've known the HMs for years can really understand how it's changed them.

I doubt if what's laughingly called Aftercare prepares HMs for how to deal with a sudden onslaught of fans. If they're left in this strange hinterland where they don't think they're famous but everyone around them thinks they are, no wonder a HM's going to mess up and misjudge the situation occasionally. They're only human after all. As much as we want to support them we're doing them no favours if we put them on a pedestal and gloss over their faults.

No, I shouldn't imagine it does and the situation is even more complex now. At least the early winners were properly famous, got some TV work and financial benefits from winning the show, now there is a danger that they get all the bad stuff - obsessive fans/detractors determined to bring them down - but none of the good stuff.

Hmm. I'm not sure whether by "everyone around them" you mean fans or friends and family (or both), but I don't think such people have to be wrong about how famous the HM is (or isn't), or that the HM is going to be right.

I would point to a different asymmetry, and it's one that HMs have in common with (other) celebrities: there are lots of people who know who you are and think they know quite a bit about you, but you don't know them at all. So from their POV it can 'feel like' there's a relationship, but from yours, they're no different from a random person you pass on the street.


Luke currently has 40,148 Twitter followers. As a comparison, the Independent newspaper's circulation for Feb 2013 was 75,125.

Interesting point, I wonder how much help they get to deal with these feelings of ownership from other people. It must be difficult to maintain your privacy and let fans down gently if they feel they have the right to run your life. It must be very stressful to deal with, trying to keep them as fans but maintaining your right to a life of your own in that situation.

I don't think it's that strong (at least not usually). I wasn't saying that fans think they own you or feel they have the right to run your life. And 'intellectually' fans (usually) know the HM doesn't know them. But there can still be problems with letting fans down gently and so on.

Who knew Luke would make such a debate here, he was hardly a memorable winner.

Other Luke deserved the win more .. if for no other reason than these few seconds
At first .. http://oi48.tinypic.com/2pzi26o.jpg
But then .. http://oi50.tinypic.com/lha1c.jpg
And then .. http://oi46.tinypic.com/2qcfkf6.jpg

40,148 Twitter followers say different

It is misleading to claim that there has been one fall-out between fans. There have been a lot of smaller ones over the months since BB ended. Just recently 500 people were jettisoned from the facebook group (from a total of around 650) which then became a secret group. This obviously must have had an impact on the attitude towards Luke of many of those who were thrown out. I believe that the official line was that they were people who had either never posted or had not posted in a long time. I know that this is untrue.

I also think it is interesting that there is apparently no warning given in aftercare that it is not ok just to indiscriminately use other people's photographs or magazine articles without permission even if they are about you and that you have to be careful to make the tax office aware of your income if you are making a profit selling items, again even if they belong to you.

Interesting point about fans thinking they have a real relationship with a celeb . Of course that has always been the case but have things like facebook and twitter made that more likely than in the past when it wasn't so easy to have actual contact with celebs?

And are there the fallouts because twitter\ FB encourage more rivalry between fans vying for the celebs attention and to be their number one fan?

Websites (and now Facebook groups) do seem to be one of the sources of ill-feeling. It can seem the HM has favourites; people can think they were treated unfairly by the moderators, perhaps with the HM's approval (or indifference, which might also be resented); and some fans can get a closer relationship with the HM than others (for instance if the fans become involved in running the site).

(I can remember years ago some people didn't like some decisions made by the people running Aisleyne's site -- bannings were involved -- but I think it was eventually resolved.)

...

I agree btw that it would be good if HMs were given some advice about how to handle fans and how to manage things on Twitter and Facebook etc.

I think Facebook and Twitter have made a big difference. In the pre-social-media days, someone's chances of exchanging text messages with a celebrity (or HM) were effectively zero, because they wouldn't know the person's number, and if they somehow did find it out, they'd probably be ignored. But if the person's on Twitter, you can easily send a tweet, and there's a chance you'll get a reply or see it retweeted.

If you get some replies, and maybe the person starts to recognise your name, that can make it feel even more like you and that person have a relationship -- and in a way you do, of the sort you can have with people online (meeting in person is a further complication). But it's still a very unequal relationship (the HM's more significant to you than you are to them). Emotionally and subconsciously, though, it may feel more equal than it is, because it's such an unusual form of relationship that there's a tendency for it to 'feel like' more familiar sorts.

However, I think there's a difference between thinking you have a relationship with a celeb or HM and what I said earlier, that it can 'feel like' you have a relationship.

I think it's easier to explain of we think back to the days of live BB 24/7. You could see a HM wake up in the morning, watch as they got dressed and brush their teeth. You could even watch them sleep. Such things normally happen only with the people closest to you in real life. You could even do things impossible in real life such as be looking out of the mirror at the HM's face in close-up as they put on or removed make-up. And of course you can see hours and hours of them doing things that aren't normally that private but still normally happen only with people you know fairly well and spend time with.

Then imagine you're walking down the street and you see the HM coming the other way, and they see you. To you, the experience of seeing them is very like the experience of seeing someone you know. You know who they are; things they've done may come to mind; you may feel pleased to see them and may have warm feelings towards them. That's how it 'feels' even though, because you still know the HM's just someone you've watched on tv, you don't think you have a relationship.

Meanwhile, from the HM's point of view, you're a total stranger. They know nothing about you, and they've never seen you before in their life.

Most people don't have a lot of experience with that sort of thing, and so misunderstandings can easily arise.

I don't think there is any doubt that is true, facebook and twitter enable frequent direct communication and there is a danger that everyone thinks that they are the main person doing that whereas in reality there could be scores of people all thinking that they have a special relationship with the BB contestant concerned. In the old days too they would have so many offers coming in that they needed a hands-on agent to fend off unwanted or over-demanding attention, now they are pretty much left to their own devices and it must be hard to know who to trust or how to handle over-eager fans. Every contestant is bound to attract some people like that even if the overall numbers of people wanting attention has declined.

I definitely think twitter in particular encourages competition to be the main person to defend your chosen housemate just as it attracts the trolls who know that they can have their five minutes of fame if they tweet something abusive to a minor celeb.

Facebook is probably less so in some ways but, at the same time, it enables what appear to be closer relationships to flourish because a lot of information can be exchanged and seeing the person's photograph probably gives the impression that the relationship is closer than it actually is. It is easy to be fooled into thinking that you know someone intimately and trust them with secrets even though you have never actually met them face to face and, if you really knew them as well as people you meet face to face everyday, you wouldn't even like them that much.

Definitely, without a doubt, the aftercare needs to move into the 21st century and offer advice on how to handle these things.

Very true and I also think it must be difficult to handle relationships like this from the housemates' point of view, especially if you are the winner, because you must feel that you owe them something.

They were some of the people who voted for you. Without them (and of course a lot of others) you wouldn't have won and it can cause a lot of guilt if you don't really want to stay in touch with them as much as they do with you.

I've no doubt that some people, those who aren't so nice, will play this guilt card too, making the housemate feel that they have to keep in contact and do what they say because you have an obligation to them because they didn't only use their hard-earned cash to vote but actively defended you against your detractors and encouraged others to vote for you too.

I find this quite interesting. It makes one wonder why it has been made into a secret group. Shouldn't a fan site be for all fans of the HM and not just the 'chosen few?' If a group is supposedly for fans of the said HM, to make it private/secret makes it difficult for the fans to know that there is even a fansite out there. Apparently to join the group now is by invitation only, that speaks volumes, that the moderator/s of the group are deciding who can and who cannot have the pleasure of joining in and perhaps even being able to have a little chat with Luke. It's almost as if some members are wanting the HM 'all to themselves' which I find rather selfish, very immature and silly. Could this be a control issue by one or more of the moderators? I do find it all rather odd. I thought the idea of a fan group was so fans could have discussions about the HM. As a former member it was plain to see that quite a few of the members were vying for Lukes attention and for the mostpart it unfortunately felt quite 'cliquey'

Like myself, I saw quite a few members leaving of their own accord for whatever reason but I do feel rather sorry for those who were just tossed aside without prior warning just because someone felt like they had the power to do so!

Perhaps it would be a good idea to have a fan group without the HM actually in the group, that way there maybe wouldn't be so much competition in showing who can be the HMs biggest fan, everyone could just feel the love in the room by discussing their one thing that they all have in common.....Namely the HM

I'll admit I have a vested interest here because I was one of the people who was evicted in that mass cull but, putting my own case to one side, I find it extraordinary that anyone could think that it was acceptable to discard so many people without explanation or right of appeal.

As this is about people's attitudes to Luke and whether they have changed, there is something I want to make clear. My admiration for him is immense. It could not have been easy to put himself out there, to stand up and announce to people he is transgender. It's something he could have kept a secret to all but his family and closest friends yet he chose to abandon that anonymity to try to make life that bit easier for all transgender people. That must have taken an extraordinary amount of courage.

He changed my understanding and beliefs about what it means to be transgender through watching him in BB and making his acquaintance afterwards in his facebook group, I found him to be delightfully lovely and often very funny and as a result of knowing him I will never look at media stories about transgender people in the same way again. I am very grateful to him for that.

To put it simply, I adore him. Maybe I'm stupid, maybe I'm naive, maybe I'm a soft touch, maybe it's transference, maybe it's simply because I have actually got to know him quite well. I don't know. All I know is how I feel. I genuinely adore him and want him to be happy.

What a lovely post, bless your warm heart Noisy Oyster