Originally Posted by Noisy Oyster:
“The aftermath of the break-up was handled appallingly badly by the ruling clique and it was this that caused a lot of people to lose interest in the group and stop posting not the break-up itself. Again, a professional and impartial admin group would have handled it much better and ensured people maintained the same level of concern about Luke, giving an appropriate amount of time and information to enable people to become acclimatised to the idea of Luke's marriage ending. What effect that had on other people's attitude towards Luke I can only guess, it made no difference to mine but I'm sure it must have affected some people's attitudes towards Luke too as it made it appear that he was as unconcerned about the break-up as his admins were even though I am sure he was devastated about it.”
Without going into the specifics of what happened, it was a bizarre and distasteful period that without a doubt blew the group apart. This is why I said that if someone in Luke's position wants to consider some fans as personal friends it has to be done in a way that doesn't alienate everyone else.
Certain people seemed oddly unsurprised at the split and a couple have even openly bragged about knowing secrets about him (compromising ones?) He's hung out with fans at sensitive times when you would normally expect someone to want privacy with their family. Yet when others of us have shown some normal human compassion and concern about how he's coping, we've been told in no uncertain terms to keep our noses out of it.
In a closed group, it would have been safe for him to confide a little in all of us together. An upside to the tight knit nature of the group is that, for all their faults, I trust nobody would have blabbed outside of it. The safer option, of course, would have been to just give us a short statement and tell none of us anything else, with nobody being an exception. After that he really should have just switched off the computer, gone away and sorted his personal problems out in private. Anyone who really cared about him would have happily waited for him to come back in a better frame of mind.
Very sadly we were left with a situation where, when Luke was at his lowest and really needed everyone pulling together to cheer him up, some people exploited that to wield even more power. Anyone who saw that and stood up for themselves was dismissed as an unloyal troublemaker.
Originally Posted by Veri:
“If there are plenty of people out there who run twitter accounts, BB groups and indeed fan clubs for no pay, what makes them professionals, and how is a HM who's naive above social media etc meant to distinguish them from such people as "some random if totally well-meaning and honest stranger", let alone from ones who aren't well meaning or honest?
I can't see BB or agents going to the trouble and expense. It's unlikely that an agent would think a HM's social media presence would bring in much money, and it's not like agents have been doing a great job for housemates in other ways.
BB seems to have little interest in HMs once the HM is out, and especially after the series is over.”
Sadly that last paragraph is very true and, by not moving with the times, BB is doing the HMs the biggest disservice at all. If the prospect of media work is so low, why appoint an agent at all and why have them waste a day with Nina Myskow telling them the world's their oyster?
If the phrase "aftercare" is to mean anything these days, I would have thought it's about how to deal with all the attention they'd be getting and most of that would come from Twitter and Facebook. So if BB's not in a position to appoint their own social media managers, they should be ramming it home to the HMs about why it's dangerous to be blinded by the flattery when some pushy strangers barge up to them and say they're going to run their whole online life for them. They could be getting a sweet, hardworking, unofficial PA or they could be getting a calculating, self-serving, passive aggressive control freak who just wants to use the HM for their own ends. They won't find out it's the latter until it's too late and many other people have got hurt.
. If they were checked and authorised by C5, Endemol or the agent then there would be less danger of them being taken over by a small clique, guided purely by self-promotion and a desire to lord it over everyone else as has happened in Luke's facebook group. 