What Big Brother 11 Houseguests Should Have Learned

There are many things that Big Brother contestants should have known before they set foot in the house that will have them on camera 24 hours a day, seven days a week. After all, each year for the past nine years, this season’s players could have spent their summers (and one Spring) watching every move of previous houseguests and thinking about what they could – or should not – do.

This season’s players have more history to draw on, but each time the producers throw in new twists as well. This year, it has to do with high school type cliques. Even with the new twists related to the cliques, there should not be a significant impact on the players’ ability to follow these guidelines – in the end, it’s an individual game.

The first run of Big Brother does not have much to tell us about the current version of the game. In that version – as in most non-U.S. versions – players were voted out by viewers rather than by each other. As Chicken George found out in All-Stars, it really is a completely different game when you have to convince viewers to keep you around as opposed to convincing those you are playing with.

Similarly, there are some parts of the previous series that won’t come into play here. Starting with Big Brother 4, evicted houseguests were not shown diary room excerpts that viewers saw, or other “private” comments. This means houseguests should feel free to fully express themselves in private without worrying that it will get back to the voting jury – as happened to Danielle in Big Brother 3. Also, because producers cracked down on houseguests looking up at banner planes after Big Brother 2, nobody should have to worry too much that the viewing audience will send messages about what they’re up to or who they’re double-crossing – though of course banner planes have still had some impact in the past couple years.

At least three times out of nine times in what I’ll call the “modern” Big Brother era (that is, not including the first series), the jury has been forced to choose the lesser of two evils: Will vs. Nichole in BB2, Jun vs. Alison in BB4, and Dick vs. Daniele in BB8. In the others, there were either likeable people actually available for the vote (though in BB3 that was in part due to some incredibly stupid play by Reality TV Hall of Shamer Marcellas Reynolds, who failed to use the Golden Veto to save himself) or personality issues were overcome by great game play – or at least the finalists weren’t wholly evil.

So what does that mean for somebody who wants to win? And what should the Big Brother 11 contestants have learned? Let's take a look at these various rules. Each week, we will look back at this and compare how each losing player or duo did or did not accomplish these goals.

1) Make Machiavelli Proud: Scheme and Plot

In the Big Brother house, you don’t need to know how to cook, how to mow the lawn, or how to fix the plumbing. You do need to have learned from Renaissance schemer Niccolo Machiavelli. Big Brother: All-Stars and Big Brother 8 reinforced this as people voted for game play rather than personal reasons. Big Brother 10 definitely highlighted this, as Dan bragged about his game play and manipulation of others’ emotions at the end and still won unanimously! (Though he was admittedly very likeable as well.)

From the very beginning, you have to start making alliances and cementing relationships. It can be difficult to know whom you can trust after just a couple days – or even hours, sometimes – but if you don’t start fast, you’ll be watching from the comfort of your own living room like the rest of us. A good example of what not to do can be seen in BB8’s Jen. Instead of making good relationships early, she immediately started alienating people and making them think she was nothing more than a self-centered brat. While she grew on some people a bit after the first couple weeks, that amount of time is far too much to spend without an ally – especially while everybody else is teaming up.

Ironically, Dan followed this rule and immediately teamed up with Brian – but then Brian alienated everybody and was voted out! Dan quickly modified his plans and held on not only for the next week or two, but all the way to win in the end.

Over the years, we have seen several alliances born simply because people happened to be together at the same time. For instance, in Big Brother 3, an alliance formed of all the people who had given up during the first challenge, and Marcellas was targeted. Gerry ended up having a change in heart and saving him (something he might have later regretted – many viewers certainly did), but the point is that this “alliance” was formed simply because people were nearby and needed somebody to target.

Similarly, Big Brother 4 alliances were determined by who happened to come into the house in which group. The first group, “the originals,” found that a bunch of their exes would follow shortly, and all of the originals agreed to keep each other around; the exes similarly ended up as allies. Of course, any of the exes could have been in the first group and any of the originals who had exes in the game could have been in the second. It was simply a matter of who happened to be around that set up that particular group of alliances. I suspect that the set-up this season will forge alliances among those in each “clique,” at least initially (and indeed, that has already happened just in the first week – which makes sense since the HOH winner also protects his clique). It seems likely this is exactly what the producers want to have happen.

The key is to find some way to create alliances that will keep you around until you can figure out your full strategy later. We saw James use this strategy in All-Stars, aligning himself with the very people who booted him in the previous season, but knowing full well he was going to abandon them as they abandoned him once the game got going and he could feel out the other players. On Big Brother 8, we saw Mike accept entry into the Mrs. Robinson alliance even though he didn’t really want to (though he failed to follow up by figuring out a full strategy!). The one thing you definitely do not want to do is isolate yourself somehow – as Zach did in the same eighth season. That’s a sure way to get booted.