This duplicity is exactly what makes it so compelling to watch – but why are we so fascinated by deception? “One theory is that watching reality TV allows us to engage in a hyperreality,” explains sociologist Danielle Lindemann, author of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us. “It’s like our own lives but more extreme, a funhouse where everything is accentuated. We all know liars in our lives, but probably not to this extreme.”
A show like The Traitors gives the viewer a bird’s eye view of the deceit. We know who is lying and to whom. We can see what people are saying behind each other’s backs, and the barefaced lies they’re telling to their faces. We can also tear our hair out over how they are falling for it. Because we would never be so stupid, right?
In fact, research shows that humans are much worse at detecting lies than we think we are – and The Traitors is testament to this. As the current season of The Traitors US kicked off, the faithful wasted no time putting their deduction skills to use. One contestant, Bergie from Love Island USA, was immediately marked out for suspicion because he had red cheeks and talked fast. John Bercow – the British former speaker of the House of Commons – was interrogated over some heavy breathing (which turned out to be asthma ). “I’m very good at catching people who lie,” said faithful Ekin Su, from Love Island UK, in episode four, not realising she’d already been “poisoned” by a traitor and was about to partake in her own elaborate funeral.
False flags
Staying too quiet, talking too much, possessing too much confidence or not enough, a funny look, an inappropriate giggle… all these can send the faithful on a wild goose chase as they try to pin down a traitor. Meanwhile, one of the actual traitors effortlessly throws people off the scent just by playing dumb and proclaiming “If there was really a mastermind, it sure wouldn’t be a dolled-up Housewife, baby.”
“We often watch reality TV to feel superior to the people on the shows,” says Lindemann. “We can see what’s happening and we know what’s to come, but the people on the show don’t. It can give us this sense of smug superiority, like ‘why didn’t you see what they did there?’ When in actuality it’s really not that obvious. They don’t have a lot of clues to go on.”
