I think people have to remember as well that it’s a reality show and what we’re seeing will be heavily edited. It’s clear The Circle producers want lots of drama, that is obvious from the games and twists they have put into the game so it should also be obvious that they are going to edit the game to show the most drama possible. We don’t see all of the conversations between the players and I think the conversations we do see have been edited, the editing can make it look like a reply to a message we haven’t seen is a reply to a different message in the conversation. They can also edit out things like Manrika saying out loud she hopes Felix isn’t a catfish to make us believe she has completely fallen for him.
There are up to 9 players at a time in The Circle for 24 hours a day and we only get a 45 minute so we are only seeing a tiny part of what goes on. The producers can easily edit what they show us of players to fit their narrative and of course we have no idea how much input they are also having in terms of who players chat to or what they talk about. It’s not a fly-on-the-wall documentary about real life and so I don’t think it’s reasonable to make too many judgements about anybody’s character based on what we see of them on the show.
This year in particular it’s important to remember that, unlike the past 2 UK series’, the show was filmed in advance and so the producers have known the entire timeline of the show, including every set of ratings, every blocking and the eventual winner, ahead or airing. This means they have been able to build narratives building up to events such as blockings in advance, for example they knew in advance that Manrika rating Tally #6 would get Tally blocked and so they have been able to focus on their friendship, Manrika’s relationship with Felix and Manrika saying she wouldn’t put a guy before a girl etc in the build up to this. For all we know there are other players who have also made and broken alliances by rating others low but which didn’t have any effect on the outcome of the game and therefore weren’t aired. I think it’s unfair to assume Manrika is playing a meaner game than others just because her decisions have been aired, it might just be that other players’ decisions didn’t have an outcome worth airing.
There’s £100,000 at stake and the other players are essentially strangers, the contestants will have gone into the game knowing some players are catfish and that a key aspect of the game is to get other players blocked so I think it’s important to try and reserve some judgement before labelling players as mean, bitchy or unkind etc. We don’t know what the producers aren’t showing us or how much of what we are seeing is exactly how it happened and it’s fairly easy to take things people say out of context and edit it to fit certain narratives or make people come across in a certain way. The players are contracted not to talk about certain aspects of the show and so are limited in terms of how they can defend themselves even now as the show is airing but I think it’s fair to assume what happened in The Circle and what we’re seeing are probably quite far apart.