Shattered

blondie83

Anyone catch "shattered" on Channel 4 last night? It's a new reality tv show where contestants have to stay awake for a week, and face a load of challenges. One person is eliminated each night, and every time someone closes their eyes for more than 10 secs, they the total prize drops by 1000 euro (it starts at 100000 euro). Seems a bit dangerous to me, although at least it's a bit more interesting than big brother

Creamy Goodness

yeh i saw it on e4 last nite doesn't seem too bad

they have challeneges during the nite where they have to pick one member out of the team.

last nite's challenge was an hour long massage and the person they picked didn't fall asleep once.

Lafortezza

I was watching a little bit of it this morning on E4, they had a psychologist who was seeing how competitive they all were as regards the big prize, by having a mock competition race.
I was funny to see how long it took one or two of them to form coherent sentences when she was chatting to them.

Is Dermot o'leary doing it as well? he seemed to have a room to himself?

Stark

cool, should get interesting as the contestants get more and more irritable. "Contestants, this is ..." "WHAT? FECK OFF!"

blondie83

As far as I know Dermot O'Leary is staying with them in the house, but he gets to sleep every night in his own room. That must really piss them off, I can imagine him just standing up and saying, " Right lads I'm off to have a nice long sleep in my nice comfy bed!" Alhough they can always play practical jokes on him during the night, that could keep them awake for a while!

smiaras

This post has been deleted.

hacktavist

I was watching it today and they let them sleep for 2 hours.
Seems a bit stupid to me. Whats the point if there allowed sleep?

Spunog UIE

if you were in it wouldn't you just love to push people over the edge, ya know start arguments over nothing, insult them, deliberately close your eyes for 10 secs to see them react. Make them snap, ah be soo funny. Make annoying noises chew wool, ice, or what ever bugs people, toenails? eww haha oh yeah that be good.

dwayneburke

sorry...total crap...

when will this reality life tv nightmare end!!

Cabaal

Originally posted by blondie83
As far as I know Dermot O'Leary is staying with them in the house, but he gets to sleep every night in his own room. That must really piss them off,

Go into his room every night and beat the living ****e outa him
It would certainly help keep them awake, atleast for a little while

Originally posted by hacktavist
I was watching it today and they let them sleep for 2 hours.
Seems a bit stupid to me. Whats the point if there allowed sleep?

Its stupid alright, but I suppose if they don't do it the contestents will be mentally affected and then Channel 4 will have a court case against them
Just a thought...

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by hacktavist
I was watching it today and they let them sleep for 2 hours.
Seems a bit stupid to me. Whats the point if there allowed sleep?

saw that today and didnt know what was going on but as a whole i thought the whole show was one big bore

irish life

Originally posted by hacktavist
I was watching it today and they let them sleep for 2 hours.
Seems a bit stupid to me. Whats the point if there allowed sleep?

New York disc jockey Peter Tripp has two claims to fame - he came up with the notion of the Top 40 and he was the first person to become internationally famous for self-imposed sleep deprivation.

In 1959, Tripp managed to stay awake for eight days and nights, a total of 201 hours, all in the name of charity.

He suffered.

Finding it harder to keep him awake, constant vigilance was required to stop him falling into microsleeps. Three days in he became abusive and unpleasant; after the fifth he lost his grip on reality and started to experience audio and visual hallucinations.

His dreams broke into his waking thoughts and he began seeing spiders in his shoes. He became paranoid and thought people were drugging his food - at one point he ran into the street and was nearly knocked down.

Psychological changes were accompanied by a continuous decline in body temperature. By the last evening, his brain-wave patterns were virtually indistinguishable from those of a sleeping person, even though he was apparently still awake.

After 201 hours he finally fell into a deep sleep which lasted 24 hours, and although he seemed to have recovered fully when he woke, close friends said his personality had changed for the worse, possibly due to the amphetamine-like drugs he had used to stay awake.

Within the course of the next year, his wife left him, he lost his job and became a drifter.

Although few of us are likely to emulate Tripp, over three quarters of us regularly suffer some form of noticeable 'sleep debt'. So what exactly happens when we don't get enough shuteye?

"When you sleep your brain processes information from the day just gone, particularly skills or data that involves physical co-ordination," says Paul Martin, author of Counting Sheep (Flamingo Press). "It also helps you deal with emotional problems, so something that was troubling you when you went to bed feels more manageable when you wake. Not getting enough sufficient good quality sleep can lead to a swathe of social and mental problems which become exponentially worse the longer you stay awake -it's no accident that it's used as very effective form of torture."

Pushing through - the effects of consecutive nights without sleep:

One: "Your reaction times will double, your short term memory will start to suffer, but you'll still be able to operate functionally," Martin says. Stanford University researchers found that after having driven for just 19 hours solid, drivers' reactions were slower than drivers with illegal levels of alcohol in their systems. "This is why soldiers are drilled constantly, so they don't have to think when exhausted in sleep-starved combat situations."

Two: Your conversational ability and short-term memory will be next to useless. "You'll have difficulty stringing a sentence together and you'll find yourself repeating cliches, forgetting words and speaking in monotone, much like if you were drunk," he says. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol start to rise, impairing your mood and your immune system, so you're more likely to fall ill.

Three: Your body temperature will start falling, you'll want to load up with energy-rich carbohydrates and you'll start losing muscular strength. "This is the point at which it all starts to go seriously wrong," he says. "It's likely you'll start having 'dream intrusions', a bit like hallucinations when you're awake and become very irritable."

Four: Your hallucinations will get progressively worse, you might start experiencing difficulty moving and lose sense of time - ten minutes will feel like hours, then you'll suddenly lose several hours without realising. "You'll start feeling paranoid and insecure and start exhibiting inappropriate, often aggressive social behaviour," he says.

Five: "From here on in, how anyone copes is beyond me," Martin says. "Your body will be shouting out for you to sleep, you'll be hallucinating very regularly, shivering with cold and your skin will start to deteriorate."

Six-plus: "Subjects who stayed awake for up to eight nights in medical tests didn't suffer any severe medical problems, just ever-decreasing levels of neurological and biological functions," he says. "How this might work in a social situation is another matter."

TheSonOfBattles

I have a very unclear sense of time tbh, and this could help explain that. I've been sleeping improperly since i was like 8 or 9. Goin to bed for only a few hours for weeks on end and the sleeping way to much for a few days.

What's actually been a few years can sometimes seem like merely months to me, and vice versa. I should probably be worried, my sisters certainly are, but at least now I have a partial explanation to this. Thanks.

sovtek

Anyone remember that Simpsons episode where the commercial mascots attacked Springfield? Remember the jingle that killed them. "Just don't look...just don't look". If we all did this to this seriously degrading endeavor known as the reality show...it would just go away.
"....mind numbing, spirit crushing reality shows..."

mike65

Shattered was won by Clare, the show is being investigated by Ofcom watchdog.

TV sleep-deprivation show Shattered is being investigated by a media watchdog after sparking a number of complaints from viewers, it emerged today.

New British government regulator Ofcom will probe the Channel 4 reality programme, which challenges competitors to stay awake for a week.

The show, which concludes tonight as the final three contestants compete for £97,000 (€140,000) prize money, has been accused of exploiting participants and endangering their health.

A spokesman for Ofcom said: “We have had 11 complaints about the programme and we are looking into it.”

The spokesman said he could not go into the details of the complaints until the investigation had drawn conclusions, but said they related to “the nature of the programme”.

Although billed as the ultimate exercise in sleep deprivation, Shattered competitors have been allowed occasional catnaps agreed by the producers.

But over the course of the week, they have complained of hallucinations, exhaustion and paranoia.

Psychologists have criticised the show and accused programme makers of putting contestants’ health at risk.

Dr Gary Wood, social psychologist at the University of Birmingham, said earlier: “Any programme which gets to the stage it causes people to hallucinate would seem to be a worrying sign that this has gone past the boundaries of entertainment.

“If we are making people uncomfortable and altering their state of consciousness. It is very dangerous. It is humiliation TV."

A spokesman for Channel 4 said: "The welfare of our participants is of the utmost importance to us and we have gone to great lengths to ensure their health and safety.

“There is a team of medical experts on hand who are monitoring the participants throughout each day and who have the power to pull any of the participants from the show if they feel they can’t cope any more.

“We are very happy with the way the show is going and have had positive feedback from each of the eliminated participants.”

Mike.

voxpop

Im sure the ppl participating signed a waiver and are happy to just get on tv, so can anything really be done about complaints ?

The show is a waste of time anyway, its just the voyeur show designers last grasp at getting ppl watching these reality shows again. I dont know about anyone else but noone I know has any interese in shattered, it never forms any part of a discussen ive had since its started and i would be surprised if many ppl cared who won.

Can we hope against hope that finally reality tv is dying ?

Cake Fiend

Did the contestants not know what they signed up for? Presumably they can leave the show at any time if they are really distressed?

Presumably some of these people have stayed awake for several days at some point in their life, so they should know to expect hallucinations, loss of coordination, irritability, etc. If they haven't, serves them right for trying to do a week for their first try. Anyone who thinks trying to stay awake for a week is going to be a cakewalk deserves to be deprived of sleep for their stupidity.

'Contestants in a sleep-deprivation show complained of exhaustion' - well duh...

Lafortezza

Originally posted by Sico
Did the contestants not know what they signed up for? Presumably they can leave the show at any time if they are really distressed?

They could have left whenever they wanted, one blond chick left after about 4/5 days, and got checked by a doctor, chatted to psychologist guy and then went to bed for 10 hours, so any pain they suffer is their own choice, they could leave whenever they wanted

mike65

I suppose one could be critical of C4 for exploiting the avarice and plain stupidity of those who put themselves forward for Shattered, I'm waiting for the first "live" murder/death/rape on one of these shows.

Mike.

razorfeather

thats insane i didn't think they looked that tired until today (the final day)

razorfeather

i'd love to do something like that just to test myself out.... i know i wouldn't last but i'd like to try...

Mossy Monk

11 people complained about that show. in all fairness that was the whole point of it. there should have been complaints of false advertising because 2 times i put it on and they were all asleep. that is really deprivng them :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Lafortezza

Originally posted by mike65
I suppose one could be critical of C4 for exploiting the avarice and plain stupidity of those who put themselves forward for Shattered, I'm waiting for the first "live" murder/death/rape on one of these shows.
Mike.

plain stupidity? Teh girl who won got nearly €100k for going a week without sleep. The other two spoons at the end are the dumb ones for not lasting more than 15 minutes in that final challenge.

Don't think we'll ever see a 'live murder/death/rape' as there's a timedelay of 15 mins for each and every programme/webcast