I don’t think this show is on anymore but I’ve been watching clips on youtube. Basically, ABC hires actors and has hidden cameras and stages situations to trick bystanders and see how they’ll react. They’ve done a few with racist situations (store owners throwing out a woman just for being black, Realtor refusing to sell to a Muslim couple), a couple with sexual harassment/date rape (a man slipping powder into his date’s drink when she steps away, a guy flirting with a woman who wants him to back down), one with babies/dogs in a car on a hot day, one with a strange guy asking a little girl to help him find his puppy and others.
I’m hooked on them, even though I think they’re pretty sleazy and seem really unethical. Basically Punk’D for people who like to keep abreast with current issues. There was one where people went on online blind dates where the pictures were completely different from the actors they met and one guy, mad at being duped, punched one of the cameras on his way out. I’m kind of surprised there aren’t more angry reactions.
Does anyone else count this as a guilty (or not so guilty) pleasure? And which ones are your favorites? So far the ones I’ve, uh, enjoyed (guiltily) are the ones I linked to above.
One I saw, and related to: they had people at the grocery store demean a cognitive impaired bagger, to see who’d come to his aid. It was only people for whom Down Syndrome was personal.
I LOVE that show! I’ve been watching it on Hulu: http://hulu.com/what-would-you-do The situations are really interesting. I always laugh whenever the guy who they always hire to play the prejudice man comes on.
I don’t think it’s unethical to conduct social experiments to see what people will do. I think most people are probably just excited about the opportunity to appear on TV, and the ones who don’t either don’t get aired or have their faces blurred for anonymity.
Some of them have gotten a bit murky. The bounty hunter asking people to help with the kidnapped baby…that one was uncomfortable. Very Stanley Milgram-esque.
Speaking of the stock actor, how about the guy who always plays the date rapist or creepy pick up artist? He’s actually pretty hot. Though he also reminds me of Jon from Jon and Kate. Now I’m getting weird images of Jon when he was steppin’ out.
It’s sweet when the people do step up, though.
ETA: Watching the Momzilla one with the mom yelling at her daughter while trying on wedding dresses. I think it’s a bit much to expect people to step in here because it’s not exactly an illegal situation. It is still nice when they try to comfort the upset girl. I thought it was interesting when they brought in the overweight actress for that because I was thinking to myself when people were comforting the first actress, “What if she didn’t look beautiful in that dress?” But people were still supportive when it was the overweight one.
With how often 911 often gets called, did the police get annoyed? I know sometimes (always?) they were working with the police. Like now I’m watching the one where an angry mom abandons her kids by the side of the road for being a little rowdy in the car. One guy calls 911 but the police are working with ABC so no one shows up. What would happen if someone really did abandon their kid and the police just assumed it was for the show? :eek:
So many of them also involve (fake versions of) abusive situations, with people trying to get involved physically. It just seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
It’s still on. There was one last night, though I didn’t watch.
It bothers me too much. They get people all upset and practically in tears or about to start a fistfight…and then they say, “Hi, I’m John Quinones, and this is just a TV show! Ha ha!”
I only watch What Would You Do when I’m bored and curious, but I’d still consider it a guilty pleasure of mine, heh.
I think the crew in this show always worked with the police – wouldn’t there be a huge problem if they only “sometimes” worked with them and let all these not-actually-an-emergency 911 calls seep through?
As for the cry-wolf scenario, I’m sure the police knows when the experiment is over. And we probably only hear a clip of the 911 call on the show. Operators ask for your location, right?
It’s interesting when they switch up the scenarios. Like the white guy/black guy/hot blonde girl stealing a bike. The weird thing is even though I knew they were all the same, I think I’d probably have been more alerted if I’d seen the black guy stealing it. I kind of hate myself for admitting it.
The mom kicking her kids out of the car was interesting, too–how when the mom looked trashier/lower class, everyone felt bad for the kids but no one seemed to care as much when it was an upper class one.
I saw this one, and almost broke down crying when people came to the bagger’s aid. I was getting all emotional, “That’s right! You tell 'em, lady! You can’t treat people that way!” I’m such a pussy these days.
My favorites are the ones in which they change one factor (change the clothing, age or race, for example, of the actors) and ask people if they’d have responded differently if the person was young/old/dressed-differently/whatever. They all, of course, vehemently deny these types of thing play a part in their decisions. My absolute favorite was when they had white teenagers vandalizing a car, and most people said nothing. Turn the teenagers black, and everyone and their dog was like, “Oh hell no!” and was dialing 911 like a motherfuck. But wait, it gets better, guys! Before the black actors had even done anything, either they or their family members (I forget which) were sleeping in a nearby car waiting, and the police had been called multiple times about “suspicious” people. But no no no, of course, everyone would have reacted the same, exact way in the scenario, regardless of race. Right.
Anyway, good show! I do think that some of the experiments are stupid, though. I’m not going to intervene if a mom is mean to her daughter, unless she’s being abusive.
Edit: I’d like to think I have a pretty good handle on when I’d intervene, and when I’d just think “What a bitch,” but I’m sure everyone else does too. I do know for almost certain I would intervene if I encountered a woman who’d been abused, though. I have before, and would again.
Never watched it, the premise sounded too low to bother with. I would never be surprised if most people do not act with courage and dignity in everyday situations.
I also noticed that the same actor who played the pharmacist (birth control and expensive meds) also seems to play the security guard in the racist shop ones.
I hate the ones were people are supposed to intervene between a man and a woman getting into a fight, even if it gets violent. Fuck that, the first one to turn on you will be the woman you tried to defend.
I do enjoy that show, though I use “enjoy” loosely. Sometimes it makes me cry because I’m so outraged by how people behave. Sometimes I’m touched by it. Sometimes I’m shocked because no one does anything. I find that it really resonates with me for some reason. Perhaps because it’s real people in real situations.
