. 'The Circle (US)' wasn't one of them until Season 7){kind=link}
Sociopathy is not a clinical diagnosis, and no study of a person’s behavior on a television show can yield a legitimate diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) — the mental illness “sociopathy” refers to. However, there may be value in characterizing the Season 7 gameplay of hit Netflix reality competition show The Circle (US version) as “sociopathic” considering the antisocial behaviors (e.g. reckless deceit and exploitation, lack of empathy) that defined the season and marked a significant shift from gameplay in previous seasons.
The eagerness with which Season 7 standouts Kevin “K-Fern” Fernandez and Madelyn Rusinyak lied and manipulated turned typical Circle gameplay on its head. Two of the three most influential players were distrusted menaces while the fan favorites watched the cancers spread, praying their niceness would win them $100,000.
What made Season 7 such a departure from the rest of the show? What does it say about the American psyche when many programs of this kind devolve into races to the bottom where antisocial behavior often reaps the best rewards?
What Makes The Circle Unique
The Circle is unique in the category of reality competition shows defined by social dynamics. The rule of isolation means there are zero physical social cues to go off of. Programmed moments of in-person interaction are so few and far in between, even players with a history of intense digital conflict between each other react positively to seeing their in-game nemesis face to face.
Something about the contestants only having a screen and “Circle” — the presumed not-so-artificial intelligence facilitating the game — to interact with seems to allow players to effectively compartmentalize the people and the game to have positive interactions and reflections once in person. Even a player directly responsible for another player’s in-game demise has a high chance of a positive experience chatting with their in-game victim. The same can’t be said for all programs of this nature.
CBS’ Survivor and MTV’s The Challenge are two such reality competition shows where contestants are largely cut off from the outside world and post-game feuds develop among each other based on in-game activity. Big Brother is also notorious for its intense contestant clashes as a result of close proximity and diversity of identity, beliefs, values, and domestic practices. While disagreements are more intense on those shows, the intimate nature of these experiences often result in lasting feelings of camaraderie between in-game allies and foes alike.
In-game interactions in The Circle lack much of what make its peer programs engaging — peoples’ feelings toward one another manifesting in tangible ways like hiding someone’s shorts in the sand, quitting on team challenges, and looking someone in the eyes when sharing sensitive information.
What replaces the lack of physical social affirmation in The Circle is the desperation with which each contestant hangs on to every word, image, and answer in frivolous icebreaker games. There is quite literally nothing else in a game where contestants otherwise live in comfortable solitary confinement. The relief from 24/7 exposure to strangers in your living space is replaced by the increased anxiety of not knowing who’s who and what’s what.
The Circle‘s Evolution
In early seasons of The Circle, this meant players often agreed to prioritize individual “contributions” to the game when deciding who to give power to and who to eliminate: what are you sharing about yourself? How many other players have you had positive interactions with? If you’ve been in a conflict, was it meaningful and were you able to resolve it? All in all, people who were putting themselves out there while keeping it fun seemed to naturally rise to the top.
It’s hard to get more earnest and good-faith than the cast of Season 1 with memorable players such as the loud Italian-American mama’s boy Joey Sasso (winner), honest-to-a-fault Shubham “Shooby” Goel, and fan favorite Sammie Cimarelli. But even in a season with regular self-revealing moments and a general buddy-buddy feeling, the full cast reunion in the finale was visibly uncomfortable for many contestants (a sentiment shared by viewers). Why? Well they were all … strangers.
Joey didn’t seem keen on leaning into the bromance he had with Shooby, Seaburn was ostracized for coming out as the only catfish to make it to the final rating, and all the blocked contestants contributed were one-liners and nervous laughter (bless Michelle Buteau for her work as host).
Thing is, despite the innate awkwardness of it all, Circle casts always managed to deliver obnoxious yet likable characters over the years. It made the mid-season arrival of Jordan in Season 6 jarring, a cynical catfish whose entire M.O. was sabotaging the game’s most popular player Myles a.k.a. Young Papi Fuego of the Tres Fuego alliance (again, obnoxious).
Dishonorable forms of gameplay have always existed in The Circle including lying, backchanneling, and catfishing (which has lost a lot of its early stigma in the game). But to watch a player so committed to ruining another player’s game, even at his own expense, infuriated many viewers. Thankfully, Jordan was able to shoulder the role of villain all by himself and his toxicity did not characterize the season. But that preview of how nasty The Circle could get became a full viewing in Season 7.
K-Fern’s vapid politicking and whimsical betrayals made him so disliked he failed upward, pacifying all the “good” players into keeping him around as a cushion near the bottom of ratings. While Kevin’s shallow charm and flippant treatment of his alliances already rang alarms, it was the venom and intentionality of Madelyn’s deceit that stole the show and made sociopathy the new defining quality of The Circle.
Kevin’s amoral chaos and Madelyn’s glee in throwing rocks and hiding her hand scared the “good” players into thinking all controversy was bad, even if guided by a reasonable principle such as voting out known liars. These two poles on a spectrum of civility — not giving a fuck and people-pleasing — resemble a number of American social arenas, namely politics. Like politics, both approaches cause harm.
In The Circle and real life, Kevins and Madelyns have awareness of the harm their selfishness causes but never hesitate to exploit people. However, Garretts and Jadejhas are also selfish in their reluctance to act on a collective issue (i.e. the Kevins and Madelyns) for the sake of their own images. Like yes, Kevin is the worst, but I’m not getting my hands dirty.
Nothing should be taken away from the season’s red-blooded moments: Deb playing as Rachel was a firecracker in the second half, The “Gianna” twins were brilliant and boisterous, and the Jadejha-Darian love story might be the purest highlight of the entire series. That being said, these plot lines only served to relieve viewers from the general tone set by Kevin and Madelyn and enabled by the passive play of other players.
The Circle is not unique in its sociopathy. Its sister shows have run long enough for new contestants to approach the game in a way that strips the human interfacing and gets to the lines of code the game runs on. In Survivor, for instance, this looks like, why bother being nice to her? We all know she’s getting voted out tonight. Or maybe, why bust my ass in this challenge? Everyone knows I have “the numbers” on my side?
For the first six seasons of The Circle (US), the show made up for its chronically-online ethos with players who cared a lot about being “real” people despite the constraints of the game. To say Season 7 was not entertaining would be a stubborn take, but the anxious charm of the show was absent. Instead, bratty adult children ran amok and more mature folks allowed it out of fear of breaking a nail or being anything other than jolly in public.
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Will the next season of The Circle give us a cast of decent people willing to take a stand for the type of game they want to play? Because if we’re in for another season of “least bad” being the goal as opposed to “the best,” this beloved show may no longer be the wholesome viewing experience it is known to be.
UPDATE 1/3/2025: Lightly edited for diction and syntax; added hyperlinked source
UPDATE 1/6/2025: Edited for structure and clearer statement of observed sociopathic behaviors in Season 7 of The Circle (US)