The War of All Against All: The Ellen Show as a State of Nature

If I could describe the Ellen Show as a state of nature, I would say it was most like Hobbes' theory.  The "riff-raff" room at the Ellen Show turned into a chaotic state of war and absence of order.  It was  every man/woman/child for themselves: "we want what you have, and we will take what we can get, and if we take it by force all the better."

So how does this:

Turn into this:

It's simple.  Selective Give-Aways.

I have seen the worst of humanity--and it is middle-aged women fighting with security guards over Pantene Pro-V Shampoo and forcefully scrounging for free T-shirts and CDs of C-list music artists.  I have gone to hell and back, and it is The Ellen Show Riff-Raff room (an area where, much like uncharted waters in the ocean, there is lack of order and you have to watch your back or you might get stabbed and plundered for a Christmas with the Kranks soundtrack).

How to Create a State of Chaos in your Studio Audience

A Case Study on The Ellen Show

Step 1:  Feed half of them false information.

Assure your audience that they only need to arrive at 9 a.m. to have prime seating.  However, make sure you tell at least half of them to come much earlier (like 4 a.m.) to camp out.  This will help cause a feeling of resentment between the "chosen ones" and the rest of the studio audience.

Step 2: After making the distinction between the chosen ones and the non-chosen ones, be sure to make both parties come at the same time (3 hours too early).

This is so the non-chosen ones have ample time to verbally tear apart the characters of the chosen ones.  This is also so that those on the border of being chosen can feel even more betrayed when the line is cut off right in front of them after waiting in the hot sun for 3 hours.

Step 3: Employ the "Musical Chairs" tactic.

It is key to make sure there is never enough seating or shade outside for more than half of your studio audience.  This worked in elementary school to create division in children and the same concept applies to adults.

Step 4: Now that your studio audience is on the verge of breaking down, it is necessary to give them a glimmer of hope.  After all, you don't want chaos to ensue until after they are all safely in their designated areas.

Let the Riff-Raff room know that Ellen will, indeed, be dancing through their room.  Let them know that they are allowed to do something the chosen audience cannot: dance on the furniture.  Hopefully this small victory will satiate them long enough to achieve your ultimate goal of chaos.

Step 5: After you lift them up, take them right back down again.  It is important to treat your studio audience like an emotional yo-yo.

Make sure they know that the chosen audience is going to get presents, and they are not.  But make sure they know that they will get something, just not the "same thing" as the chosen audience.  This is a timeless tactic that has been in use for centuries.  It was most popular during that whole "slavery thing." Separate but not quite equal.

Step 6: After you line up and parade all of the chosen audience into The Ellen Show while the non-chosen audience (who should still not have quite enough seats so that some of them can be more angry than others), let your now sufficiently aggravated non-chosen audience into their separate room.

Make sure the room also does not have enough seats, that it is just a huge room with a few T.V. screens so they can still see the chosen audience they have come to hate having fun.  Make sure it is the kind of room where, if something goes wrong, you could just shut a single door and set the room on fire Holocaust-style.

Step 7: Your audience may be a little too aggravated by now, so you need to start out with anything good you have for them so things can only get worse.

Let T.V. personality Ellen loose in the room for 3 or so minutes (not TOO long, we don't want a prolonged state of glee in the non-chosen audience).  Throw some T-shirts out to specific people and encourage dancing.  Endorphins will begin to flow and your non-chosen studio audience will be lulled into a false sense of security.

Step 8: Now that you have brought your audience to the peak of their euphoria, make sure you bring them down with a bang.

In the first five minutes of the show, make sure the chosen audience is gifted a $500 DVD-recording camcorder.  This is the good part because all you have to do is sit back and wait for it to dawn on the non-chosen audience that they will not receive this gift.  The expression change on the faces is worth all the trouble you've gone to so far to insight chaos in your audience.

Step 9:  Belittle your non-chosen audience by handing out CDs by artists that no one has heard of, and giving everyone a shirt.

This one is really good because now the people who felt special because they caught a shirt are even angrier than those who received pity shirts.  Also, CD trading amongst the non-chosen audience encourages them to interact with each other and fuel each other's anger.

Step 10: After you've sufficiently belittled your non-chosen audience, put a little icing on this violent cake by giving the chosen audience something smaller that the non-chosen audience normally would not get angry over, but in their heightened state of aggression become enraged about.

Make sure you give them something really inconsequential, like Pantene Pro-V Shampoo and Conditioner, so that when the non-studio audience gets enraged, steams about it for days, and calms down later they can feel really ridiculous for verbally abusing a security guard over a shampoo that makes your hair fall out anyway.

Congratulations!  You now have an outraged studio audience.  The kind of audience that will be sending you enraged letters for weeks that you can show to your friends and bring out at parties!  Just let your audience simmer for a little while longer and they'll be ready to go out and commit road rage.

Author's Side Note:  I truly believed that if I had sent a secret message around on an Angie Show CD during the trade-amongst-yourselves time (something along the lines of: "Let's all rise up and storm the studio, they can't catch all of us!  We'll steal the cameras from backstage, there will be enough for all of us!  See you in the promised Land a.k.a. The Ellen Show Main Room--Through the curtains and on to victory!")  I could have started a revolution.

The only thing that held me back was that I didn't feel like getting arrested for instigating public action at the time.  I had a long drive home.