'Big Brother's Derek Frazier Has Some Tea About the Online Reality Show 'Fishtank'

There aren't many other reality competition shows that compare to Big Brother, but the online show Fishtank comes pretty close to it. With former houseguests being recruited to be part of the show, it's hard not to wonder how else Fishtank compares to the long-running CBS show that puts more than a dozen strangers in a house and sequesters them away from the outside world.

And Derek Frazier, who competed on Season 23 of Big Brother, recently shared some details and spilled some tea about Fishtank on X. According to him, there is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes than what everyone else sees, and since he said he turned down the chance to be part of the reality show that streams online live, he has nothing to lose by sharing those details.

According to its YouTube channel, Fishtank is "a 24/7 reality show where contestants are locked in a fully monitored smart house, terrorized by the audience. It's always on." Big Brother is different, in that there are live feeds online, but the show itself includes edited episodes that air on television multiple times per week.

The fact that both shows have sequestered players is really where the similarities end. The channel has more than 90,000 subscribers and some of the players who participate in the online stream are paid. However, the events that happen during the live stream often cause chaos, and those who watch the stream are able to interfere to trigger events to happen in the house, in real time.

The players can be eliminated through one of these viewer interferences, or through overreacting, or by simply leaving the house. The last player left standing in the house on Fishtank wins $50,000. If it sounds like something that doesn't even seem real, apparently, it's all legit, because Luke Valentine from Season 25 of Big Brother is one of the current contestants as of October 2024.

Derek shared on X that, like Luke, he was asked to participate in the Fishtank show. He shared details about being asked to compete on a show called Last Man Standing, though he later found out it was Fishtank. But in the end, according to Derek, he wasn't offered enough money to make the show worth his time.

“I’ll explain what happened, but unfortunately they weren’t paying me the money I wanted to do the show so they went with someone they could afford a.k.a. Luke,” he wrote in a thread on X.

Another user on X shared that the players inside the house on FIshtank are being lied to on a daily basis, which not only adds to its intensity, but also sets it apart from Big Brother once again.

“All of these people (besides Luke) are being DUPED btw,” they wrote on X. “They've all been told the show is on Hulu. so they think they're going to be famous. Multiple ppl cried tears of joy today when it was announced that their first episode debuted and did well on Hulu (it did not).”