Uncovering the ‘sick pleasure’ of reality TV with The Crush House’s director

The hardest part of any TV binge session is figuring out what to watch.

That’s the tall task that stands before me when I meet up with The Crush House director Nicole He at a co-working space in Brooklyn. Rather than simply talking about her upcoming reality TV simulator or walking through a demo, I float the idea of first sitting down to actually watch an episode of reality TV first. She agrees, and now we’re sitting in front of a huge screen loaded with streaming apps trying to decide the exact flavor of trash we’re hungry for.

She rattles off a few shows she hasn’t gotten around to yet, but one catches my attention: Couple to Throuple. The risqué Peacock series brings couples looking to experiment with polyamory to a resort and gives them a buffet of eligible singles to play with like toys. It’s a poor representation of polyamory and one that’s haunted me even since I watched its first season earlier this year. If Nicole and I are really going to dissect the grotesque thrill of reality TV and how it laid the foundation for The Crush House, we both need to be so deeply submerged in mud that even a pig would gag.

Sick pleasure

Nicole He is no stranger to reality TV, though she doesn’t describe herself as a “fiend.” It’s a more casual interest for her that aligns with some larger themes she’s been exploring throughout her career. She’s perhaps best known for the True Love Tinder Robot, a matchmaking robot that determines a user’s reaction to dating app profiles via hand sensors and automatically swipes left or right based on that. Between that and her new move to games, He was a creative technologist on Google’s Creative Lab team. There she was able to explore her fascination with humanity’s relationship with both technology and one another as shaped by it.

Now she’s bringing her skills to a new medium with her ambitious debut game. Developed by Nerial, The Crush House casts players in the role of a camera person on a Big Brother-like reality show. It’s their job to