Spencer Hawkins went viral for being the man almost pushed to vomiting over the stress of Squid Game: The Challenge(Picture: Netflix)

How stressful would it be to lose out on a $4.56million (£3.6m) prize as you clutch a tin full of your spit and a broken cookie?

Would you be left in tears, choking back your own vomit? Spencer Hawkins – aka Player 299 – found out the hard way, due to a brief but oh-so-memorable stint on Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge. 

‘It was overwhelming,’ he recalls to Metro.co.uk. ‘I’ve had a history of anxiety to an extent but I don’t think it’s been anything abnormal from what I’m aware of. Everyone has different reactions to the world around us and the stress we’re experiencing and so for me, and that situation just led to that response.’ 

Spencer isn’t the only person whose stress has been televised as entertainment in the past 12 months. Reality competitions frequently push people to their limits, but there’s recently been something of a boom in shows that test mental resilience in extreme ways. 

The Traitors is returning in January after becoming 2022’s big hit thanks to unpredictable twists, deceit and back-stabbing. As unmissable as it was, fan favourite Maddy Smedley later admitted: ‘I’m really chuffed that I did it, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it for people for their sanity and mental health.’

Alone, billed as ‘TV’s most extreme survival experiment,’ arrived on Channel 4 in August with a simple premise: Drop 11 people in the Canadian wilderness with basic essentials. Whoever survives the longest wins £100,000.

With an upbeat outlook and exceptional hunting skills, Louie Seddon emerged as a likely winner. But as the days wore on, the Wirral-born builder’s sunny disposition faded and it soon became clear that his biggest challenge wasn’t a physical one. ‘You only saw part of it,’ he says. ‘I was in hysterics some days. I couldn’t stop crying but no tears were coming out because I was dehydrated.’

Alone contestant Louie Seddon is still haunted by his reality TV experience (Picture: CHANNEL 4)

Seddon’s decision to quit 18 days in came as emotions he recognised bubbled to the surface. Having been left unable to work and ‘surviving on the bare minimum’ after a motorcycle accident, he was trying to get back on his feet when the pandemic hit. ‘I wouldn’t say I was suicidal… I never thought about killing myself, but I would be at work thinking of how I would,’ he says. ‘I’d think “f**king hell, I’m really not good”. I had a breakdown on a job. I was in the corner with my knees to my chest, bawling my eyes out.’

In the Wilderness, these thoughts returned. ‘When I was in the show, I started feeling like that,’ he says. ‘And I thought, “It took me a year and a half to get out of that headspace”. I was terrified of going back.’

They’re stressful for contestants and gasp-inducing to watch – so why do we love these shows so much? Jo Hemmings, a behavioural psychologist who also works in TV duty of care, offers an explanation. ‘There’s a fascination with the human mind,’ she says. ‘How do we respond to high level stress, difficult decisions and environments? We want to see how people cope under that extreme level of pressure and what sort of decisions they make.’

Hawkins was dealt an impossibly tough hand in Squid Game: The Challenge (Picture: Sky Armstrong)

Hawkins was one of 456 contestants competing for £3.6million on Netflix’s anxiety-inducing reality TV show (Picture: Netflix)

Having watched Squid Games: The Challenge when it arrived on Netflix, Hawkins reflects on how he responded. ‘I didn’t take that step back and I wasn’t mindful of what I was doing,’ he says of his cookie disaster. ‘Sure, $4.5 million is on the line for me and dozens of other people, but that stress doesn’t help anyone. 

‘If anything, I was making it so much worse for other people in the room by being a distraction, and like being a reminder of the fact that they’re in a difficult situation. I was trying to mitigate my panic attack as much as possible. But ultimately, I think I ended up making it worse.’

I think about [the show] all the time, it hasn’t left

Seddon still vividly recalls the days after he left the wilderness last October. ‘I came out and I just cried,’ he says. ‘I went to my room and sat on the floor for about five hours. I didn’t sleep until about 4am.’ The next day he ventured outside, where he ‘burst out crying’. ‘I think about [the show] all the time, it hasn’t left,’ he continues. ‘I think mainly because the one thing I didn’t want to do is tap out and that’s what happened. That’s what upset me the most.’ 

Seddon and Hawkins knew what they’d signed up for, but both admit they hadn’t fully considered the mental tests the shows would present. ‘I didn’t think about that entirely,’ says Hawkins. ‘Like sure, I thought about the fact that I’d be away from my phone. And I was ready for that.’ 

Noughties reality programmes weren’t always as kind to their contestants. I Wanna Marry Harry infamously tricked women into thinking they could hook up with Prince Harry and we’ve all rightly agreed Playing It Straight – where gay men could steal the prize by duping a woman into thinking they were heterosexual  – has not aged well. 

I Wanna Marry Harry was the shameful TV show which duped women into thinking they were marrying the royal (Picture: FOX)

‘Sacred of the Dark worries me’ (Picture: Channel 4)

Hemmings cautions that we could go too far once again. ‘Scared of the Dark worries me a bit,’ she says of Channel 4’s celebrity series, which was branded ‘damaging’ by one expert, seeing eight celebrities confined to live in a small space in complete darkness for a week.

‘You’ve got to be careful with how far you push boundaries. However robust or resilient people are, there will come a point where you’re in danger if you’re putting someone in a phobic situation. Even if they’ve willingly gone into it, it could cause a lot of distress.’ 

As the dust settles and viewers move on to the next much-hyped series, for the most part, contestants return to daily life. Hawkins, a software engineer, is getting to grips with having an online following and plans to soon publish a play that he previously thought only his family would read. ‘I’d say [the platform] is something I am grateful for,’ he says. ‘I am trying to learn how to appreciate it, and learn and try to understand what my life will be like moving forward from this. 

‘Life is long, but life is too short and so I want to make the most of it while I’m here. And I think the best way to do that is to pay love forward and to focus on growth.’

Seddon’s adventurous streak hasn’t gone anywhere and he now shares his exploits on his YouTube channel. Perhaps remarkably, he’d do it all again in a heartbeat: ‘I’ve begged Channel 4, [saying], “Season three or four, let me have a redemption”. It’s so weird, I’ve got a craving to do it again. It’s like an itch that I can’t scratch.’ Whether he returns to our screen or not, one thing seems for sure – these stress-inducing shows aren’t going anywhere. 

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