Not all of the dichotomies from Flipverse were bad, or hostile, or violent.
There was one in particular that was pretty innocuous. It wasn’t without its
controversies, but it was created with the best of intentions, and designed
just to be fun and entertaining. They called it Flipsides, and it was a
reality show that featured a tournament style competition, which pitted two
different types of people against each other. Every season was about two
somewhat opposing lifestyles, if only superficially. The first, for instance,
was city-dwellers against rural-dwellers. The second season was athletes
versus scholars. You might imagine the criticism that the producers endured
over the years—accusations of playing into stereotypes—but for the most part,
it did okay. It lasted for eleven seasons, and mostly only ended because of
other social changes that were going on in the world at the time, which made
pursuing any entertainment endeavor difficult. The contests were varied. They
took place in different locales, all over the world, and no specific contest
was ever repeated. Some were in swamps, others in the mountains, and they even
went into orbit around the planet. The audience would vote on various things,
such as which contestants would compete in which location. Anything could
happen, including the rules being changed mid-game, just to make things more
interesting, but no one was ever given an unfair advantage, unless they earned
it in some other way. Many tuned in, not just for the competition itself, but
the drama that surrounded the contestants. How they lived together during the
season, even after people were eliminated, was an important aspect of the
social experiment; perhaps most important. There were group challenges, and
bonus challenges, and these led to secret advantages, or better
accommodations, which could result in social complications. People fell in
love, and fell out of love, and had fights, and were occasionally kicked off
for causing too many problems, or quit. The impact of the show went beyond the
broadcast itself. Many contestants were elevated from it, and started getting
noticed for the other things they did in their life. The final season spawned
a documentary, where some of the most favored contestants were followed around
in their daily lives, as they kept in contact with each other. While proper
physics of Flipverse always had a little bit of scifi stuff going on with it,
it was actually the leads of the docuseries that uncovered until then unknown
secrets of the cosmos, and changed the course of history for the entire world.
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