I keep wishing reality shows would just go away, that people would lose their appetite for them the way we all wish we could lose our jones for crunchy, fatty food and sugar. Unfortunately, both are guilty pleasures that many refuse to give up, and so they're here for good.
I can't keep track of all the reality shows that come and go. I try so very hard to pretend they don't exist but they keep interrupting my regular viewing pleasure with teaser ads, often showing the latest catfight (question: why is it always the women fighting?) or couples making out in hot tubs while jealous girls in bikinis shoot killer looks their way.
By now we all know there's nothing real about reality shows; we know they're scripted in varying degrees and what we see is a thin version of of these people's lives the producers want us to see. After all, if we all squabbled and argued and fought and brawled and cried and yelled as much as these "actors" do in our own world, we would be too tired, way too exhausted, to get anything productive done.
If reality shows were real I'd lose all faith in humanity. In reality world (as opposed to the real world) the one who causes the most trouble is the de facto hero who gets the most air time; the most narcissistic, manipulative sociopath always wins. This is not the place for people who don't want to cause trouble: here, troublemakers rule. In a very real sense, we're rewarding people for exhibiting behavior that normally they'd be punished for.
I have no idea what kind of long-term effects reality shows will have on society. I would certainly hope that real-life dating is unlike anything in reality-world dating, where a bunch of women fight each other tooth-and-nail over one man they barely know, whose attention and affection they would do anything for. Besides, is this dating or harem survival?
I'm not an expert on reality shows. I've viewed a few episodes here and there along the way, and always felt silly, even guilty, for watching. I couldn't say I was being entertained and I didn't learn anything either. I'd come away not liking anyone on the show enough to want to root for any of them, no matter how evil the others were in comparison. The worst part, however, was that most of these folks make more money than the rest of us simply by being the kind of people we warn our children about.
Aaron Sorkin explains best what I both hate and fear most about reality shows in tonight's episode of Newsroom. Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) tells his date, who's a fan of The Real Housewives of New Jersey : "Human cockfighting makes us mean and desensitizes us."
And just like real cockfighting, the human version makes so much money for the winners that we probably won't ever see the end of it. Even if it makes losers out of the rest of us.
11 of 30: TOO MUCH REALITY, AND NOT NEARLY ENOUGH
I keep wishing reality shows would just go away, that people would lose their appetite for them the way we all wish we could lose our jones for crunchy, fatty food and sugar. Unfortunately, both are guilty pleasures that many refuse to give up, and so they're here for good.
I can't keep track of all the reality shows that come and go. I try so very hard to pretend they don't exist but they keep interrupting my regular viewing pleasure with teaser ads, often showing the latest catfight (question: why is it always the women fighting?) or couples making out in hot tubs while jealous girls in bikinis shoot killer looks their way.
By now we all know there's nothing real about reality shows; we know they're scripted in varying degrees and what we see is a thin version of of these people's lives the producers want us to see. After all, if we all squabbled and argued and fought and brawled and cried and yelled as much as these "actors" do in our own world, we would be too tired, way too exhausted, to get anything productive done.
If reality shows were real I'd lose all faith in humanity. In reality world (as opposed to the real world) the one who causes the most trouble is the de facto hero who gets the most air time; the most narcissistic, manipulative sociopath always wins. This is not the place for people who don't want to cause trouble: here, troublemakers rule. In a very real sense, we're rewarding people for exhibiting behavior that normally they'd be punished for.
I have no idea what kind of long-term effects reality shows will have on society. I would certainly hope that real-life dating is unlike anything in reality-world dating, where a bunch of women fight each other tooth-and-nail over one man they barely know, whose attention and affection they would do anything for. Besides, is this dating or harem survival?
I'm not an expert on reality shows. I've viewed a few episodes here and there along the way, and always felt silly, even guilty, for watching. I couldn't say I was being entertained and I didn't learn anything either. I'd come away not liking anyone on the show enough to want to root for any of them, no matter how evil the others were in comparison. The worst part, however, was that most of these folks make more money than the rest of us simply by being the kind of people we warn our children about.
Aaron Sorkin explains best what I both hate and fear most about reality shows in tonight's episode of Newsroom. Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) tells his date, who's a fan of The Real Housewives of New Jersey : "Human cockfighting makes us mean and desensitizes us."
And just like real cockfighting, the human version makes so much money for the winners that we probably won't ever see the end of it. Even if it makes losers out of the rest of us.
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