In Reality

I do not understand the appeal of reality television.

Yes, I used to watch The Real World when I was a pre-teen and teenager. I freely admit that I was hungry for episodes where somebody got slapped or kicked off the show or woke up in another roommates bed and couldn’t remember what happened the previous night. I enjoyed the drama of it all and would wonder to myself what I would do in those situations.

But I was a teenager at the time. Once I was of college age and beyond I lost interest in such shows. I wouldn’t say that I witnessed the same level of drama in my college days, but there was enough human interest going on around me that I didn’t want produced and fake human interest from television to entertain me.

Reality television is an understandable guilty pleasure option, I get that. But my concern is this: does anyone watch these shows and actually believe them to be true? If yes, how is that possible? The thing that makes reality television interesting is the drama that happens (I think…cannot confirm as I really do not enjoy reality TV). So obviously the producers are going to set the whole scenario up so that as much drama happens as possible. It’s manufactured and therefore is not real. But it seems to me that there are people who believe what they are watching.

This frightens me because of the debates. When watching the debates the first thought that occurs to me is “oh my God, we’re doomed” but the second thought is, “does anyone believe that any of this is real?” I personally tend to believe certain candidates over others because I know them to be more trustworthy. So when they make a claim, I am inclined to believe it. But watching the debate all you see is a ping pong match of claim after claim being stated by one party and then immediately refuted by the other party. Inclined as I am to believe one side over the other, it is honestly hard to know what to believe watching the debates.

And that is terrifying, because as we know there are people who actually believe reality television is real. Therefore, I am sure that there are people who believe that everything that political candidates say is real. They do not account for spin or omission or the fact that some people have no qualms about flat out lying to get what they want. If these statements are accepted at face value and no research is done to confirm what candidates are saying then I am forced to come back to, “oh my God, we’re doomed”.

Political fears aside, I do wonder at humans. We are a weird bunch. The experience of being a human is riddled with interactions with other humans. For all of our good qualities (love those opposable thumbs), human beings are messy and even with the best of intentions we can really mess each other up. That’s just real life and there is certainly enough of it to go around. So why on earth is reality television so popular? Are people not getting enough reality in their own lives? I truly do not understand the appeal of watching allegedly real human drama on TV when you could literally just go out in public and watch the legit real thing.

Humans are weird. We live our own drama and still crave to watch others experience their drama. It’s odd and I don’t really understand it.

I’m not judging, I just don’t get it. But if anyone wants to fight me about it I’m sure we could get someone to back us for a reality show where people fight about reality shows. Hmm. I like this idea. I’m off to come up with a killer tagline…something like, “Reality so real you really won’t believe how real it isn’t. Or is it?”