Reality TV/ Why Do People Like It?
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Well the first thing to say about reality television is that ALL people do not like it. I know a guy who doesn’t like it. Because he doesn’t have a tv and doesn’t know about it. He is dealing with more than enough reality on a daily basis.
Why would he like another load dumped on him when he is fortunate enough to be home and not slaving away at some poor paying job?
But he is in the minority. There are lots of folks who are like him and yet enjoy watching television and their favorite reality show or shows.
Two. Five. Ten. How many shows does the average viewer watch? The one I find most totally weird is The Bachelor. Beautiful women line up to be humiliated and rejected in front of millions of people. I really had no idea they wanted love so badly that they would do something like this.
I might have asked a few for a date when I was young if I had known.
But I was not rich, funny, sophisticated and handsome. Maybe that has something to do with it? There are apparently not many of those around and they are worth a lot of trouble.
But why do people enjoy watching this stuff?
Maybe because it’s a contest and we have always enjoyed watching contestants winning prizes on television. How many years has Wheel of Fortune been around?
And don’t you admire Vanna for devoting just about her entire working life to flipping letters in a charming way? She has been doing it since 1982. And the show has been on since 1975.
Not everybody can do that. If I did it Wheel would have gone off the air after the first episode. Vanna makes letters interesting. But reality tv didn’t just start with Survivor. There have been regular people doing crazy stuff on the air in an attempt to win prizes for many years.
It’s just that the flood gates opened about the time the New Millenium arrived. And the competitive spirit of the television viewer living vicariously doesn’t begin to explain this situation.
But the advance of the internet does explain a lot of it. We became involved in what happens inside the television monitor when we started living online. We started communicating with and entertaining each other instead of watching the tube.
We didn’t know we were so talented and entertaining! And maybe we are not. But it is fascinating watching us try whether we are building a blog or running around on an island somewhere half naked and starving.
My son Zachary was an extra on the John Adams series just done on HBO. Everyone who knows him made sure to watch it. And he had a really forgettable role.
We enjoy watching ourselves, our neighbors and people like us on television. We claim contestants who live in our state and hope they do well.
Maybe the novelty will wear off some day. But for now there seems to be no end in sight. Hopefully there will be tryouts for American Wrestlemania Warrior soon followed by National Nascar Survivor.
And then there are our fantasies about participating in one of these shows. But we really don’t have time to go there.
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One response so far
I don’t watch a lick of reality tv, it annoys me.. that so many of these people are put up on pedastals because of the bafoonery. The average person trying to make it in the real world never gets as much notorioty as deserved.
I flipped channels and saw Brett Michaels one night, loved him when he sang and did what he had a talent for, but was totally disappointed when I saw it was a reality show. The back biting woman, and the antics to get the attention of a once famous musician, if he would have just continued to perform and let us enjoy his god given talent, it would have been much more appealing to see the groupies than the ladies who give up their integrity to try to get on tv.
In my opinion…
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