'reality' tv

I often struggle with the concept of modern reality television, and have never really gotten into any of the shows very much.

There is something attractive about peering into the lives of everyday people, and a lot of it probably has to do with relatability. If a show is about a typical person rather than a famous actor trying to be someone else, there is probably a better chance that the viewer can relate, and like we talked about in class on Tuesday, that is an important thing to many people watching television.

However, reality television has seemingly devolved (well, that implies it was once better, not sure) into the most fake and impossible of all television, from what I can tell. Seriously, the scenarios are often just completely ridiculous, and pretty obviously staged. And I'm not talking just about the editing to create a story.

There seem to be a lot of shows that are based around someone finding love. You know, like Rock of Love, the one with Flavor Flave and then the girl from that show that got her own, probably The Bachelor or something, I don't know. Setting aside the fact that the whole situation is about the furthest thing from anything real on earth for a moment, it's amusing that inevitably there are multiple seasons, despite the premise being that the star is looking for true love. Umm, no. And I'm not going to bother linking to them either because that would seem entirely too supportive and/or promotional.

The fact reality television is so awful is too bad, because regular people can be most interesting (though it's probably more fun to live your own regular life than watch someone else's), but all too often the way it's presented on television is anything but real.

This all makes 'reality television' probably the biggest misnomer going.

And again, regular people are fascinating.