Reality Television is basically the networks way of saying “here is your entertainment, you dumb piece of shit.”
So, I’m a subscriber to Foxtel. I pay an exorbitant fee, and in exchange of my hard earned money, I get to watch 200 odd channels of advertising, and occasionally some TV in between. This occasional TV is not all rainbows and rabbits popping out of hats, however. The majority of this “TV” that I speak of is whats known worldwide as “REALITY TV”.
Taken from Wikipedia:
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors.
That is a pretty reasonable definition. What started out as just Big Brother for 6 months of the year has turned into this fucking juggernaut of advertising and totally unreal “real life”.
For example, there is a Reality TV show called “The Real Housewives of New York City”(before anyone tries to tell me the orange county one was first, I don’t give a fuck). This show basically shows these women living in upper class Manhattan or somewhere equally as fucking expensive strutting about spending copius amounts of money, getting botox, drinking expensive piss together and generally plotting against eachother. The ratings for this show are through the roof.
This is just one end of the Reality TV scale. at the other end you have shit like Wife Swap, and Extreme Makeover. Not a subject is left untainted, like a virgin at a Peter Gabriel gig. Real estate, medicine, science, gardening, employment, the arts, dating, it’s all covered.
Granted there are some exceptions to this. Pimp My Ride is pretty cool.
But for the most part, it’s absolutely rediculous. There is no way any of us will ever gain anything from watching Reality Television. If anything we lose. These corporate fatcats are playing on the lower rung of society, ie, the unintelligent and cashing in off it. There are so many stupid fucking people out there that Reality TV can’t be killed. Those of us with half a brain want to watch something with some substance, but we have to wade through this waist high pile of visual and aural shit before we can get to it. If there is one thing I hate more than advertising, its Reality Fucking TV.
I’d have something mildly amusing to say about it, but it’s honestly too bleak to make any good of it. Like a field full of dead kittens, you can’t really find anything to make you smile.
On the other hand, what if Reality TV was like real life? Can you imagine “Your Pissweak Job” where it shows a guy digging graves for half an hour each day? Or “Your Social Life Is Shit” where they film a guy who gets drunk alone every night? It just wouldn’t work.
But Reality TV lacks the greatest thing the human mind can show. and that’s CREATIVITY. We don’t get to see the works of a person who has poured his or her heart into something. all we see is rich people, and strange people. That makes me sad.
The moral of this rant?
FUCK REALITY TELEVISION.
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