“Sixty-eight percent of viewers said it didn’t matter, or only mattered a little, whether the shows were truthful or not.” #
/define: reality: the state of being actual or real. Placing the word “reality” into a phrase like “reality television” would mean that what you’re seeing is real, or that you are watching with the expectation that it is real – otherwise, you’d just be watching scripted television with an actual plot.
Why are we so obsessed with everybody else? The celebrities, the money, the lifestyle, the things that we can or can’t have. Why do we have to obsess over it so much? It is insane the level of obsession we have reached. Do you realize this? The level of insanity we have come to.
If we aren’t obsessing over how skinny someone is, we’re obsessing over how fat they are. If we aren’t obsessing over how old their kids are, we’re obsessing over when they are going to have new ones. If we aren’t obsessing over relationships they are having, we’re obsessing over relationships they are potentially going to end. Whether it’s good or bad news, we don’t care. As long as it’s something to obsess over, to paste onto the television in a sound-byte, we will obsess over it.
And it’s not just A-list celebrities anymore. It’s regular people. It’s regular nobodies of no exceptional talent or skill who we obsess over now. These average nobodies that are famous for nothing. That only exist on the tips of our tongues because of a mildly popular “reality television” show. Why are they famous again? Why are they popular? Why are we obsessing over these people? Have we really come to such a sad state in our progress as a society that we are actually paying attention to these people, cheering them on in the self-destructive nature?
We’ll cheer them on in self-destruction and watch them fall in their downward spiral, and we’ll cheer them on as they redeem and resurrect themselves. Do we even care what the outcome is, really?
Can we return to a time when television was actually entertaining?