I hated, detested, loathed all types of Reality TV over the years. I equate the reality TV to WWF; faked to put on an “exciting” show. But I could understand why they were so popular. Every person on this planet has a need to see the intimate details of their fellow being. Be it an old maid in the corner of a small village in India or be it a high flying executive in Toronto. The voyeuristic bug has been with mankind for ages and ages and will continue to be with us until the sun burns out. Reality TV software was an excellent outlet for most of the western audience but the networks (like the greedy pigs that they are), instead of waiting for the gold egg, killed the goose. The absurd bundle of reality TV software that has been coming from the networks lately bordered on the ridiculous. The western society already has tremendous pressure to conform to a certain image and the new shows in which you got an makeover to become “better” person were the probably scrapped from the bottom of the gutter from which all the reality shows came from. I also think these new shows (E.g. The Swan (?) and Extreme Makeover (?)), broke the camels back. By now it’s fairly obvious to all but a few people that reality shows are anything but real. And, thankfully, the deluge of reality shows affecting the networks in the last 2 – 3 years is ebbing. Finally, some sitcoms and series are making a comeback.
I guess you can decipher from above that I really have no love for reality shows but I, being human, am voyeuristic. I too crave to know what goes on in another person’s life. So far I had been satisfying my voyeuristic lust through Dooce, Dairy Of A Fired Flight Attendant and the like. But lately I have begun to regularly follow these (1, 2 & 3) young people’s lives. Their lives are really no different from mine in the aspect that it’s fairly mundane everyday stuff. But the way these people write about their lives is so engrossing that I need to know what happens next. I need to know if they got through a relationship OK or are they even more messed up. I need to know why they like a certain type of food and not the other. I need to know what they do for fun. I need to know where do they live. I need to know why they do the things they do. In other words, I need to know how they lead their daily lives.
I know I make fun of my wife when she watches her reality shows but how exactly am I different from her? Except maybe I know that the blogs I go through are far more real than the TV shows she watches. Other than that I am no less a voyeur than anyone else on this planet.
Desi In Toronto 