The unreality of reality TV, based on how we feel

New TV on a showroom floor in Tallahassee, Florida (Photo: State Archives of Florida)

There is an abundance of reality TV shows that not only showcases the glamorous lives of Hollywood’s elite, but makes celebrities out of the kinds of people who are likely to live in your neighbourhood.

There are those who reserve time for these shows every week and, whether we like to admit it or not, the rest of us have most likely tuned into one of these shows at least once, either out of boredom or curiosity.

The study Why People Watch Reality TV found that people favour reality shows based on the feelings that have at the moment they’re watching. This may explain why we find it so interesting to watch the vicious fights and drama that make reality shows such as Keeping up with The Kardashians and The Real Housewives of Orange County worth watching.

CNN reported on the article, relating it to the way these shows promote bullying. Watching the bullying that occurs on TV shows, viewers feel satisfied when a spiteful person is getting the kind of treatment that the viewers would like to give their enemies, given the courage to do so.

It makes sense that the producers would monopolize any moments within a reality show that would invoke these feelings. Even when these moments are amplified for the sake of ratings, viewers buy into them. We feel the pain that the “stars” feel and want to relate to them. And, we’ve all had that backstabbing friend who we just want to scream at until we’ve gotten out all we’ve had bundled inside.

Reality shows give us the satisfaction of that without having to actively participate ourselves. We feel joy when our favourite character succeeds in belittling his or her enemy or, as is the norm nowadays, their frenemy. We become invested in the lives of people we don’t even know and feel like we have become a part of their lives.

In investing our lives in these shows, we often tend to compare our “stagnant lives” to their seemingly thrilling ones. Unlike them, though, don’t have highly-paid editors and producers watching our every move, cutting out the boring parts and emphasizing the smallest amount of excitement. It is because of this that viewers of reality shows are so often disillusioned. Ironically, despite the fact that we call these kinds of shows “reality shows,” they often showcase a highly exaggerated reality, making it questionable that we we should call them what we do.

It is not a secret that media is built on sensationalism. Nobody would watch a reality show in which a normal family went about their everyday lives: parents with stable jobs, kids in school, the family coming home at the end of the day to eat, watch some TV and then sleep. That’s what the real world’s version of reality is. Throw in an interesting spin, like the fact the family is rich and famous, with enough siblings to cause at least two rounds of intense drama a day, and there you have – society’s version of a perfect reality show.

Watching these shows really does nothing for us. We give up 30 minutes to an hour of our day and are thrown into a world where a simple fight over which colour to paint a room escalates into World War III in a couple of seconds. Although there is not much to gain from these shows, other than peeking into the private lives of others, they will no doubt continue to be made, constantly skewing society’s definition of what it means to live a normal life in the real world.