By Richard Garibay
It’s been a long day; you sit down and turn on your television set. What do you see as you flip through the channels? Things like ‘Washed up Celebrity Looking for Love’, ‘Teenagers Who’ve Ruined Their Lives’ or maybe ‘Rich People and their Rich People Problems’.
That’s right, it’s reality TV. It’s everything wrong with modern television. Sure it’s fun to watch people being awful and living their train wreck of a life in front of millions of viewers, but at what cost?
There was a time in the not too distance past when the ‘M’ in MTV stood for something called music. Now the only music MTV plays is the opening titles to whatever God awful reality TV show they’re airing. It isn’t just MTV either, most networks are spewing reality programs, even the History Channel. If I flip on the History Channel it’s because I want to see some history, not ‘Pawn Stars’.
One of the problems with reality TV is that it goes against the very essence of what TV should be. Television shows aren’t supposed to force the ugliness of everyday modern life down our throats; they should distract us from it. We watch TV in order to escape reality for thirty minutes to an hour. If I wanted to see pregnant teenage girls crying I could visit my old high school. I can’t, however, walk out my door and watch a group of humans surviving a zombie apocalypse. Not yet anyway.
What’s worse is, in the eyes of naïve children, reality TV is rewarding stupidity and disgusting behavior. It tells children that if they want to become rich and famous they should film themselves in a sex tape. It glorifies the lives of people who get shitfaced drunk and have a melodramatic fight with their roommate. Is this really the type of people we want our society to worship?
Imagine an alien spacecraft landed on Earth at the same time Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had their wonderfully named baby, North West. The aliens see the couple on every newsstand and news channel and ask, ‘Who are they? They must’ve done something great.’ No, she had sex with a guy and videotaped it and he is a recording ‘artist’. It’s pathetic! We’re watching the every move of people who have done absolutely nothing worth talking about.
Reality TV has created a generation of people who want to become rich and famous but don’t want to work hard to achieve it. It has blurred the line between fame and infamy and is slowly eating away at our collective intelligence.