Essays, Etc.

Television, Etc.

I have a really bad problem with watching too much reality television.

Actually, allow me to rephrase that; I have a really bad problem with watching reality television and pretending I hate it.

On any given day, you could probably find me watching reality TV at least once, and I will make at least five snarky comments if I end up watching the whole thing.

I began noticing it only recently, when I was watching a show called Cutthroat Kitchen. The basic premise is that these cooks have a certain amount of money, and throughout the cooking challenge there’s the opportunity to screw each other over if you pay enough money. You could, for example, pay money to have someone have to make grilled cheese over a camper stove with canned cheese, if your heart so desired.

Being an asshole, this show was basically made for me. I laugh my ass off watching these poor people try to make food while they fuck each other over to get an edge, and it’s awful.

I still love it, though. I yell stuff like “Yeah, make that ice cream with no blender, you stupid bitch!”

I feel as though this shows a disturbing trend in people, because I know it’s not just me who does it; there are others like me, who like to believe that the people on the screen aren’t real people, with real lives, under real pressure. We just like to believe that, because they’re being transmitted to us, they’re not real.

The problem is, it doesn’t end. When someone is on reality television, there’s a predetermined notion that we are better than them.

“I don’t whore out my life on television.”

To be blunt, what is there to whore out? Most people don’t have an interesting life. I know I like to pretend that I run around saving orphans from attacks by rabid tigers in the middle of burning orphanages, but if I was actually video taped you’d just see me go to school, come home, take a “nap” that lasts as long as I can stretch it, and then write essays and stories on my laptop until I decided to go to bed again.

If you were lucky you might see me converse with someone over the course of the day.

The root of the problem is not that I hate them for being on TV; I hate them for being on TV when I’m not.

Every time I see an author on television giving an interview, I feel the same way.

“Darlings broke five-thousand reads, bitch!”

Oddly enough, J.K. Rowling has never spoken back to me when I yell this at my TV. She must think she’s better than me.

It feels as though they are detached from us, as though they were made for us to either look up to or chew up and spit out with sour tastes in our mouths. Most of the time, it’s both.

And then when they die, we pretend to have loved them the entire time. We never called her a whore, we never spied on her life, we never let out her drug addiction! You must be thinking of someone else; we always loved her.

They live for us to hate, and die for us to love. We watch their lives, compare them to our own, and always emerge victorious.

And, for the first time, I hope that poor camper stove actually melts the cheese for that poor cook.

He deserves it.