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This is what I thought "Reality TV" should have been. Genuinely interesting content about real people in the real world. Somehow they managed to just create so

This is what I thought "Reality TV" should have been. Genuinely interesting content about real people in the real world. Somehow they managed to just create soap opera with bad actors instead.

dylan604 14d ago
"Reality TV" as it is now was born from a writer's strike. Producers couldn't outright give the people scripts and written lines, but they could stand off camera and feed them lines off the cuff in the style of leading questions. If anyone thinks these shows are not intentionally pushed in the directions the producers want, then they just are not paying attention. Which is precisely what these producers want
- vasco 14d ago
  I know many people who watch, I watch myself, and we all know it's semi scripted and that the overall arcs are decided in advance. The really interesting thing about reality tv is once you realise that this is happening, the "Reality" part really comes back into play even stronger because you can see how people react in such situations (the situation being them being part of a scripted reality tv show while wanting to increase their social media following etc). These days there's also the whole component of social media posts and real life events between the seasons that sometimes are more juicy than the show itself, but only get exposed because of the show. It's just that most people who don't watch, or like to feel smarter than those who watch, think that you just sit there and suspend all belief instead of seeing it for what it is and acknowledging it's pretty interesting.
  - lotsofpulp 14d ago
    I don’t see how that differs from any other fiction. Either the whole thing is non fiction, or it’s fictional. I would even go so far as to label only videos of an event itself, like security recordings, to be non fiction as re-enactments and whatnot can have a lot of extra information that was not there in real life.
    - vasco 14d ago
      > Either the whole thing is non fiction, or it’s fictional. You miss out on a lot with this way of thinking. The interesting stuff is in the middle.
      - lotsofpulp 14d ago
        What am I missing out on if I cannot tell what is and is not fiction? It seems detrimental to assume something is real and then it turns out to be fake (but I will never know).
        vasco 14d ago
        I'm not sure if anything I say will convey the point because I think you already got what I meant, but think of Santa. During childhood it goes from reality to the middleground of "I wonder if" to later clearly being fiction. Not knowing what is what and later finding out or not is interesting in itself.
      - kelnos 14d ago
        I don't think that follows. It's fine to recognize that something that isn't non-fiction is fiction, and, frankly, that's the only reasonable thing to do, since you can't know what's true and what isn't. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it just as much as the next person, or get something good out of it.
    - ad_hockey 14d ago
      It would be very difficult for any TV show or film to meet this bar for non-fiction, because even if the footage is real there's still an edit. The Senna documentary[1] is in the grey area. It's entirely composed of archival footage - no reconstructions, no talking heads, no voiceover. But the filmmaker has still chosen which footage to include and omit and in what order to construct a narrative. I don't think that neatly falls into fiction or non-fiction in your model. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424432/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424432/
  - kelnos 14d ago
    I don't think it's a matter of "feeling smarter" (at least not for me); I don't like most reality TV because the things you mention just don't resonate with me as being interesting or worth watching. I don't particularly care how a bunch of "regular people"[0] react in the situation of being fed scripts while wanting to increase their social media following. I don't care about random people I don't know and their "juicy" events. Some people do, and that's fine; it just isn't my cup of tea. My partner got me into The Challenge early in our relationship. There's a lot about it that I don't like, and it's pretty clear that the competition itself is steered by the production team in ways that aren't really natural, and the outcome week to week is often likely not what would happen if the cast members weren't interfered with. I'm not on social media and don't care what the cast is up to off-screen, and I never watch the "reunion" episode at the end of each season because it's just a bunch of big-personality drama and performances made for internet points. But the show itself can be fun to watch sometimes, and some of the challenges they have to complete are genuinely difficult and cool to watch. [0] The "regular people" thing is also really blurry. Sure, most (all?) reality shows pull from people who aren't otherwise actors or famous, but being on a long-running reality TV show can create that fame and lead to other (no-reality-TV) acting gigs. (Arguably many of the long-time cast members of The Challenge are celebrities in their own right, with curated public presences, and some of them have since taken on regular non-reality acting roles.)
- Ntrails 14d ago
  In my headcanon it was all born from an experimental show (Big Brother) in around 2000 - which was obviously and intentionally stage managed but otherwise largely genuine behaviours. It took them a couple of seasons to really optimise for the "right" contestants and how to maximise the drama etc etc. The move to more and more of reality tv content is as much about budgets as anything else imo
  - dylan604 14d ago
    yeah, I'd agree with that, but the number of shows just exploded after the strike taking them from MTV to mainstream channels.
- mmooss 14d ago
  MTV's The Real World began in 1992. Did it inolve a writers' strike? Edit: Looking at Wikipedia's account, there are many reality TV shows going back decades before that. Some are game shows and other things - t's hard to tell what matches the modern model.
- htrp 14d ago
  it's all editing. In an entire week of cameras, you can always find a bit of time where anyone behaves in an outrageous over the top manner
Aeolun 14d ago
Reality TV in Japan is pretty nice. People mostly just spend time driving around the country talking to random people and eating tasty food. Sometimes they vary the thing and do it overseas.
- mtrovo 14d ago
  Any shows you recommend? I've watched Old Enough! and got hooked on how unpretentious the idea and video editing feels compared to regular Western stuff.
  - ChoGGi 14d ago
    Hard Gay? /s
- ebiester 14d ago
  I don't know about it being pretty nice - I just think of Nasubi and what happened to him on Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.

This is what I thought "Reality TV" should have been. Genuinely interesting content about real people in the real world. Somehow they managed to just create soap opera with bad actors instead.

dylan604 14d ago

"Reality TV" as it is now was born from a writer's strike. Producers couldn't outright give the people scripts and written lines, but they could stand off camera and feed them lines off the cuff in the style of leading questions. If anyone thinks these shows are not intentionally pushed in the directions the producers want, then they just are not paying attention. Which is precisely what these producers want

vasco 14d ago
I know many people who watch, I watch myself, and we all know it's semi scripted and that the overall arcs are decided in advance. The really interesting thing about reality tv is once you realise that this is happening, the "Reality" part really comes back into play even stronger because you can see how people react in such situations (the situation being them being part of a scripted reality tv show while wanting to increase their social media following etc). These days there's also the whole component of social media posts and real life events between the seasons that sometimes are more juicy than the show itself, but only get exposed because of the show. It's just that most people who don't watch, or like to feel smarter than those who watch, think that you just sit there and suspend all belief instead of seeing it for what it is and acknowledging it's pretty interesting.
- lotsofpulp 14d ago
  I don’t see how that differs from any other fiction. Either the whole thing is non fiction, or it’s fictional. I would even go so far as to label only videos of an event itself, like security recordings, to be non fiction as re-enactments and whatnot can have a lot of extra information that was not there in real life.
  - vasco 14d ago
    > Either the whole thing is non fiction, or it’s fictional. You miss out on a lot with this way of thinking. The interesting stuff is in the middle.
    - lotsofpulp 14d ago
      What am I missing out on if I cannot tell what is and is not fiction? It seems detrimental to assume something is real and then it turns out to be fake (but I will never know).
      - vasco 14d ago
        I'm not sure if anything I say will convey the point because I think you already got what I meant, but think of Santa. During childhood it goes from reality to the middleground of "I wonder if" to later clearly being fiction. Not knowing what is what and later finding out or not is interesting in itself.
    - kelnos 14d ago
      I don't think that follows. It's fine to recognize that something that isn't non-fiction is fiction, and, frankly, that's the only reasonable thing to do, since you can't know what's true and what isn't. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it just as much as the next person, or get something good out of it.
  - ad_hockey 14d ago
    It would be very difficult for any TV show or film to meet this bar for non-fiction, because even if the footage is real there's still an edit. The Senna documentary[1] is in the grey area. It's entirely composed of archival footage - no reconstructions, no talking heads, no voiceover. But the filmmaker has still chosen which footage to include and omit and in what order to construct a narrative. I don't think that neatly falls into fiction or non-fiction in your model. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424432/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1424432/
- kelnos 14d ago
  I don't think it's a matter of "feeling smarter" (at least not for me); I don't like most reality TV because the things you mention just don't resonate with me as being interesting or worth watching. I don't particularly care how a bunch of "regular people"[0] react in the situation of being fed scripts while wanting to increase their social media following. I don't care about random people I don't know and their "juicy" events. Some people do, and that's fine; it just isn't my cup of tea. My partner got me into The Challenge early in our relationship. There's a lot about it that I don't like, and it's pretty clear that the competition itself is steered by the production team in ways that aren't really natural, and the outcome week to week is often likely not what would happen if the cast members weren't interfered with. I'm not on social media and don't care what the cast is up to off-screen, and I never watch the "reunion" episode at the end of each season because it's just a bunch of big-personality drama and performances made for internet points. But the show itself can be fun to watch sometimes, and some of the challenges they have to complete are genuinely difficult and cool to watch. [0] The "regular people" thing is also really blurry. Sure, most (all?) reality shows pull from people who aren't otherwise actors or famous, but being on a long-running reality TV show can create that fame and lead to other (no-reality-TV) acting gigs. (Arguably many of the long-time cast members of The Challenge are celebrities in their own right, with curated public presences, and some of them have since taken on regular non-reality acting roles.)
Ntrails 14d ago
In my headcanon it was all born from an experimental show (Big Brother) in around 2000 - which was obviously and intentionally stage managed but otherwise largely genuine behaviours. It took them a couple of seasons to really optimise for the "right" contestants and how to maximise the drama etc etc. The move to more and more of reality tv content is as much about budgets as anything else imo
- dylan604 14d ago
  yeah, I'd agree with that, but the number of shows just exploded after the strike taking them from MTV to mainstream channels.
mmooss 14d ago
MTV's The Real World began in 1992. Did it inolve a writers' strike? Edit: Looking at Wikipedia's account, there are many reality TV shows going back decades before that. Some are game shows and other things - t's hard to tell what matches the modern model.
htrp 14d ago
it's all editing. In an entire week of cameras, you can always find a bit of time where anyone behaves in an outrageous over the top manner

Aeolun 14d ago

Reality TV in Japan is pretty nice. People mostly just spend time driving around the country talking to random people and eating tasty food. Sometimes they vary the thing and do it overseas.

mtrovo 14d ago
Any shows you recommend? I've watched Old Enough! and got hooked on how unpretentious the idea and video editing feels compared to regular Western stuff.
- ChoGGi 14d ago
  Hard Gay? /s
ebiester 14d ago
I don't know about it being pretty nice - I just think of Nasubi and what happened to him on Susunu! Denpa Shōnen.