What they do tell you about reality TV is everything else: how it's reductive and superficial, how it's cultural rot. It's a circus, they shout. It microwaves the mind to mush.
It's also the most dominant form of entertainment today. Reality TV has been called a "volume business"; many of us swallow whole seasons in a single sitting. The shows are operatic, polarizing, and unrepentant about what they are-all id and impulse. Name a setup, pastime, premise, gimmick, and it probably exists as a reality TV show.
We refuse to look away. Or maybe it's that we can't. Perhaps it's because we're addicted to spectacle. Or because we demand our pop culture in every color, shape, and size. Everything is primed for content-making. No, seriously-everything. Across Instagram and TikTok and YouTube, we optimize our lives for the screen. We enjoy letting other people into our curated worlds and being let into theirs in return. It's OK to admit it: You are good and truly hooked.
So am I. In the best of times, I watch a fair amount of reality TV. But it was only during this past year-one shot through with heartache, a breakup, and what felt like piled-up grief-that I came to depend on it. In a genre built on stock phrases and digestible tropes, let me offer one more: Reality TV saved me.
LAST SPRING, I grieved for a lost friend. By August, I grieved for my grandmother who was here and then suddenly wasn't. Weeks after that, I grieved for my relationship with T, one that had cratered right in front of me, one that I'd felt-finally-might not end in what-ifs, or end exactly as it did: with a lingering unanswered voice note. I felt like a bodiless thing outside myself.
Bu hikaye WIRED dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye WIRED dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
DeLorean vs DeLorean
Decades after her dad's iconic sports car time-traveled into movie history, Kat DeLorean wants to build a modern remake. There's just one problem: Someone else owns the trademark on her name.
THE BEHIND THE SCENES TECHNO-WIZARDRY OF ARATI PRABHAKAR
She has the ear of the US president and a massive mission: help manage AI, revive the semiconductor industry, and pull off a cancer moonshot.
11,196 YEARS IN PRISON
Faruk Özer made crypto seem like the sation to decades of economic dysimction. Then he became Turkey's most wanted-and hated-man.
THE FORENSIC EMPIRE OF ELIOT HIGGINS
As fakes and deceptions proliferate at record speeds, one guy has maintained a miraculous nose for the truth-the founder of Bellingcat, the world's biggest citizen-run intelligence agency.
THE COMMUNIST & THE CELEBRITY
CHINA MIÉVILLE WRITES A NOVEL WITH THE INTERNET'S BOYFRIEND.
DESIRED
WIRED's visit to the intersection of luxury and technology.
SCREEN SAVER
There are still nice things on the internet.
FIXER UPPER
Maybe you think they're majestic. Maybe you think they're an eyesore. No matter how you feel about wind turbines, there'll be a lot more of them in coming years.
DO THE MATH
Learn you a Haskell-the spooky, esoteric cult classic of programming languages
PRETTY IN PINK
Why did scientists put tangerine DNA in a pineapple-and can this Frankenfruit help change public opinion toward bioengineered foods?