If you watch tv, chances are you’ve seen at least one reality show. Who are we kidding? You’ve probably seen more. If you’re reading this, you may actually be an enthusiastic viewer of these crazy nuggets of questionable truth around which the United States seems to have built almost its entire real-time television watching habit. And if you’re the most typical viewer, you’re talking smack about how stupid they are while you’re furiously programming your dvr to all Bravo all the time.
But did you ever stop and think about what your favorite reality show says about you? What drew you to a beleagured soul living in a house with 5,000 magazines and every receipt he’s ever gotten in a store while your friend furiously text-votes in Dancing With the Stars? Or why you do both of those things, God help you? Read on, friends, for a little bit of reality show psychological profiling from a marginally qualified professional.
Recovery Shows (Hoarders/Intervention/Heavy): You enjoy pain. Sorry. You either enjoy the pain of other humans because it makes you feel better about your own or because you empathize so hard. Whether it is existential, physical, or emotional, you can’t look away, because this pain is best served on your television. But you are not a monster, no, far from it. The flip side of suffering is the hope of redemption, and that is the twofer hit that you get from A&E. Maybe the hoarding will stop because the camera crews said so. Maybe Billy will put down the meth and walk out clean? We can still hope. But still mostly it’s pain.
Finding Love (or Not) With Terrible People Which is to Say Eliminating Them From Your Life by Refusing Them Flowers So You Can Pick the Girl Who Shows You Her Boobs Faster Shows (The Bachelor/The Bachelorette; Celebrity Reality Show Sub-Genre — Flava of Love, Rock of Love Bus): What are we without love? Don’t you want someone to care about you? (Get out of my head, Ann Wilson.) Without love, we are but clanging gongs, remember? Haven’t you ever been to a wedding? Sure you have, because if this genre is your thing, you are the truest of the true romantics. You believe that love can transcend idiocy, spite, a potential mate who makes out like 50 people right in front of your face, helicopter rides to distant lands, the smarmy antics of Chris Harrison and (I am completely speculating here) an utterly psychologically damaging premise. You may also be a fan of “journeys,” “opening up,” and “breaking down your walls.” You are not here to make friends. You’re here for [insert latest love interest's name here.] If you’re a fan of the celebrity version of this show? You enjoy train wrecks and the melodious sounds of Bret Michaels saying “C’mere lemme kiss your mouth” and Flava Flav screaming “AH looooovvvveeee uuuuuuuuuuu.” And really, who wouldn’t love that? Who? Okay, moving on.
The 75th Anniversary of the Real World, Road Rules, the Various Challenges and Reunions: You enjoy watching seven people (never six, oh no, never six) people picked to live in a house (or an RV) and have their lives taped. You are a masochist who likes to relive those days where you had to share a bathroom with strangers and maybe even had to listen to their random hook-ups through the walls. More likely you are a Gen-Xer clinging desperately to the last remnants of a time when videos played on MTV and spent many hours on Saturdays watching Real World San Francisco marathons, or…No, that’s pretty much what you are. You remember when Puck was public enemy #4357, and the Mormon girl got kicked out of BYU because she moved into the New Orleans Real World, and how that guy slapped the girl on the Seattle dock and got sent home.
Or maybe you don’t remember that. Maybe that’s just me. In any event, you may have a 401k by now, but dammit you can still get with some manufactured roommate drama. You are also a purist, because without going all the way back to This Old House, the Real World dynasty spawned it all, really. Damn them.
Real Houswives of (Any City) Shows: You enjoy watching women with celebrity of no known origin and terrible hair bicker and sometimes pull one another’s terrible hair. You may have unresolved issues with a housewife, or with your house, or with your friend who tags along to be your opening act when you go out on the road and gets wasted and almost ruins your show but doesn’t because girl you can sing. You are not yourself shrill or excessive, but are working out that shadow side with many, many women who are not really housewives at all.
Talent Discovery of People Who Aren’t Very Talented Shows (American Idol, America’s Got Talent, Last Comic Standing): You may enjoy music or performance art for its artistic merit, but you dig the side of schadenfreude and criticism that any cutthroat competition brings to the table. You enjoy watching celebrity judges react to people who may or may not be more talented than they are. If you only watch for the first few weeks of people brought on strictly for laughs, you have never had a humiliating experience at a piano recital that may or may not still require therapy, or you did, and you’re out for revenge. You also enjoy hearing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and any number of ’90s pop songs brutally, vocally murdered.
Competitions Based on Some Lifestyle-Oriented Occupation (Top Chef, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model) : You are a fun loving person and an excellent dancer, with a taste for the high life and high drama. From the amuse-bouche to the final curtain, you’re a foodie and a fashion plate, who perhaps harbors dreams of restaurant-hopping with Anthony Bourdain or having Tim Gunn up the street as your personal stylist. But it’s not all fun and candy with you, no. You have a competitive streak, and you’ll cut a bitch if she steals your tulle (or your pea puree.) You also weep when you are tired, and you may deface someone else’s dress form when no one is looking.
Also? You’re definitely not ready to go home. You are that hardcore, and there is nothing wrong with that. (And you’re not here to make friends either. How does anyone have any friends anymore?)
D-List Celebrities in Humiliating Life Management Situations or Unrealistic Athletic Competitions Shows (Celebrity Fit Club/Celebrity Rehab/Dancing With the Stars/Skating With the Stars): I could take the easy way out and say that you may have watched a lot of Good Times reruns or attended several ill-advised hair metal concerts in your youth, but then I’d just be projecting. Again. But the truth is, you probably exhibit a healthy dose of nostalgia crossed with a love for seeing people past their prime in utterly humiliating competitions or, if you’re a better person, attempting to redeem themselves. Maybe you have a flair for the absurd and enjoy seeing Jani Lane from Warrant on a treadmill, Gary Busey and Kathy Najimy fighting in a support group-type situation, Vince Neil lumbering around on ice skates, or Vern Troyer (aka MiniMe) on a tricycle running fleeing from Chynna the wrestler.
You may also have issues, but that’s another story.
Physical Transformations of Completely Unrealistic and Morally Questionable Origin Shows (Biggest Loser/Extreme Makeover): On the positive side, you like to see people improve themselves. However, this is exhibited by watching them lose 27 pounds in one week while having a 100-pound tyrant trainer standing on their very obese backs, or beating one another with giant foam bats and crying. A part of you knows that this is all very, very wrong, but you really — really — don’t want to be right. You just want transformation, man. That’s what it’s all about.
Visits to Foreign Lands Shows (Sister Wives, Toddlers & Tiaras): You enjoy exploring other cultures and experiences totally different from your own. You seek understanding, and the more base among you may just like to point and laugh. That is for you to explore on your own.
Home Improvement and DIY Shows (Pretty much all of HGTV/The Vanilla Ice Project/Extreme Makeover Home Edition): You do not like your current living space but you are too lazy to do anything about it, so instead you’re going to watch other people do other things to other houses and pretend you got some kind of renovation hit off of it, aren’t you? I know your kind. You are also quite possibly newly married or a brand new homeowner, or a fan of the appearance of Ty Pennington.
So Bad They Have Their Own Very Bad Show Category Shows: (Bridalplasty, Millionaire Matchmaker, Wife Swap, The Littlest Groom) You work too hard. Your brain cannot handle any more thought, effort or energy expenditure, so therefore when you go for reality tv, only the least common denominator will do. You are also a fan of the extreme trainwreck, the thing so bad that everyone has to stop and say “This. This is where we have arrived, America. Stand up — or sit down, in your case, on the couch — and be proud.”
So Good It Gets Its Own Category Show (Amazing Race): You like to travel. If you win, you think so fast on your feet you move while you’re standing still, and you’re crafty enough to cut in the cab line. You are so badass you will shave your head for a shortcut, and at the end you’ll stand in front of a handsome man with a booming voice and weep when he says, “You’re number (whatever number isn’t last.)
There you have them, totally random, completely biased and irresponsible evaluations of what your reality show of choice says about you. And you should take all of this completely seriously, because not only did I purposely watch Tommy Lee Goes to College AND all episodes of Rock of Love, but I kept up with the Real World from the first New York all the way to San Diego.
