Why Can't We Quit Reality TV?

And why is gossiping so fun?

I finished and reviewed a 400-page history of reality TV. It was much less fun than I was expecting.

How do you make this boring?

The book’s author is a TV Critic at The New Yorker, and she’s interested in reality’s impact on the medium and unionization efforts among reality cast and crew. Which is of interest to a tiny minority of reality viewers, I imagine. I personally have never met someone who wanted to talk about this.

By contrast, my review is written for people I actually know, who actually enjoy this stuff, and I share the 1% of the book they’d actually be interested in:

Nevertheless, a few (though genuinely, very few) juicy scoops sneak through.

One of the best ones is offered by Sarah Shapiro, an early producer on “The Bachelor.” Shapiro started out as a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College interested in “maximalist queer art, equal parts grotesque and gorgeous.” She ended up on the set of “The Bachelor,” where she found she had a knack for being “the schlubby best friend who hot girls tell sh-t to.” Nussbaum offers a liberal critique of the “bone-deep sexism,” “The Bachelor,” and Shapiro’s situation: “The series tapped a wellspring of internalized misogyny, teaching her to aim it at other women.”

Shapiro’s take is a little less highfalutin: “I started getting rewarded for it and I started getting money for it — and then I started feeling like it was actually really f-cking satisfying! Like: Destroy these b-tches.” Insiders call manipulative producers posing as confidantes “preditors,” a mash-up of predator and editor. Shapiro was one of the best.

One season, Shapiro knew her contestant wasn’t getting the final rose, but sensing an opportunity, she began pumping the bachelorette up: “Oh my God, I’m going to get fired for telling you this. Like: Oh my God, oh my God. It’s you.” She got the bachelorette into her dress, excited and liquored up. When she was rejected, Shapiro earned hours of meltdown footage and high praise from her bosses.

Another season, contestant Jessica Holcomb refused to do an emotional farewell interview. Shapiro didn’t let up. Holcomb was twenty-five, a recently single small-town prosecutor with an eating disorder. After trying all types of cajoling and negotiation, Shapiro finally got the reaction she needed by asking:

You’ve been very honest about all the girls here being so much prettier than you and skinnier than you and better than you. How does it feel to know you were right? 

Absolutely brutal.

Reality TV has some obvious appeal. It feels good to watch people screw up and fail from a safe distance. There is a comfortable predictability (any surprise gets teased before the ad break) and (often) a reassuring sense that your life is quite stable and admirable in comparison to these contestants. We could go on.

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt posits that gossip serves a social hygenic function. When you and your friend bash someone for cheating, you two aren’t making idle chitchat. You are bonding over a shared moral framework. You are reaffirming, “We don’t do that.”

Spilling the tea can feel almost compulsive because you know you will feel both better about yourself (I’d never cheat!) and closer to the person you’ve shared with. Think about the things you love to gossip about, and you’ll see this dynamic at work.

Reality TV is absolutely brutal. Many shows are premised on gawking at people who have made foolish, destructive choices. At its worst, these shows are merely cruel. At its best though, these shows offer a reminder of how one ought to act, a chance to gain gossip’s benefits without the attendant guilt that comes with badmouthing an acquaintance.

This sort of thinking gives me a helpful justification for why I watch more reality than “serious” TV. But also, it’s just fun.