Ninth Blog Post

After watching the video in class about how reality television shows are taped and edited and reading Chuck Klosterman's article, I have a different view about reality television. The video changed my view the most, but Chuck made several points that I have never noticed about reality television. One point that I find to be true is that people will say or do things that someone had said on "The Real World" or some other reality television show. From watching "The Real World", or any reality show, people pick up ideas and attitudes from the people on the show and they begin to act like that person. Not only are ideas and attitudes picked up, but some traits are also adapted by the people who watch a reality show regularly. I find this to be true especially if there is a cast member on a show that has a little catch phrase they use often, or even if they have an interesting style. For example, several teenagers and young adults get into the MTV show "Jersey Shore" where the cast members always have nicknames for things and have influenced many things on young adults. The famous "GTL" (gym, tan, laundry) is popular with college students. The members are also influencing trends; Snooki's "poof" hair. Viewers see these things that they think are or must be cool since the people from Jersey Shore do, say, or wear the things they do. The video we watched in class about how reality shows are taped and edited made me think about all of the things I have seen on a reality television show that probably aren't true, but are made to look like it happened or someone said something but really didn't. I think this probably happens a lot in shows like "The Real World" and "Jersey Shore". It is a way for the makers to keep their viewers interested in the show because for some reason shows are more interesting to watch when there is some sort of drama or fight involved with it. Surely not all of it is edited to make it look a certain way, but I think the editors probably alter a lot of things to make it look like a different situation to make the episode more interesting. And another thing makers of reality shows seem to do a lot now is advertise a new episode with drama and fights, but really not show it until the next new episode. They show what causes the fight or drama, but they don't show the fight itself. It's like a cliff hanger for the viewers so that the show is guaranteed to have lots of viewers for the next episode. Based off of what I have read from Chuck's article and from watching the video in class, I think that about 75% of what is shown on a reality show is actually real; the other 25% is edited that way to make it seem like something happened. And the cast members on the shows can also be just as fake as the show itself. Some of them seem like they act a certain way just to get the most attention and they want the camera to be on them. Then again it's also hard to get a good idea of how someone actually is in real life based off of what you see them like on a television show.