I love reality television - you should, too

I love reality television. I’m going to go ahead and assume you don’t. In fact, I’m going to assume you don’t know a single person who does. I can deduce this because you’re reading, and literacy implies intellect, and intellect generally precludes people from enjoying reality television. But only because you’re not looking at the bigger picture. 

See, somebody is watching it - that's why the mass media keeps churning out more garbage. A quick look at the ratings reveals that reality television viewers are a huge market. And given the fact that 99 percent of Americans are complete idiots, that’s exactly how it should be: if you can keep the overwhelming majority of America’s population glued to their couches, they won’t go meddling in activities reserved for the elite few of us with intelligence - like engineering or doctoring or making tons and tons of money off the kinds of people that watch reality television. In other words, reality television does for modern adults what cartoons do for children: it keeps their tiny brains occupied so the grown-ups can get some work done. The more of them that are watching, and the more oblivious they are to the rest of the world, the more we can move forward with this great nation...and the more money we can make doing it.    

Now maybe this seems a little insensitive, but think about the people I’m describing here. They’re the idiots you see living out of a Wal-Mart or the people you know with 30 cats or the guy you remember from your hometown that could have been a football star until he knocked up his high school sweetheart and went on welfare and now he spends all his free time and child support checks at Uncle Chester’s Legs and Eggs Strip Club, Buffet and Tire Center chugging his way into cardiac arrest. He’s the demographic reality television is targeting - would you really want him computing your anesthesia dose during surgery? Look, you wouldn't want the cast of Jersey Shore teaching your children physics, or for one of A&E’s Hoarders to represent your state in the Senate, or for any member of any of the Desperate Housewives to argue in your favor during a criminal hearing, so why would you want the people who are enthralled by these programs doing any of these things? I’m not being condescending - in fact, I’m being polite. I’m not saying that 99 percent of Americans can’t perform the critical roles of our society, I’m just saying they don’t have to. We got this; the rest of you sit down and watch your shows.      

I hear a lot of very smart people saying that reality television is dumbing down America, but America has always been full of dummies - they made an entire book series for them! - and the rest of us have finally figured out that we can make a shit-ton of profit off this untapped goldmine. We're not making more people stupid, we're just catering to them now - we tape stupid people doing stupid shit, and stupid people tune in to watch. We call movies “3D,” and stupid people pay four times as much for tickets. We tell citizens that the world is dangerous, scary place, and stupid people barricade themselves inside to buy more of the useless crap that we advertise to them. We tell these sciolists that every emotion is just a mental construct that could stem from any number of psychological disorders, and they happily buy up prescriptions and self-help books and "spiritual alignment" bracelets. It's too easy! There's too much money to be had for the asking!

Those of us with any kind of education can see how all-encompassing this epidemic of pandering to morons is, but with just a small change in perspective, it seems more like a quarantine than a contagious outbreak. Take online dating for example: it doesn’t seem to make any kind of sense to those of us who see dozens of potential mates every time we walk down a crowded street. But we’ve convinced most of the nation to stay inside, far from danger, glued to their television advertising programming, and since we don’t want them to miss any product placements or multi-million-dollar commercials, we just needed to invent a way for them to believe they were pursuing healthy relationships without ever having to leave the house. It’s genius really, to say nothing of how it allows idiots to actually have sex, thereby creating more idiots and perpetuating an endless resource for those of us who profit from ignorance. Online dating isn’t destroying the delicate fabric of social relationships, it’s just a cash cow breeding program.               

Like online dating, we few – we happy few – who are capable of altering our relative viewpoints can find brilliance (read: profitability) in almost all of the cultural embarrassments we’re currently observing (read: enduring). This tsunami of stupidity is a product, and it’s intentional, and it’s selling like hotcakes - so knowing there’s a target market should help relieve your fears that it could eventually affect you and yours. Your intellect is your levee. Your perspicacity is your life ring. If you’re still reading this, you’re winning, you’re part of the 1 percent, and you’ll never understand our generation’s obsession with calling vandalism “street art” (thanks Banksy fans), or believe that “going green” is anything more than a marketing ploy (“all you have to do to save the planet from being consumed is buy more green stuff!”), and you’ll never find yourself surrendering your strength of will as a symptom of some absolutely asinine diagnosis (no, the inability to exercise self-control when it comes to eating, drinking, hoarding, fucking, shopping or starving yourself is not a “disease,” but we’ll happily charge those with no autonomy for meds and 12-step programs so they can be “cured”).  

And, thankfully, you’ll never be mesmerized by the deluge of reality television programs that stupid people across our great nation can’t stop watching. But after discovering why they exist, and after realizing they don’t appeal to you in the least, don’t you just love them?