It all seemed to start with MTV’s Real Life television show where we followed the lives of a handful of young adults. Now we are inundated with reality competition shows of every kind, peeks into the lives of celebrities, and more. What’s the fascination? Why do we find ourselves pulled to these kinds of shows more and more?
Competition Shows
As you may have noticed the number of reality competition shows is increasing at a great rate. There are human “survival,” baking, fashion, fitness, and even body painting reality shows. The list is nearly endless.
For some reason (guilty as charged), we find ourselves drawn to these slices of human nature that may or may not represent our interests. We get drawn into the carefully chosen personalities on the show and our competitive nature comes out in full force. We often choose a winner early on and watch them proceed through the contest.
“Improvement” Based Shows
This category of shows is broad and also every expanding. You have your hotel, home, restaurant, and retail improvement shows. They highlight what is going wrong with a place and show us how to make it better. I can often see the fascination with these shows as it’s a great way for us to learn to improve our own spaces. But it goes beyond that, for whatever reason we are enthralled in watching the mishaps and wins on these shows.
“Real Life” Shows
We haven’t seem to have left behind our fascination of watching the real lives of people in action. Often times now though this is based on famous people, or people that become famous from these shows. We see their good sides, bad sides, and really all sides of what their life is like. Perhaps there is some comfort in knowing that the rich and famous have much of the same ups an downs we face daily.
What is our Fascination with all this?
I think that at times we just like to see unscripted life in action – no matter what the topic is. Sometimes it’s to learn (“improvement shows”), other times to feel better about our own lives (“real life” shows) and other times just for fun (“competition” shows). We love to see an underdog come out on top!
I don’t see this fascination ending anytime soon. In fact, I can easily see all areas of this genre expanding into new topics as the ratings for these shows continue to rise.
What’s your take on Reality Shows?
Do you watch them? If you do, what draws you to them? Do you have a favorite type?
Comments