Ologies with Alie Ward - Reality TV Sociology (‘TRASH’ TV) with Danielle Lindemann

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Nude strangers. Icy roads. Brain rot. True love. Class warfare. Queer visibility. Scripted ad libs. Sociologist, professor, author of the book “True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us,” and straight up Reality TV Sociologist, Dr. Danielle Lindemann studies human behavior through the lens of pop culture and reality TV. Dr. Lindemann lays out the history of the medium, the complexities of why we watch, the effect on society at large, who signs up to be on these shows, how our reactions change to it over time, political consequences of reality TV, and what these shows can teach us about ourselves and each other. Also: the Jackie & Shadow show. Visit Dr. Lindemann’s website and follow her on BlueskyBuy her books including True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us on Bookshop.org or AmazonA donation went to the Pedro Zamora ScholarshipMore episode sources and linksThe Jackie & Shadow ShowSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: FIELD TRIP: A Hollywood Visit to the Writers Guild Strike Line, Phonology (LINGUISTICS), Kalology (BEAUTY STANDARDS), Matrimoniology (MARRIAGE), Ethnocynology (HUMANS & DOGS THROUGH TIME), Fanthropology (FANDOMS)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh, hey, it's the new leaf on your what you thought was a dying houseplant. Allie Ward, this is Ologies. We're going to get real about sociology. It's everywhere humans are, including in your television. And by that, I mean probably your laptop in bed or your phone on the toilet. Now reality TV sociology, it's a real thing. And it's proof we're going to meet a professor of sociology at Lehigh University, who is part of the core faculty of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies,

who's also an author of the books Dominatrix, Gender, Eroticism, and Control in the Dungeon, and her highly-lauded 2022 release, True Story, What Reality TV Says About Us. And she studied creative writing at Princeton and then got a PhD in sociology from Columbia and has spent her career analyzing and writing about non-normative or

deviant behaviors and how they shed light on how we relate to each other. Now, months back, a tweet of hers went viral and it was a snapshot of the list of presentations some of her students were giving. And among them were the sociology of body image and self-worth in The Biggest Loser, the sociology of work and inequality in Below Deck, the sociology of lesbian relationships in The Ultimatum, Queer Love, the sociology of perfectionism in Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. So we will dive into a lot of that and more in a sec. But first, thank you to patrons at patreon.com slash Ologies for supporting the show for

a dollar a month or more and submitting questions before we record. Thanks to everyone out there in Ollijee's merch from Ollijee's merch.com. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews which helped the show so much. I read them all and I read you one so thank you to Sarsie Gray who wrote, in the world of severance, Allie Ward is the Audi Helly R deserves. Sarsie Gray, thank you for that. I hope I wouldn't do that to myself. You know what, either way, Cupbanks, don't sever your crush. Also thank you TSPIN32 for saying all the right things. Okay, so reality TV sociology, off we go. Stay tuned for queer culture, making it to the mainstream. What is real in reality TV?

Who signs up to be on reality TV? What effect could it have on young brains? Primetime cat fights, class warfare, passive aggression, what reality can teach us about ourselves, eating hamburgers with a camera in your face, good examples, bad examples, race, wealth, and so much more with sociologist, author, professor, and straight up professional reality TV sociologist, Dr. Danielle Lineman. So many people were like, get her on now.

And I was like, I didn't know this was an ology. My name is Danielle Lindeman. She her hers. Great. Reality TV. Did you start off watching it or did you start out so interested in sociology that you realized this was like the perfect cauldron of places to find interesting things about humanity. Oh that's such a good question. I sometimes say that my

love of sociology actually stems from my early love of reality TV. So I was definitely a fan of reality TV even before I knew what sociology was. You know watching episodes of the real world back in high school. And I was just hooked, you know? The year was 1992 and the network was MTV. A camera crew composed the first shots of a media revolution. This is the true story. True story.

Seven strangers picked to live in a loft. And had their lives taped. To find out what happens. What? When people stop being polite. Could you get the phone? And start getting real. The real world.

And I think the same kinds of social dynamics that I saw on those shows are the same things that excite me about sociology. So then when I became a sociologist, I was like, well, I obviously have to teach a class on sociology of reality TV because there's so much there. So it was just an amazing dovetail of my two loves, sociology and reality TV. Are there a lot of sociologists and sociology professors that work with reality TV? Or did you find that this was like a hard sell for the education board?

That's a good question. I would not say there are a lot of sociologists who work on reality TV. And I do think there's a lot of stigma around studying something that people see as frivolous, like reality TV. But at the same time, a lot of sociologists have sort of come out of the woodwork

or come out to me as people who love reality TV because of what I study. And so that's really exciting to see. But there definitely is still a kind of stigma around it in academia. Well, there's such a variation in like smut level. You know, I feel like you could find high brow and you can find low brow. Like is there reality TV that is more respected? And is there some that's like, this is just straight exploitation or scripted? Are there

tiers where it gets closer to documentary and then others that get closer to like Jerry Springer. Oh yeah, for sure there are tears in terms of this kind of ladder of respectability. In fact, there are a lot of people who tell me that they don't watch reality TV and for the most part, they do. It just turns out they watch things like HGTV or the Great British Bake. They feel more wholesome because they're trying to teach you something. They're less conflict driven. Although I would still classify those shows as reality, like House Hunters, I would still say is reality TV. But I think there's a sense of some shows that are maybe more overtly educational, less conflict driven, people see as more kind of wholesome and acceptable.

It's kind of interesting because when people tell me they don't watch reality TV, oftentimes they'll say, well, I mean, I don't watch the Kardashians. I don't watch Real Housewives. That's what they think of when they think of reality TV. But most people are watching reality TV in some form. When does it become a documentary? When does it cross that line? Does it depend on how much producers sort of prod people or nudge them into different directions? Is it talking head confessional booths? Like when is it a documentary and when is it reality TV? So it's kind of an unsatisfying answer, but as a sociologist I often say reality TV is a social construct and so there isn't any one definition of it So it's kind of messy as a construct the definition that I use there's two things basically as people

Behaving as themselves rather than as characters and you can already see how that's kind of messy, right? If there's some scripting involved, you know, it's all kind of performative. People are still performing. But basically, it's, you know, Kim Kardashian is being Kim Kardashian. She's not playing a character. Although just in the last year,

the socialite star of The Simple Life alongside Nicole Richie... That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. That's hot. And now Media Mogul and DJ Paris Hilton has given more of the backstory of the persona

the world has known and mocked for decades. The producers said, we want you to play the dumb, rich, spoiled airhead. So I played that character. I had no idea that I would have to continue that on for five seasons and then going around the world doing all the talk shows and interviews and then continuing with the character because that's what everyone knew me for. And while Paris Hilton has been bravely outspoken at revealing the trauma she endured over her life, in one recent interview with her she explained that a reason she took on that persona

as this vapid, materialistic, rich girl was because that was what the media at the time glorified. However, she was the media at the time. But did she have enough power to be authentic? How much is coercion? So the first of many murky factors is, is someone being themselves? Secondly, what's the point of this show,

specifically a reality show? And then the main intent is to entertain rather than educate. So like the news wouldn't be considered reality TV, although again, that gets messy, right? Because we pick what stories to tell in the news to entertain. But the main purpose of a documentary allegedly is to educate.

But again, a lot of messiness, right? You can probably think of a lot of exceptions, right? What side of the line a certain thing goes on. Yeah, like the Great British Bake Off. I feel like when I watch it, I'm learning how to make a pastry. Reality is I'm never going to make those pastries. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Again, I think you nailed it when you said

the closer to documentary it is, people see it as more kind of legitimate. I think you used the word smut, right? Like less smutty, if it's overtly trying to teach us something. Although of course I argue that all reality TV actually can be educational for us if we know where to look.

Yeah, I mean, I think when people tune into any media, they're looking to get something to put in their pocket to live their life a little bit differently, whether it's aspirational wealth or whether it's maybe feeling better about their relationship dynamics, because it's not as messy as what they see on TV or something. Like, why the huge question? Why do we love reality TV, let's be honest? Because while you might not watch Vanderpump Rules or Toddlers and Tiaras or Married at First Sight,

you may still be a reality watchers, like Mythbusters, West Coast Shoppers, Brain Games, maybe even the 2020 Netflix series, 100 Humans, or Jersey Shore or Beast Games or the one with Alec Baldwin, seven of his children and one semi-Spanish wife. What is reality? And so people tune into different shows for different reasons, right? And there probably are people who are watching like Bake Off or Top Chef to like learn how to sous vide, meat or make a souffle. Right. I also cannot

do those things. So there is that educational element. But there's a lot of research that looks at why people tune in. One of the things is that kind of voyeurism element where you're watching the train wreck to remind yourself that you are not of the train wreck to feel slightly superior. Right. Like, well, my life might be messed up in some ways, but at least I'm not like competing on The Bachelor or eating bugs for the camera. So there definitely is that, you know, there's also that sort of community,

but you know, we can come into community with people, you know, from a wide demographic array, just by saying, you know, I like the real housewives and we can have conversations around the water cooler online. So we have, there's that community aspect to it as well. But also paradoxically, even though we watch it to remind ourselves that we are not of the train wreck, oftentimes the people on the shows kind of resonate with us or we feel a connection with them

because reality TV tends to traffic in these broad archetypes, right? Like there's the shy one, there's the bossy one, there's the smart one. So usually there's like someone you can grab onto and say, well, I'm not exactly like this person, but you know, I'm more of a Chloe than a Kim. I think we need to do some soul searching. Speak for yourself.

Or you can kind of grab onto and feel that kinship with the people on the shows. That's by design. Are the worst people on a reality show actually that bad? They always come out later and say that producers tweaked things, they edited it, they asked them questions, they prodded them. But if you're the worst on a show, are you actually the worst or is that all post-production? I think somewhere in the middle. worst on a show. Are you actually the worst or is that all post-production? I think somewhere in the middle. It also speaks to the question of is reality TV reality?

I think most people at this point don't think reality TV is 100% reality. We're pretty savvy. We know that people are being cast to fit these particular archetypes and anything that falls outside of the realm of that storyline, of that archetype is cut out. So we don't really see people as kind of whole people oftentimes, right? If there's someone who is the worst 5% of the time, then we're going to see that 5%, right? We're not going to see the other 95% of the wonderful things that they do. And then they're prodded with producer questions, free-flowing alcohol, and sleep deprivation, and all that stuff.

So are they 100% the worst? Probably not. But they do use the kernel of something that's there. And in her book, True Story, What Reality TV says about us, she explores race, sexuality, and gender with chapters like, Don't Be All Uncool About the Self, Here for the Right Reasons, which explores couple dynamics in reality TV, Not Here to Make Friends is about group sociology, and there's a chapter titled, I Question Your Taste Level, about class, and even Bad

Boys, Bad Boys on the Soci sociology of deviance on our screens. And her students get to write papers like the sociology of age stereotyping in the Golden Bachelor, the sociology of women's work in Wife Swap, the sociology of social media in the Circle. So, for every reality show there are like 10 papers you could write. It just gives me butterflies that this is a possibility, this is anology. This stuff deserves to be looked at in an obsessive academic fashion. When you're designing your syllabus for the next semester or when papers are coming in

from your students, can you describe some of the topics that get covered and how you decide on those? Well, actually, I had the syllabus before I started writing my book, but it was basically like the sub areas of sociology. So we would have sociology of gender and we would read a classical sociology piece about gender and then we would watch RuPaul's Drag Race and we would talk about how those principles were being played out on RuPaul's Drag Race, like performing gender on the difference between biological sex and gender, those types of things.

So it's basically kind of a tour of sociology through the lens of reality TV. So like sociology of gender, sexuality, we have the sociology of work, sociology of race and intersectionality. And then for their final projects, what the students have to do, which is the thing that I posted on Twitter that probably led you to me that went viral, was then I have the students say, I tell them, pick a realm of sociology that we have not talked about in this class and write about that in a particular TV show. Someone did the sociology of work hierarchies in below deck.

So that was something we hadn't covered in class and we hadn't looked at that show in class. So we had a lot of angry people who were like, why didn't you do this show or this topic? It's because we had already done them. We had already done, for instance, I love Real Housewives. I'd love to see a presentation on Real Housewives,

but we had already covered Real Housewives in class. You came after me in the house. I was sitting there having a lovely moment with the ladies, and you came in in your Herman Munster shoes. They're Louis Vuitton shoes, you know? Even Louis Vuitton makes mistakes. When your students are coming up with these papers and they're researching it, do you find that they are typically drawn toward things that have a lot of relevance for their own life?

And does that mirror why we tune into some shows and not others? That's interesting. Do they pick topics that are relevant to their own life? I mean, some of them pick topics about kind of young 20-somethings partying. There was a great presentation on Floribama Shore this semester. The presentation was Sociology of Alcohol in Floribama Shore this semester. The presentation was sociology of alcohol in Floribama shore which examines the MTV show which bills itself as nine roommates hit the Gulf Coast to party, hook up, fight and stir up plenty

of other southern fried shenanigans. I'm doing shots and I don't care what I'm taking shots of. I watched some clips. I felt like I could smell the clips. Which was super interesting. Niche. Yeah, like southern etiquette or lack thereof. So that was interesting.

And this person actually was from that area too. So I could see that there is that resonance there. You know, you mentioned the real world and I watched the real world when it came out when I was in high school and it was revolutionary to be like, wait, we're just in these people's house. They're just being themselves in their houses. This one got in a fight. What is going on?

Are they gonna kiss? These are real people. And Survivor, I feel like was a really big moment for competitive TV, for competition-based television. Did they wire younger brains to be like, I really am more drawn towards seeing actual emotions, you know? Oh, that's a really good point. There's a reason why so many social media influencers are reality TV personalities. I think they paved the way for us kind of making these, we call parasocial connections, right? We feel like we know the people on our screens

and it's, that's heightened, right? When it's people who are behaving as themselves ostensibly versus playing characters. And so those connections that we feel online, right? Like on Instagram or whatever with celebrities. Okay, let's go back in time now. Although Jen Alpha may not know, the road to reality has been paved with classics like the panopta iconic Big Brother and the delicate balance of being wealthy and attractive but upset at the same time. When it comes to Real Housewives, tell me why that has a spot in your heart.

And is it only certain areas? Are there certain cities that are more attractive to you or what do you love about it? What do I love about? Well, Real Housewives definitely has a special place in my heart. I first encountered by accident Real Housewives of Orange County in like 2010 or something. And I just remember I had broken up with my boyfriend and moved out of our apartment. And I was like in my new apartment. And this show comes on and Vicki Gumbelson gets

beamed in the head by football. And I was like, yes. Woo! Woo! Woo! Nice! Woo! Yes.

And I was like, this is what I need in my life right now. And I think, and this is also one of the draws of reality TV. And she was like, this is what I need in my life right now. And this is also one of the draws of reality TV. And she was fine, right? Otherwise, I would not be acting this way about it. But this is one of the draws of reality TV too, right? Is that the stakes are pretty low. And in so much of scripted TV now and so much of life, obviously, the stakes are so high.

And you can just tune into Real Housewives. And the biggest conflict is like, will Bethany invite Ramona to her barbecue on Labor Day? And there's something soothing about watching something that's so low stakes. And it's interesting because when things get high stakes on Real Housewives shows, you'll see the fans react negatively to it.

Like, this is too real. This is not what I want to be seeing. I want to see like silly rich ladies hitting each other with their Gucci bags and fighting over stupid stuff. You know, the term brain rot is I feel like something that we use where we just need to turn our brains off from thinking about something that is too terrible. I'm wondering how much human brains are actually capable of taking in the horrors of the world on a global scale from an anthropological standpoint. And if there is some need as we learn more and more about what's happening globally with suffering, global warming, if we are more drawn towards something that's low stakes. Do you feel like reality TV is Doing something to our brains where it's a respite. I think on an individual level

I definitely experienced that right where I just want to tune in to something that I can just let wash over me although of course it's paradoxical because I can't just let it wash over me because I'm analyzing all of the psychological dimensions of it, all the micro dynamics and gender, race, class, because it's such a rich text that can teach us so much about ourselves sociologically. I'm kind of watching it on these dual levels where on the one level it's like, okay, Ramona's barbecue, right? That can wash over me in an aesthetic wave. On the other hand, I'm like, oh, but what does that say about their interactions as a dyad and gender and race, right? And for decades, scholars wondered about the causes and effects of reality shows. There

was this one 2001 paper, it's now vintage, I suppose, Psychological Escapism, predicting the amount of television viewing by need for cognition in the journal Communication. And it found that if a person's need to think is lower, they feel less pleasant when they have nothing to do, because there's nothing left to do but think. And the easiest way for individuals to escape this pressure to think is by watching TV. So if we're wondering why we sit and scroll for hours looking at videos of people we will never meet who are blending their contour or sharpening a

camping hatchet or demoing their guest bathroom, that might be why. In tough times, no thinky feels good. But can reality TV as a construct deliver that anymore? There was this one New York Times critic who called reality shows, quote, a theater of cruelty, citing that the casualties of these onscreen conflicts are too real, with reality TV personalities dying by suicide and suffering other stark readjustments to their new life under scrutiny. So now that we know the behind the scenes, reality TV might be too dark to lean on for escapism or maybe as a culture we're just getting more mean. What are some things that you feel like your students or you have learned about human interactions and human dynamics?

Has it changed any of the ways that you interact with people in your life or the way that your students interact? Do you end up learning how to be a person or how not to be a person from hours of watching? I think, actually, it might be the reverse. I think sometimes, I mean, reality TV is potent, right? Because we're watching so much of it. And there is some research that shows

that people who watch reality TV tend to think relationships are more conflict driven than they actually are. And I kind of was like, oh, that's interesting. And then recently, I spent a lot of time marathoning The Traders, which is a very like conflict driven show. I feel like being faculty meetings, department meetings, and be like, feel like a level of tension that was not there. And so I can see, right, like how reality TV can really affect us, maybe sometimes in a negative way, if we're thinking that things involve more conflict than they actually do. You know, I've always wondered too, I grew up watching Discovery Channel. I loved like nature documentaries and animal documentaries. And then as time went on, it became like Pawn Stars

or like Ice Road Truckers. It became a lot of Blue Collar Hero. And is there something economic there where it's cheaper to make the shows or the demographic tends to want to see themselves reflected? Do we know why some media has kind of turned over to reality TV type of shows that are more people-based than maybe nature-based?

More people are gonna tune into more conflict driven shows. Right, like you see TLC, which was originally the learning channel. Yeah. Right. And now has been referred to as like a latter day freak show, right? You have the families with a million kids and what have you. Alec Baldwin and Hilaria's new show with their seven kids,

that's on TLC. Now one 2021 paper in the journal Media and Communication is titled, quote, here come my 600 pound quintuplets, a discussion of reality television as a freak discourse, which explains that from gorgons and mermaids to bearded ladies and elephant men, people have for centuries been fascinated by those who deviate from physical and mental social norms. However, as science and medicine progressed and the protection of human rights became

more important, freak shows and traveling sideshows dwindled. The article looks at how reality television programming as a genre uses a narrative formula that can be likened to 19th century freak shows to enhance its storylines and produce a human spectacle. Hmm. Wow. But why? So, yeah, I mean, like, it's economical, right?

It's like a cost-benefit analysis. People, they want things that are gonna bring in viewers and that are relatively cheap to make, and that's kind of the history and the story of reality TV in general is that it's relatively cheap to make because, for the most part, you don't have to pay the people who go on it, right? in general is that it's relatively cheap to make because for the most part, you don't have to pay the people who go on it, right?

You don't have to pay the crew union wages sometimes and you don't have to build sets. So there's a lot of reasons, right? Like from the production side, why you'd want to create them. And then from the demand side, more people are gonna watch the Duggars than they're gonna watch a show about orcas.

Now, whether or not we want that to be true is another question, but that's just the reality. So yeah, like a drive-through on a road trip. It's cheap and it's easy. And unlike trained actors with SAG and AFTRA, union protections, the documentary nature of reality means longer shoot days, no overtime penalties or missed or late meal penalties, no mandatory eight hour turnaround between shoots to sleep. And we covered the importance of unionizing the labor force with a ton of great history in the entertainment industry

in a field trip episode from the WGA strike, during which we talk about how the literal richest company on Earth exploits union loopholes to pay its crew low budget film rates. And we'll link that episode in the show notes. But even 10, 20 years ago, this was well established in the industry, as detailed in this paper titled Reality TV's Low-Wage and No-Wage Workforce, which covers how reality TV's classification

as non-scripted programming lets the studios exploit this non-unionized workforce and how duping someone into being a contestant on a show means you don't have to pay for the participation. It's a gamble for contestants but the house always wins. Speaking of wealth and houses, how do you feel as someone who loves The Real Housewives, how do you feel about the title? Oh, the Real Housewives title. I mean, we could write a dissertation about the title.

I know. Fascinating. First of all, none of them are housewives, right? I'm not the first to point this out. But this idea that they're kind of being defined through their relationships with men is super fascinating. The fact that that still resonates in our culture, that they're housewives is super interesting,

that they would be defined that way. And then on top of that, they're not housewives, they have jobs. Well, they all have jobs because they're all in the show, which is another dimension of it. And now more and more, they're bringing down the fourth wall. This is a really interesting transition in reality TV now, a really interesting development is that more and more, we're tearing down the fourth wall and This is a really interesting transition in reality TV. Now a really interesting

development is that like more and more we're like tearing down the fourth wall and they're talking about themselves as reality TV personae, as real housewives, because most of the conflicts now that they have are about things that happen because of the show like happen at BravoCon or someone tweeted something about the show. And so that's been really fascinating to see as well. When it comes to what you study for reality TV, do you dip into things like YouTube and TikTok? Or where is the line for you educationally where you're focusing on this medium but not this one?

And that's a good question. Again, it's a super messy construct. I would consider YouTube and TikTok to be forms of reality TV. And there are people who study those genres specifically. But that's just an arbitrary guardrail. I consider those things to be reality TV as well. Can I launch into some questions from listeners?

For sure. OK. I'm just going to get into it because I have so many good ones. But before we do, let's highlight and donate to a charity. And this week, it's going to get into it because they have so many good ones. But before we do, let's highlight and donate to a charity. And this week, it's going to the Pedro Zamora Scholarship via AIDSMemorial.com, which is dedicated to continuing the legacy of the late AIDS educator and health and social justice

activist Pedro Zamora by awarding $5,000 scholarships to those making a difference in the fight against HIV AIDS and or advancing public and reproductive health, racial, environmental and immigration justice and more. So for more on those scholarships or to donate, you can see the link in the show notes, which will take you to the AIDS Memorial.org page about it. Thank you to sponsors of the show for making these donations possible. Okay, on to your questions sent in by the patrons via patreon.com slash ologies. First one comes from Oliver Callis, Sarah Manns, and Darren Bush, who noted that in

working with primates in grad school, Darren said, when there's a physical conflict, every monkey watches with interest. Maybe we're wired to be voyeurs, Darren said, as well as. OK, Jennifer Dorsett says, Hi, Ali. This is Jennifer from Florida. My question isn't so much about those on reality TV, but why we as a society are so fascinated by watching other people. What is that? Is that voyeurism? Is that jealousy? Or is it something else? Thanks, Ali.

Yeah, I mean, so there's literature on this, right? So again, there is that voyeurism, right? Where we want to watch the train rack to feel superior to the train rack. There are a lot of different subgenres of reality TV and people might tune into different shows for different reasons. Like probably we're not watching Top Chef for the train rack. We might be watching it because we feel that it's educational in some ways, we're enjoying the conflicts that we're watching. And again, there is that paradox where at the same time that we're watching to feel smugly superior,

we're also making connections with the people on the show, right? Saying like, oh, I have more of a Bethany or I'm more of a Carol. And kind of, we all kind of have one character that we can kind of grab onto, even if we don't support everything they do or we're unlike them in a lot of ways and say, you know, that's my character. Patreon, the Lady is a Geek, asked, rather than these shows reflecting the reality of

courtship, how much do they shift expectations to something unrealistic? Reality TV seems to romance what porn is to sex. The lady is a Greek said. It reminds me of that definition of pornography or obscenity where I can't define it but I know when I see it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think part of the time is people trying to convince themselves that what they watch is not reality TV. It's almost like challenging. Well, I watch House Hunters. That's not reality

TV. Is it? Is it? Because they want to feel superior to the people who watch reality TV, right? Also, I understand that in house hunters and house hunters international and all of the franchise that they absolutely already bought the house before Yeah, they shot it. Is that true? I mean, that's what I've heard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah No, sorry everyone On those house hunting shows, they usually already bought the house. And according to many publications, like House Beautiful's article, here's the shocking truth about HGTV's house hunters. Usually you're watching someone who already purchased a place tour their own empty home. And then the producers find a few other places to tour.

Like according to reports from people who have been on the show, they might be filmed walking through an Airbnb or even a friend's house, places that are sometimes not even on the market, as if they were considering living and dying in it. Now, filming can take place over a few days and you might get paid like 500 bucks to do it, but for like Lynn and Gary looking for a Myrtle Beach summer house, I guess the clout in the cache like isn't bad for people who are not classically trained thespians. But then, is that acting if someone's like, I don't know, Roger, I really don't want to live this close to the freeway. Is that acting? Are they playing themselves? Well, I guess the sociology answer is we are all playing ourselves all of the time, right? We are like all performing for audiences of others. So yeah, my criterion is not are they acting because that's, I mean, how do you parse that, right? Are they acting or are

they not? But are they basically playing themselves? whether or not there's any scripting involved? Well, this was on the minds of a lot of listeners. Jamie Hanna asked, reality TVs often make me think of the Stanford prison experiment, which is really interesting because so many of these questions are about ethics. Does a person's behavior change while in an extreme situation? Ali Lopez, first time question asker, asked the same thing. Curious how the presence of the camera in and of itself influences, amplifies, changes how people on reality TV act versus how they would have handled similar situations while not on display. So does the presence of the camera change the reality of it and how would we know? Yeah, it's interesting because if

you talk to people who are like long time reality TV personalities, they'll say that they eventually forget about the camera. Yeah, right. I can't imagine forgetting about the camera, but I mean, that's what they will say. Yeah, I mean, but obviously, right, like the presence of a camera is gonna change the social dynamics of a situation.

Now is it gonna kind of amplify what was already there? It's interesting because I think a lot of people don't realize the psychological stressors that reality or maybe don't even care, because they'll just say, well, you shouldn't have gone on the show then. You knew what you were getting into. There's that lack of sympathy there. There are multiple psychological stressors that

these people are being pinged with on these shows. So, I mean, you could argue that like, under these conditions, any of us would behave badly. How much does it pay? When it comes to cash prizes, how does that influence the way that a show is shot or the outcome? Like Jamie Hanna wanted to know, can you discuss coercion and cash prizes? I'm thinking of someone like alone who has a half a million dollar cash prize. When Constantine says, I've noticed that

reality TV shows have a really different vibe when there is or is not a cash prize, like the Great British Bake Off versus those crazy stressful Food Network shows. I remember seeing some meme about the Great British Bake Off is like, well, it's quite good for a fondant, crazy stressful food network shows. And I remember seeing some meme about how like the Great British Bake Off is like, well, it's quite good for a fondant,

but you could use some work. And then American cooking shows are like, I need to win this or my child doesn't get cancer care. You know, like, what is the difference there when cash is involved? Patrons Lisa Kahn, Scott Sheldon, Lily B, Brittany Corrigan, Jesse all asked in Lisa's dismayed words, why are American reality shows so awful and cruel?

Great British Bake Off has proven that watching lovely people be kind and wonderful to each other is popular, Jesse says. So is it the lack of safety nets and the fear of getting like a stress-induced disease that will bankrupt you. Is that what drives American reality TV to be a gladiatorial sport? Like what's happening? Yeah, there's that issue of coercion in reality TV. I do think there's more of an understanding about that, the sort of coercion dynamics of reality TV now. I think that's slightly

starting to change with people realizing like, oh, like, hey, maybe these drunk people who have had no sleep, right, cannot consent to being filmed. Or what about these kids who are on these reality shows who have no choice but to film, right? Like, is that ethical? Is that coercive? And of course, then they cast people who really need the money. Oh yeah. So yeah, I think the dynamics do change. Even if there's not a cash prize, you might end up as a co-host on The View. You might have your own hosting gig on E! News and so there is always that promise perhaps of using that to make a career and make some wealth, especially if you're not

from a wealthy background. Right and that's one of like the major ways that reality TV has changed over time. More and more now we have people who already have influencer followings right and are going on these shows in order to increase their number of followers or get a hosting gig become the kind of a personality. And a lot of people wanted to know why. As much as we like to watch reality TV, it's a real small percentage of people that would be like, sign me up for it, right?

Because it could be so brutal. Psychologically, to see yourself portrayed or just you might get your heart broken or you might have to eat a deer penis depending on what the show is. I know, if you're like, the host who's barking at a woman to deep throat a bull penis sounds familiar. Yes. He's now America's chief cultural arbiter Joseph Rogan. And his previous job did involve gulping picnics. But on the less

juicy side of the mic, who does that is a great question asked by Angelica Stanley, Ali B, Hope J, Renee Wagner, Alia Myers, Rachel Nelson, who's almost cast on Dance Moms, but her mother was too emotionally stable. Cooper Michael and... Cox Ember, first time questioner asker, asked, I get why we love to watch it, but why do people want to be on it? That was Lee, first time questioner asker.

And Annabelle wants to know if there are studies of people who decide to be on a reality show. Like, what types of people get cast in it, and what are they looking for? A lot of people will say, well, you have to have a narcissistic personality to go on the shows. I don't know if that's necessarily true. Well, I think part of it is people wanting to increase their number of followers, right? The whole famous for being famous thing. But at the same time, I also think people don't necessarily know what they're getting into, which might seem naive, right? We should know what they're getting into, which might seem naive, right?

We should know what we're getting into at this point. Reality TV has been around a while. We kind of understand. I mean, having never been on a reality TV show, I don't really know, but I would imagine it's one of those things where you think you know what it's like and then you get in there and you realize it's so much worse than you thought that it was. Yeah. Okay, but who does gravitate?

Of course there are studies. Such is this 2016 paper from the journal Current Psychology titled, The Dark Triad Traits and Fame Interest. Do dark personalities desire stardom? Which explained that, although the fascination with fame is not a new phenomenon, the emergence of YouTube and reality television has led to the perception that fame is something that seemingly anyone can achieve. They write, researchers have examined the characteristics that are associated with the

desire for fame and have found that narcissism is one of the most consistent predictors of fame interest. But while psychopathy and narcissism were associated with fame interest, the third dark trait, Machiavellianism, was negatively associated with desiring fame. It continues that the perceived ease of achieving fame may be motivating large numbers of individuals, especially younger individuals, to strive for celebrity status.

And it also cites a 2012 study that found 40% of children between the ages of 10 and 12 reported that becoming famous is their biggest goal in life, with kindness toward others and achievement taking second and third place, respectively. But honestly, in this economy? I don't know. Another 2016 paper, Narcissism on the Jersey Shore, Exposure to Narcissistic Reality TV Char can increase narcissism levels in viewers. That one's pretty self-explanatory. And then a 2022 paper in Psychology of Popular Media titled, Linking Adolescents' Exposure to and Identification with Reality TV to Materialism, Narcissism, and Entitlement, reported that

though previous research found a link between adolescents reality TV viewing and their level of materialism Narcissism and entitlement those earlier studies did not stand the test of time because current adolescents had lower traits of narcissism and materialism because quote reality TV mainly portrays Negative consequences of entitled and narcissistic behavior, causing viewers to refrain from copying this behavior. So that's good news. You may not have to lose sleep over your child

growing up to hit someone with a purse or slamming an empty margarita glass onto a mansion patio. What would you do if your child was on a reality show? I don't know. Ask my mom. I just realized in talking to you that I've been on a reality show? I don't know. Ask my mom. I just realized in talking to you that I've been on a reality TV show. What was it?

Well, I mean, it's not really, but I mean, I had a Food Network show where I went around and ate stuff. Yeah. Why do you say that's not really? I never even thought of it that way. I mean, there is a discomfort for sure of having to perform emotions or having to have an emotion that's interesting enough to be camera-worthy.

So it's interesting for me to delve into it because I wouldn't have considered it reality TV but it was very much eating hamburgers and stuff on camera for entertainment. So weird. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to have to go down a whole spiral of being like, what did that serve in my life? eating hamburgers and stuff on camera for entertainment. So the weird. Exactly. I'm going to have to go down a whole spiral of being like, what did that serve in my life? I'm really surprised that you've mentioned sleep deprivation.

I had never considered that. But Anna Wolf, DVNC, and Kyla C want to know a little bit about the conditions where there are maybe not a lot of sleep breaks or not a lot of rest and stuff like that. Is that just partly filming schedule or is that something that it really does sort of take down your filters and guards? Oh, is it by design? I mean, I guess I can't really speak to the motivations of the people who create the shows, but it seems like it's both, right? Some of the things, they need to have bright lights on at all times, and that's not... That's constraints of filming,

but that's also something that's going to be a psychological torture device. They certainly cast for people with certain psychological profiles. Sometimes they'll say that's to weed out people who are not fit for the show, probably, but also, right, it's to, you know, put people together who are going to trigger other people because these shows are conflict driven. I can't speak to what's in the producer's mind or the show runner's minds, but it seems like that's bread and butter of reality TV, right, is this kind of like these psychological manipulative tricks. Not every show, but a lot of the shows. But Who Among Us hasn't been a little bitchy when we're hungry or after a red eye broke

down crying in an Uber, you know what I mean? If you had a camera on me when I've missed a flight in an airport and have cried in the bathroom. If you don't want to lose all your marbles on camera or in a stall that smells like diapers, you may find the acronym HALT helpful. It stands for hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. So again, HALT, hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

And if you're any or all of those things, I don't know, you're dancing too close to the edge, my friend, and I know I've fallen off it. Conditions affect our resilience so much, but Greg Wallach wanted to know how you feel that reality TV has influenced shifts in cultural attitudes like Project Runway or RuPaul's Drag Race, queer culture,

attitudes toward race, things like gender. Like, do you think that it's moved things forward to feeling like I have a friend who is queer or trans from watching TV even if people might not be exposed to them in their actual lives? Yeah, I really appreciate that question because oftentimes when people are talking about the impact of reality TV on our culture, it's negative impact, which I think is absolutely there, especially because reality TV traffics and stereotypes, right, so like, if the only black people

you come in contact with are people who are being stereotyped on reality TV, that's gonna be a negative impact. But at the same time, if you look at, you know, for instance, queer representation, and reality TV has not been perfect in terms of queer representation. There's stereotyping there too.

But I mean, even going back to the real world, people probably too young now to remember Pedro Zamora, who was this gay man on the real world San Francisco. You know, even as growing up, I never had anybody on TV that I said, oh, you know, he's a gay man like me, I could relate to. And he was living with AIDS, but not only was he a gay man living with AIDS, but he married his partner, Sean, on the show. They had a commitment ceremony on the show. And he, even though people are often portrayed in unidimensional ways on reality TV, he was

really portrayed as like a multidimensional person. He wasn't just like that gay guy. And he was really the first, you know, gay person or person living with AIDS that many people kind of got to know. And I would say that had a tremendous impact on the culture. And in terms of queer representation, reality TV has really been at the vanguard. You know, it was telling queer stories before scripted TV really started to catch up, trans stories.

But again, in terms of trans representation, there's absolutely some problematic representation in reality TV as well, but just sort of, you know, exposing people to people with queer identities who they might not have otherwise come into contact with. I think that has been a hugely positive impact on our culture. So that's some good news. But Marianne asked, do you feel that given today's climate toward women, that we should really be watching stuff like The Bachelor, where it's so degrading to women?

And talking about gender, Ruby Gordon and Olivia Rempel wanted to know, why do many men seem to like it less than many women? Olivia asked, why is reality TV typically seen as a feminine activity? I know this isn't always the case, and a lot of masculine people enjoy it but a lot of what I've experienced they say is an aversion to these shows from the male presenting people around me. Is that partly because you know tent-pole shows like Kardashian's Real Housewives are focused on more without taking into

account how many shows are reality? No, I mean, it tends to be a pretty female-driven genre. It's more often women on the shows. Women are more likely to tune in than men. I do think there's some effect of men feeling like they are gonna be more stigmatized for admitting that they watch the shows. I hear a lot of stories from people who'd be like, oh, my boyfriend or my husband says he doesn't watch,

but then he's in the background commenting like, didn't Madison get eliminated last week? So I think, yes, it's definitely a more female driven genre. And I also think that plays into maybe why it's more stigmatized, because genres related to women and femininity tend to be more stigmatized or kind of looked down on. There was Duck Dynasty, right, Big Two, There are some kind of more masculine driven shows, but yeah, for the most part, it's a pretty feminine genre. Yeah, it is interesting though, like Ice Road Truckers,

Pawn Stars, things like that. That blue collar hero, stuff that they might not think of as reality TV just because people aren't wearing makeup in it. Right, yeah, good point. People are asking a little bit about the history and the evolution. Esther Heydok wants to know, how has the genre evolved? And Julia L. and Anajali Himali also wanted to know that.

Anajali asked, do you see a change in attitudes or awareness of stereotypes in newer TV shows? Since you've been watching, you know, for 25 years, how have you seen that evolution of different genres? Yes, how has it evolved over time? Well, it's certainly become more conflict driven. It's really interesting because if you watch the original real world, I remember at the time thinking

that was very conflict driven. Looking back, it's like just Kevin sitting there being, yeah, I'm a little angry. It's not. But I think oftentimes, yeah, I'm a little angry. Right? Like it's not. But I think oftentimes people, and this is just in general, like sociologically, people tend to think, want to feel like we're moving towards something or away from something. So I often get asked the question, like, why are these shows more and more outrageous? I don't necessarily think they're more and more outrageous.

I think, you know, there were outrageous shows in the year 2000, right? With the world deadliest beast worms, number five, right, there were like five iterations of that show or The Swan. There were like these crazy shows that probably wouldn't happen now. Just a side note, if you didn't watch The Swan or you blacked it out due to secondhand trauma, I got you. It premiered around the turn of the century in 2004. And every episode followed two women who identified as ugly ducklings. And they get sequestered in a nice McMansion and over three months are treated to therapy sessions, personal trainers, dental care, and things like extreme plastic surgery to

correct their natural plainness. Wow. You say it can't get much more degrading than that, but hold on, they also have to compete in a beauty contest among all the other contestants, and only one is crowned the swan. Because it's just, it's not enough to be at war with your own body.

You also have to go into battle against other people with the same vulnerabilities. It only survived two seasons, but it lives on in our hearts like a tapeworm. I don't think it's getting more outrageous. I think it's getting more conflict driven from the early days, for sure. And then there is that connection to social media that we talked about that is really like part and parcel of reality TV now, right? Like people are going on to increase their followings or they're going on to have followings.

The two of them are really tied together now. I do think in recent years, there has been a more of awareness of stereotypings like post George Floyd, post Me Too, moving forward from there. I mean, at least they're like giving lip service to the fact that there are stereotypes involving gender and race on these shows. It'll be interesting to see if that's just like a blip or whether we move forward from there. But there are some shows that I would say

probably would not air today from, you know, like the early 2000s that just are overtly offensive on the face of them. But then again, I don't know, like the early 2000s that just are overtly offensive on the face of them. But then again, I don't know, like a show like Cops, you know, in the wake of George Floyd got canceled. But now it's back. Yeah. Really? Yeah. But now it's back. So bad boys. Bad boys. What are you going to do? Yes. After the BLM movement and Me Too, there was a brief era of so-called cancel culture, say the people who were held accountable for their misdeeds.

But it's 2025, baby, and we have seen things that have been canceled bounce right back up like a horror movie villain 10 seconds before the final credits. So yeah, Cops is back. It was canceled for four months and resumed shooting in October of 2020. Aired on Fox, it remains one of the longest running shows in America. The more things change, the more they stay the same. You know, you mentioned transformations.

Hannah, Marie, Ali B, and Hailey Kirby asked about that. Hannah asked, why was Bridal Plasty the best reality TV show ever made and why was it only one season? Ali B asked about The Swan and The Biggest Loser. asked, why was Bridal Plasty the best reality TV show ever made and why was it only one season? Ali B asked about The Swan and The Biggest Loser. Were they popular because Americans love to critique hypocritically or do we hate ourselves so much that we want to see people suffer to change themselves? Have you seen anything in the body positivity movement change in reaction to shows like that or have you seen how those types of shows have declined? When I say certain shows probably would not air today,

you know, I think a show like Bridal Plasty or a show like The Swan, I don't see a show like that airing today. Some of the more like racially stereotypical shows I don't see airing today. There are some body positive shows like My Big Fat Fabulous Life. Yeah. I mean, The Biggest Loser. Yeah, there's super, there was a study done. This

is kind of a divergence, but there's a study done on The Biggest Loser. And it was an experimental study and it had people watch one episode of The Biggest Loser versus people in a control group who watched like a nature show, one episode. And then coming out of that, the people in The Biggest Los loser group had more of a dislike of fat people than the people who watched just one episode of a nature show versus that show. So my understanding is that there is kind of more of an awareness of that type of show. Reality TV is always kind of a chameleon and changing and rising like a phoenix.

So you know, I don't know what's around the corner. We might revert to bridalplasty next week. I mean, there are elements of bridalplasty on TikTok and on Instagram, you know, if you look up a moisturizing cream, the next thing you know, they're like, would you like to get a full face lift at 35? And you're like, what, what, no.

So, you know, those things I think are, they find their niche differently. But, you know, those things I think are, they find their niche differently. But you know, you mentioned race too. Mark J. Lerman wanted to know, how are reality TV dating shows racialized? How does race operate in terms of the presentation, as by their daughter Jackie? Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, it definitely depends on the show. It tends to be like this, what we call like homophilist experience, where people are searching for people who are kind of like them quote unquote demographically, not only in terms of race,

but also in terms of social class and relative age and where they grew up and religion and political values. It's interesting because a show like Love is Blind kind of tries to take that away. Although at the same time, how much does it really take away? Because when you hear someone talking, right, you're already getting clues about their demographic identity. But I, a show like Love is Blind is fascinating to me from this perspective because the overt point of the show is that it's trying to take away these demographic constraints

that we have. But at the same time, it's showing us that these constraints exist and that we can't actually take them away because once the people come out of the bunkers, right? Like there's still these barriers that exist that we've put into place in our society. So something like that's really fascinating. And then of course notoriously, right? Like the Bachelor, Bachelorette franchise has been so white for so long. Not anymore, right?

Like finally there are protagonists of color on these shows, but it took a really long time. For a really long time, the people of color who were on these shows were not presented as serious contenders. There are a few exceptions. Oftentimes, they fell into that trap of representation where they were just there to lend an ear to the white people on the shows who were, you know, talking about their experiences. So yeah, I guess that speaks to your other question about are things changing? I mean, yeah, okay, we've had black bachelors and we've had black bachelorettes now. And so

we do see like a little bit of incremental change in that respect. Just heads up, I cannot recommend the reality podcast, Two Black Girls, One Rose, more highly. Justine and Natasha have the hottest takes on things like Love is Blind and The Bachelor. They're looking at modern love and relationships through popular TV. He's going six foot five. He's going six foot five. Doors open and her face. Her face.

That's when she knew she got the ill set up. You know the record scratch? Her face. Her face. Her face. That's when she knew she got the ill set up. You know the record scratch? So they are in effect reality TV sociologists, but also hilarious. Two black girls, one rose. Love those ladies. We have a really interesting episode about vocal fry, accents, code switching, and African-American vernacular English in the phonology episode with a brilliant Dr. Nicole Holliday, which

we'll link in the show notes. Also, Rachel Lindsay, who's an attorney, was the bachelorette in 2017, and the first black lead in this long-running bachelor franchise, and in a really rare move, did end up married with her pick on the series. For five years, which is pretty good.

They separated in late 2023, but she launched a career as a TV personality and a correspondent from it, which honestly on that show, that's kind of the bigger goal for a lot of contestants. Are there any shows that you feel like have really moved the needle more? Like are there any shows that you're excited about

giving voice to people who maybe haven't had them in the past? Anything like that that you're excited about giving voice to people who maybe haven't had them in the past? Anything like that that you feel is very hopeful that might have super positive impacts? Yeah. I mean, I think about that more in terms of queer representation. There's a sexually fluid season of Are You the One on MTV, and that got a lot of press. I think that I was pretty excited about that, especially because there's a long history

of people who are bisexual or pansexual being extremely stigmatized. Having a whole season of people who are like, I'm not fitting into one box one way or the other was fascinating for me. Also the fact that they were being presented like not in a negative way, just as people on a dating show. But that was kind of a turning point that was I found really exciting. We had someone ask about that. Matt Thompson wanted to know how have shows negatively affected different minority groups like bisexuals with Tila Tequila's dating show and LDS with Secret

Lives of Mormon Wives. But you. But you mentioned that there are some other options that are actually kind of illuminating positives of different queer groups. When it comes to religious voyeurism, I don't feel as bad with religious voyeurism because I'm like, you're proselytizing all the time anyway, so let's look at how fucked up this is. Yeah. Which, I mean, I came from a Catholic background, so. Me too. Where's the Catholic reality show?

Seriously. I confess all your sins to this old guy, yeah. Literally, we were the first confessional booths. It's like, come on in. We're all confessionals, yeah. Right? What sins have you to confess? Lisa Kahn wanted to know,

why are American reality shows so awful and cruel? Great British baking show has proven that watching lovely people be kind and wonderful to each other is popular. B. Ingberti asked, I'm a fan of reality shows. However, if we watch shows that are from other countries such as Japan, I get to learn about cultural norms as an outsider. Are they very different across different countries? Like, for example, I turned on the TV at a hotel I was in in London, right as room service came up and they brought in a sandwich or whatever, right, as everyone's dogs were just in full 4K color. There's like a reality TV show in-

What show is this? It's like they show you fully naked on a reality show. In England? In England. And I was like, what? And I was mortified. And then I told someone that I met about that later and they were like, oh no, those are just like our normal reality shows.

But it was like full frontal nudity. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God. I think we can learn cultural norms from reality TV, but we also have to kind of be wary there, right? Like a bunch of penises out does not represent all of Britain. I mean, by the way, Naked Attraction was the name of it. Naked Attraction. Are they being judged based on the-

Oh yes. A clothed person is faced with six naked people who are initially hidden in booths. Their bodies and faces are gradually revealed through successive rounds from the feet up. And at each round, the chooser eliminates one naked person their bodies and faces are gradually revealed through successive rounds from the feet up. At each round, the chooser eliminates one naked person until only two are left. When the chooser also takes off their clothes to make the final choice.

Just because. Why wouldn't you? And then they pick a person and then they go for a fully clothed date. Oh, I like that they specified that the date was fully clothed. Okay. Fully clothed. And each episode I'd like that they specified that the date was fully clothed. Okay. Fully clothed. And each episode can take up to 12 hours to film. Okay. It must be so cold. I mean, what if you're like a grower, not a shower?

I mean, there's a lot of problems with this. Well, it's on max in case you want to see naked people seeing naked people. And let's just say the reactions were priceless. One viewer wrote, this is the craziest I ever watched on TV. I mean, we do have naked and afraid, but that's true. The privates are blurred out on that. Right. And last question about politics, Ali B and Sidoni S wanted to know, Ali asked, Can you correlate the rise of reality TV with world and political events of the early 2000s, 9 11, Bush administration, war on terror, war in Afghanistan, and really did this start because we cannot face actual reality, which we touched

on earlier. But Sidoni S. wanted to know how did the apprentice shape America's perspective of Donald Trump? Did reality TV make him our president because of that familiarity or what about political and historical influence? Well, it's nuanced because on one hand, people don't want to watch overtly political reality shows because again, it's supposed to be this kind of escapist realm apart from politics. But there's always been a tie between reality TV and politics, right? Like from Bill Clinton, like tooting his saxophone on a talk show or Richard Nixon on Laugh-In, that tie has always been there and been a part of it.

Did the Apprentice make Donald Trump our president? I mean, I think that's maybe too simplistic. It seems like it helped and it aided his rise. Oftentimes when people talk about the negative impact of reality TV, that's often what they're referring to. And so I don't have any like hard data on this, but I mean, there's some like anecdotal evidence. I know people who campaign for Hillary in the first election,

they would go door to door in Pennsylvania and people would say, you know, no, I'm voting for Trump. I saw how many on the apprentice. I liked him. Right. And it's interesting because we talk about reality TV being a female coded genre. And oftentimes women are represented very stereotypically, very materialistically in this genre. But when men are represented, especially white men, when they're straight right men on these shows, they're not represented in any kind of negative stereotypical way. I think it also plays into the way that Trump was represented on that show. Because if he had been represented as a kind of like a bozo, I don't think it would have had that same impact

as someone who's being represented as, I'm a businessman, I'm sitting behind a desk, I'm making important decisions, I'm always right, I'm wearing a suit. And so I think that gets into people's brains as, oh, this is a person that I want in charge. So this is a long answer, all to say, did reality TV make Trump our president?

I don't know if it's like a one-to-one correlation, but it certainly seemed to accelerate his rise. What are some reality TV shows that you wish existed? Is it really hard not to be driving around and being like, you know what they're doing? You know? Okay, so I wish it existed. I always say, so my mother-in-law

is in like a retirement community and oh my gosh, the stories. Because it's like high school, but it's people who DGAF anymore. I don't give a fuck. And so it's amazing because they will tell you exactly what they think and they will tell others exactly what they think and there's cliques and there's romances. And I think there have

been a couple of reality shows that's focused on senior living communities, but I think that's an untapped more. Plus seniors would watch those shows as well. And who we are again can change from our teenage era to our horny golden years. And it can also change Schrodinger style on whether or not we're being observed. We're all engaged in impression management. We're all performing. Anytime we're in a social situation, we're performing for others to some extent. It's so funny to think of how maligned reality TV is because of that when people don't realize that they're doing their own forms of code-switching don't realize that they're doing their own forms of code switching 10 times a day, you know?

Yeah. Whether they're talking to their dog or their partner or their boss or their in-laws or whatever. So who are we, I feel like is the bigger question that's really, really interesting. I mean, yeah, we're all social selves inextricably, right? We can. And it's interesting because reality TV, oftentimes the people on the show show are like This is my authentic self or be authentic be real right? But there is no real authentic self divorced from our social contacts right from the moment. We're born. We're being socialized

So it's impossible to kind of extract some Authentic self that's untouched by our socialization Unless we're raised by wolves, which almost never happens. I could have spent hours chatting with Danielle, like she was a new pal, but that is not why I'm doing this. Megan Ratcliffe, Ali B, Maya, and Kim Grainier had questions about that. In Kim's words, can we talk about the phrase,

I didn't come here to make friends? Also, Kim writes, if I were on a reality show, I would totally want to make friends with everyone. I'm not here to make friends about that everyone. I'm not here to make friends about that phrase. I'm not here to make friends. Do you feel like when people are on a reality show or they're making a reality show, we are there for the parasocial relationships and is there friendship? Are we becoming friends with people that we're seeing?

Oh, interesting. So the viewer, okay. So I thought you were going to ask about the nuances of the people on the shows who say, I'm not here to make friends. But the viewer, that's interesting, is kind of there to make friends in a way. Yeah, yeah. Studies have shown this, right? That's part of our attachment to reality TV is that, and also reality TV, as we've talked about with influencing, right, functions on multiple platforms simultaneously. So it's like, not just, I we've talked about influencing, right, functions on multiple platforms simultaneously.

So it's like, not just I'm going to watch Kim Kardashian on the show, but also I can like tweet at Kim Kardashian, follow her Insta, and maybe she'll even comment on my comment, right? And I'll actually have that back and forth with her and then I can buy her beauty products and her clothes and her skims and so I can enter and play her video games, right? And so I can interact with her on these multiple dimensions which is why these parasocial relationships are much more potent with reality TV personalities because we are interacting with them as themselves

versus, you know, I watch Sex and the City and I'm more of a Miranda than I am a Carrie. Who's a Carrie? I don't know, she's awful, right? But it's not like I'm feeling a, and so I can kind of feel a parasocial relationship with Miranda, but it's not like I can then like go off the show and interact with Miranda in various domains. Miranda?

What's the hardest thing about what you do in study? What's the biggest challenge? I mean, I love what I do in study. I do think there is that that stigmatization aspect where people academics but also non academics will just say why. You know I remember like one time I was in a bookstore and I was doing a reading for my book and this woman came up and she was like what's this about and I was like oh it's a book about reality TV and she goes ugh why and she walks away. And I think that really summarizes how a lot of people feel about what I study. So it's interesting, right? Because it

still you show that more people than not are watching reality TV, even if they don't think they're watching reality TV. And I often say I'm an evangelist for reality TV, not in the sense of I think everyone should watch it. I have no stake in that or whether they enjoy it. You can find it problematic. I find it problematic in many ways. But I think it's really important to study reality TV because I think people think of it as this kind of, a lot of people think of it as this kind of like sideshow, right? This kind of frivolous thing, you know, but as we've talked about talked about here, there are really huge consequences to our consumptions of these shows. And also these shows can really teach us about a lot of dynamics of our social lives. So whether people watch or enjoy the shows or like them,

I mean, I have no stake in that. But I do think it's really important to actually look at this thing that's a cultural juggernaut and that really has a vast potential to change the ways that we live our lives. What about the best part of your job? Is there anything that just really lights you up that you get butterflies about? Is there anything where you're like, oh, I love doing this? I mean, certainly teaching. I love teaching in general, but I just love when students make their own connections between these shows and the dynamics

of our social experiences in ways that I'm like, oh yeah, Flora Bamashore is doing that, or Four Weddings is totally showing us how weddings are stratified by class. And so the connections that the students make, especially when they're connections that I wouldn't have thought of, are super exciting to me. Just seeing the list of papers that your students were working on made me see reality TV in

so many more dimensions that it is a very fertile ground for exploration of, obviously, sociology that we just don't think of. We take it for granted because it is entertainment. But you know studying film in school is there to teach you about social relationships and the art of it. So it's it's no different than being a scholar in film. I think it's so fascinating. Thank you. I think people often think that you know if you're studying reality TV then that's kind of a tacit support of everything that goes on on reality TV when it's just, you know, I'm just looking at the sociological nuances of the genre. And yes, I am a fan, right? I position myself as a fan. I like a lot of these shows, but I also see a lot

of these shows as deeply problematic. So I think studying the genre is not endorsing everything that goes on within the genre. Yeah, this makes me want to look at everything that I watch with using more of my brain. Yes, amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for having me on. This was so fun. So ask real people real not smart questions because they would not dedicate their life

to it if they didn't care about the subject. So thank you so, so, so much to Dr. Danielle Lineman for that tweet that led to this conversation and for all the context on things happening right under our noses on our phones, usually. Now we have links to Danielle's work in the show notes, also a link to the Pedro Zamora scholarship and so many links to clips and researches

linked in the show notes. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky. Please give us a follow there. And on Instagram, I'm at Allie Ward on both. And we have shorter kid-friendly episodes called Smologies. Those are available in their own feed every week wherever you get podcasts. S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. Ologies merch is available at ologiesmerch.com.

You can join our Patreon for as little as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash ologies. A whole bouquet of roses goes out to the people who make this show every week. Erin Talbert, Admin Zoologies podcast, Facebook group, Adeline Malik makes our professional transcripts, Kelly Ardwyer does the website, Noel Dilworth is scheduling producer, Susan Hales, our managing director, Jake Chafee edits, and lead editor is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. And also thank you, Jared Sleeper of Mindjam Media for some finishing touches on this one. I guess you get the final rose because legally we are married. Nick Thorburn made theme music and now is the time when I whisper confess something and I will tell you that my reality TV vices usually involve building a weird cabin or

watching someone surviving in the woods without a cabin, or restoring old cars. This week, the reality program I most glow to is this couple, the lady is Jackie, and her partner, I don't even think they're married, goes by Shadow, okay? And they had a kid in 2022, but have been going through some infertility stuff, and a few of their kids were killed

and eaten on camera by ravens. But just today, two new offspring hatched. They are birds. They're bald eagles. Jackie and Shadow are bald eagles who live 14 stories at the top of a Jeffrey pine tree overlooking Big Bear Lake in Southern California, which isn't too far from where I live in LA. And for months and years, people have been hoping this pair of eagles will be on the

other side of their heartbreak. And now today, with 60,000 people watching the YouTube livestream of their nest, their fuzzy little eaglets made their debut. They have two, there's one egg that hasn't hatched yet. So all day and all night you can watch them sit on the babies, you can see them weathering gusts as their home kind of bends in the wind. They're rearranging sticks, sometimes while bickering, or they're tearing up

a duck into shreds to drip into their babies mouths. They're on the YouTube Friends of Big Bear Lake livestream. Jackie and Shadow, they're eagles. They are here to make friends. You are the friend. And bonus also, the livestream kind of doubles as an ASMR channel. If you like the sounds of sticks and bird song and gentle winds and tiny squawking, I do want to muddle my life after them and just sit and look at a view for most of the day. I do not want to sit on birds though. Okay, bye-bye. Cryptozoology, Litology, Nanotechnology, Meteorology, Fepidology, Nephology, Cereology,

Selenology. I still think about our night down by the beach when we decided we wanted to be together. Every word you said to me sank to the bottom of my heart. And we've walked through fire together, and it hasn't been easy. And I know I don't always make it easy, but I still believe in that same feeling.

I still believe in you and me. So will you accept this rose? No.