Why Not?

 Why not watch someone get drunk and make questionable choices? Why not “Redneckognize”? Millions of viewers could not resist doing otherwise. The popularity of reality television has increased dramatically in the last decade. I am happy to say it has been several years since I have watched a reality television show. Most of the time, I would watch these shows simply because I was bored or for the entertainment factor. Shows like Dancing with the Stars and Keeping up with the Kardashians would attempt to bring in viewers by ending each episode with a “cliffhanger” which meant leaving the viewers in suspense at the end of the show so you would return the following week to see what happens next. Most of the time the producers were successful in doing this, thus the popularity. While watching these shows you would start to develop a relationship or bond with the characters and would even start to pick sides with the person whom you liked most. Well that’s what my friends and I did at least. The reason I stopped watching was when I found out most of these shows are semi-scripted and the situations were usually over-dramatized. This was a little upsetting especially to find out these “celebrities” were actually getting rich for not having any sort of acting talent or skill in general. Shows like Jersey shore for example were definitely not benefiting society. This show depicted several young adults living life in Jersey Shore. There vacations consisted of partying, having sex, fighting, and drinking until they would throw up. Not to mention the almost constant use of profanity. I knew a lot of teenagers watched this show at the time because I would hear about it at school constantly. Some viewers started to think it was okay to act like this and even thought this type of lifestyle was appealing. Kids, as we know are very impressionable and knowing your kids could be watching this is almost scary. Perhaps watching a network like the History channel or Discovery channel might be beneficial. But in reality kids aren’t interested in shows like that. I’m sure there are some educational reality television shows on nowadays but the majority of them are not. Personally, I prefer documentaries and dramas. Documentaries interest me since they are based on real people in the real world with true stories. I wouldn’t say I try to avoid reality television nor do I have anything against people who watch it. It is just something I grew out of and lost interest in. Maybe in the future my opinion could change.