Argumentative Essay: The Appeal Of Reality Shows

Being famous used to be something that came along with having a set of unique skills and getting noticed. Actors like Humphrey Bogart and Jack Nicholson didn’t rise to fame because they had catchy phrases like ‘It’s T-Shirt Time’ and ‘Gym. Tan. Laundry’. In the zeitgeist of today’s television you don’t need to possess even a sliver of acting talent, as long as you can appeal to the audience, documentary reality shows like The Jersey Shore, wife swap, and Made will gladly take you. Ever since my young days watching early reality shows on MTV like Made and The Real World I’ve always been skeptical of the content reality shows display, so when Steven Johnson stated in his article that even ‘Bad TV’ like is beneficial to watchers due to the …show more content…
The answer lies in the fact that the shows are tailored to increase viewership, producers somehow found a way to make the shows empowering to viewers ego’s because they can watch the shows and think to themselves how they are better than the people on the shows. If I had to break down the appeal of these shows to our generation of people, let’s say Penn State students however this could be considered all college students, into five different reasons why people watch reality TV the list would go as following. The first and biggest appeal is emotional empowerment, which is basically the idea that people want to look down on lesser beings than them. However cruel that may seem, that is what shows like these do for us, they provide an outlet for viewers to feel good about themselves due to the fact that when they are feeling down people can flip on the television say to themselves things like ‘well at least I’m not doing that bad’. The second reason people watch reality television is that deep down we secretly admire the cast. Most people that feel this way have most likely acted like the cast of