Single In Silicon Valley: What’s Your Reality?

While it’s pretty common knowledge that there is a scripted aspect to reality television, it doesn’t keep us from being engrossed nonetheless. Reality TV has found itself in so many areas of life, from the obscure to the surreal, there seems to be something for everyone. I miss the days of “real” reality.

Remember the very first Real World on MTV? The singles picked to live in the loft pretty much only got the loft given to them. They had to hold down jobs and pay bills. Heather B. rapped her way, Kevin Powell was a struggling author and Andre strummed his guitar. Season 3 (in San Francisco) gave us Pedro’s fight with HIV and Puck just being disgusting. Yet, it was actually real.

Now, we have everything from unreal housewives to basketball “jumpoffs” to hillbilly’s fishing with their hands. I conducted an unscientific experiment that involved a handful of friends. Most are single girlfriends, but I threw in a couple of married ones as well.

After taking a somber look of my DVR list filled with reality shows, I wanted to see what was in my friends set recordings. I was actually surprised by a few of the findings.

The married friends regularly recorded dating shows (The Bachelor, Cheaters (?!) and the like) as well as home and personal makeover programs. The single friends didn’t have the dating shows recorded but instead seemed to hone in on true crime and forensic type shows.

Common among both were the not-so-typical programs, like Hillbilly Handfishing and Lizard Lick Towing. Also common were cooking competitions, like Chopped, Top Chef and Cupcake Wars.

What did I learn from this grand experiment? There is a guilty pleasure out there for everyone (Toddlers and Tiaras, Mob Wives) and that today’s reality television is the most inexpensive form of escapism there is. My reality escapism is filled with shows like Storage Wars, Mob Wives and The First 48. What about you?