Reality TV wrote the first script
By the third season, reality TV contestants were not just being themselves. They were copying earlier seasons. The person and the performance slowly came apart.
Reality television built the first shared script for this.
Reality television built the first shared script for this. Big Brother, Survivor, and the dating shows that followed.
By the third or fourth season, the contestants were not simply being themselves on camera. They were copying the seasons before them.
They knew how a villain gets edited, because they had watched it happen. They knew what a staged romance looked like. They knew which on-camera confessions aged well, and which became mocking clips later.
So the usual worry misses the point. We worry that a camera makes people fake. But there is no pure, private self being bent in the moment. The contestant is reading an old script while performing, and the audience is reading it too.
It pushes the self aside by its own format, so the person and the.
Reality television built the first shared script for this.
Big Brother, Survivor, and the dating shows that followed.
By the third or fourth season, the contestants were not simply being themselves on camera.
This leads to something quiet and strange. The person and the performance slowly come apart. They were never quite the same. The longer the show runs, the more everyone accepts the gap, contestants and viewers alike.
The old fear was that being watched would damage the real self. The real change is simpler. The self is not damaged. It is pushed aside by its own format.
Big Brother, Survivor, and the dating shows that followed.
It pushes the self aside by its own format, so the person and the performance slowly separate.
By the third season, reality TV contestants were not just being themselves. They were copying earlier seasons. The person and the performance slowly came apart.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “Palimpsest self, parasocial media”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
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