Unreality TV
4th June 2013
All television has become a parody of reality. For example, how many young women believe The Bachelor plausibly depicts 21st-century courtship rituals? Alas, very many. Once a friend and I watched an installment (my singular viewing) and endeavored to figure the annual income needed to furnish such a lifestyle. Our conclusion was that a man would need approximately $5 million after taxes to live as lavishly as the series presents. That isn’t an entirely implausible until one recalls that half the globe lives on less than $2 per day.
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Elusive to me is the one black, one Asian, one white, and one “other” band of brothers stopping in for McNuggets. Yet to judge by television I am the only person in America whose friends are predominantly one color or another. Hopefully that doesn’t make me racist, but it evidently makes me unique.