This article in Discover compares reality TV competitions to Milgram’s infamous experiments. I’m not entirely sure the author is serious – it’s fairly simplistic picture of “reality TV” – but it’s an interesting take.
There’s a light side of Reality TV?
(I figure 80% of the people who open this thread will want to say that, so I’m planting my flag.)
That’s an interesting article, but I don’t see “America’s Next Top Model” as a show that celebrates ruthlessness. Although there are some bitchy episodes, there is a remarkable amount of sweetness and sharing among the girls on this show. Some of them weep tears which appear to be real when their friends are eliminated from the competition.
Chalk me up as one.
It’s an interesting idea, but I think the same principles could apply to most of show business rather than just reality TV.
All of show business, or all of what viewers actually get to see? Show business is, from all reports, a horrible business that chews people up and spits them out, but we don’t get to watch it every evening after supper. We see almost nothing of the machinations that go on behind the scenes in normal tv. The end product that we get to see might be vapid and bordering on a complete waste of time, but it isn’t usually venal and brutal, and there’s always the buffer that we know the things that are happening are only make-believe.
I tend to agree with the article. Not to be a reality tv snob, but I found reality tv horrible from the very beginning, and never really had a reason why - it just made me uncomfortable and I didn’t find it entertaining at all. I’ve never liked practical jokes, either, probably for the same reasons - I don’t think it’s funny at all to make people think bad things are happening to them.
What a load of crap. He realizes most “Reality TV” shows are just game shows that place over several weeks and not in a traditional studio right?
Apparently not.
Oh, and before all the reality TV-haters come swarming in:
I love reality TV and you can’t stop me! Because of people like me, it’ll be on forever!
Ha ha ha Ha! Ha! 
Actually I’ve been thinking for quite some time that reality TV does quasi experimental stuff with humans that any psychology researcher would be thrilled to have passed by an ethics review board. Whilst on the one hand, research has become stricter about what you can and can’t ethically do with humans (and animals for that matter) and yet reality TV has become more and more loose with what it does with humans.
Actually, I will disagree with this. Most Reality T.V. shows (or at least the ones I have been able to sit through for a while) aren’t like traditional game shows. In traditional game shows each person tries to be better (or luckier) at something than the other contestants. In reality T.V. shows (not all of them of course, but a large number) the goal is to screw over the other contestants in anyway possible.
I haven’t watched Americas Top Model (and never want to) but I did watch a bit of Survivor a couple times and couldn’t agree more with the statement:
I don’t know if the camera brings out the worst in these people or if they are just rotten people to begin with. I don’t care. All I know is that watching these people debase themselves and others for money isn’t my thing.
Hopefully the people, and the kids, watching these shows know that they are contrived and that screwing people over is not the way to be successful.
Slee
Actually, I think, when Big Brother ran for the first time (in the Netherlands, that is), they touted it as an “experiment in social psychology”. Same for Beauty and the Geek, where the host apparently has it in his contract to state in each episode that “this is NOT A GAME SHOW but a SOCIAL EXPERIMENT” (much parroted by the contestants).
In the latter, one finalist even convinced the other people in the game *not *to vote for him and his partner, as he felt she had not properly embraced the “spirit” of the “social experiment”. (Allegedly, that is, it might just have been a) set up by the powers that be, or b) a clever ruse to get more “sympathy airtime” - I trust those reality show people as far as I can throw them).
ANTM is the only reality show I watch regularly, and I have to agree that while there is plenty of bitchiness (although it falls pretty firmly into the level of bitchiness I’d expect from ANY dozen girls trapped together nearly 24/7), there’s not much *ruthlessness * (at least onscreen).
First of all, the nature of the competition doesn’t depend on it. You either have a good picture or you don’t. Secondly, on ANTM, as a rule (onscreen) bitchiness is not rewarded*. Anyone who watches knows that one girl each season will get “The Bitch Edit”. This girl will NOT be America’s Next Top Model**. (At least not unless she starts getting the “redemptive” edit halfway through the season (Eva***, anyone? 
)
*At least not with the title. Said bitch may of course be rewarded with, say, seventeen minutes of fame as opposed to fifteen.
**Although if she’s *amusingly * bitchy, they will keep her around for entertainment value. She may well make final three.
***Actually, now that I think about it, Yoanna was kind of a bitch. But she was a *stealth * bitch, and benefitted from the presence of Camille, who was a crazy-in-your-face-bitch.
about a year ago, there was a thread on here about the difference between a game show and a reality show. The conclusion that we finally reached was that to be a reality show, there has to be shots of a contestant talking to the camera about what they just experienced. Therefore, The Weakest Link qualified as reality, while Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader does not. And on a related note, what the HELL is with the announcer of 5th Grader announcing at the very beginning of the episode which contestants are going to get to the million dollar question? It takes away what little excitement that show has when you KNOW they’re going to get every question right!
“Beauty and the Geek” is the one reality show I watch - I thought it had higher aspirations than most reality tv, and I didn’t get the same out-and-out mean vibe from it. You’ve lied to me for the last time, TV! (not really)
You want a Dark reality show?
From the same reality-TV-hating friend who sent me the link in the OP, here’s Something Awful’s take on the genre: linky.