Lurkers are such losers

[The Shika]

Describe "reality" then.

Reality is what's outside and what's real. Get out and experience more, that's reality.

People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct or true. That's how they define "reality." But what does it mean to be "correct" or "true?" Merely vague concepts...Their "reality" may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs?

Knowledge and awareness are vague, and perhaps better called illusions. Everyone lives by their own subjective interpretation...

[FistFuk]

I don't consider Nabokov to be an authority on anything, other than Butterflies, which he so mercilessly hunted down for his own perverted gratification.

The reality in American Idol and the X Factor is the audience, the performers, the judges, and the unseen technicians: they are not made up, they are real. The confusion is with reality as a raw product, and reality edited for popular consumption: the films we see, the books we read, the newspapers and magazines, the txt messages, these posts, are all edited -we do it consciously as part of the joy of writing, just as we edit out from texts those parts we don't want to say; just as news programmes do not show you the raw footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing; and just as Lurkers edit the truth of who they are and what they look like. Editing is the pause button, the scissors and paste tool, the interpellation of desire and restraint -or excess, the signature of anxiety. It is what enables us to craft what it is that we want to say. Humankind cannot bear much reality, which is why we edit and txt...and lurk...

You seem like an intelligent guy, but that seems like a bunch of bullshit to me. If you're trying to hoist the concept of "editing" as some philosophical construct to justify assholes who lurk/post anonymously, I don't buy it.

It's not even a correct use of "edit". An internet forum presumably doesn't contain your picture to begin with. By not posting it, you've established a level of anonymity but you haven't altered, changed, or rearranged anything. That argument is like saying:

"I just edited 'The Grapes Of Wrath' by not changing anything. I was fine with how it was!"

Hopefully this isn't going to turn into a "A flute with no holes is not a flute. . ." type deal, I'm not a big fan of existentialism.

[Debra]

I work for a large advertising agency. I am a "Concept Design Artist". Bring me your product and tell me all about it, and I come up with a concept that delivers the message to the public. This could be in audio, video, magazines, billboards, sides of busses, roofs of taxis.....you name it. Chances are very good that all of you have seen my work in one form or another.

With that in mind, I must travel to where ever the client is located in any part of the country to begin the process. I have done many layouts for TV and TV Networks. Reality shows are fake from beginning to end. I am talking about game shows, adventure shows like Survivor, Great Race, and the pathetic shows about washed up has-been starts that need money like Hulk Hogan, Gene Simmons..... entertainment shows like American Idol and X-Factor......you get the picture.

None of them are real. The star that is picked on X-Factor this week, or the idiot that gets voted off the island, are all decided up to a year in advance. They are all acting out according to a script that was written before the season began. These actors are all sworn to secrecy by their contract. If any of them talk publicly and show copies of their contracts, they will be in breach of contract to which the penalty is $10Million and 2 years in prison without parole. This is not a law, but is in their contract that they read and signed. Would you violate a contract like that?

Reality shows look like real life which is attractive to the average viewer. So they bring fair ratings for the network. They are also very cheap to produce in a single studio or on location. So the networks get a hit show with high ratings, and it cost them little to make. No big starts to pay millions to. No big production movie studio to caost millions more. Writers are usually collage students earning extra cash for tuition.....Reality TV is as real as WWF wrestling. They are designed to fill fantasies of the general public. Nothing more, nothing less. They are fake. All of them. Including all game shows. Simon Cowel is making a fortune on this crap. And network CEO's are lighting their cigars with thousand dollar bills. What a racket.

[canihavu]

I have never ever liked reality shows. TV sucks big time today.

[runningdownthatdream]

I work for a large advertising agency. I am a "Concept Design Artist". Bring me your product and tell me all about it, and I come up with a concept that delivers the message to the public. This could be in audio, video, magazines, billboards, sides of busses, roofs of taxis.....you name it. Chances are very good that all of you have seen my work in one form or another.

With that in mind, I must travel to where ever the client is located in any part of the country to begin the process. I have done many layouts for TV and TV Networks. Reality shows are fake from beginning to end. I am talking about game shows, adventure shows like Survivor, Great Race, and the pathetic shows about washed up has-been starts that need money like Hulk Hogan, Gene Simmons..... entertainment shows like American Idol and X-Factor......you get the picture.

None of them are real. The star that is picked on X-Factor this week, or the idiot that gets voted off the island, are all decided up to a year in advance. They are all acting out according to a script that was written before the season began. These actors are all sworn to secrecy by their contract. If any of them talk publicly and show copies of their contracts, they will be in breach of contract to which the penalty is $10Million and 2 years in prison without parole. This is not a law, but is in their contract that they read and signed. Would you violate a contract like that?

Reality shows look like real life which is attractive to the average viewer. So they bring fair ratings for the network. They are also very cheap to produce in a single studio or on location. So the networks get a hit show with high ratings, and it cost them little to make. No big starts to pay millions to. No big production movie studio to caost millions more. Writers are usually collage students earning extra cash for tuition.....Reality TV is as real as WWF wrestling. They are designed to fill fantasies of the general public. Nothing more, nothing less. They are fake. All of them. Including all game shows. Simon Cowel is making a fortune on this crap. And network CEO's are lighting their cigars with thousand dollar bills. What a racket.

The sad thing is how popular these shows are. At some level people seem to actually believe what they are seeing is spontaneous and unscripted.

[Debra]

The sad thing is how popular these shows are. At some level people seem to actually believe what they are seeing is spontaneous and unscripted.

They are so easy to dupe. And there are millions of them every day. The worst part is, most of them are voters. That should explain A LOT!

[AmericanDream]

I work for a large advertising agency. I am a "Concept Design Artist". Bring me your product and tell me all about it, and I come up with a concept that delivers the message to the public. This could be in audio, video, magazines, billboards, sides of busses, roofs of taxis.....you name it. Chances are very good that all of you have seen my work in one form or another.

With that in mind, I must travel to where ever the client is located in any part of the country to begin the process. I have done many layouts for TV and TV Networks. Reality shows are fake from beginning to end. I am talking about game shows, adventure shows like Survivor, Great Race, and the pathetic shows about washed up has-been starts that need money like Hulk Hogan, Gene Simmons..... entertainment shows like American Idol and X-Factor......you get the picture.

Some of these reality shows are so badly faked it's terrible watching. It is very similar to watching WWF wrestling. WWF wrestling does have some high-risk and dangerous moves at least though.

I don't think that too many TV prank shows are scripted though. Some of the shows pull pranks on actual people.

I can't stand a lot of reality TV anyway. It's shocking to me that anyone could think that it isn't scripted. I like to watch the real videos like "Most Shocking Videos" and other things that are not so made up. They have a reality show for everything though.

You said that game shows are set up though... A lot of the new game shows look like complete bullshit to me and that's why I don't bother. The older game shows I think were real though. Somewhere along the way they must have switched to being fake crap.

[Debra]

Some of these reality shows are so badly faked it's terrible watching. It is very similar to watching WWF wrestling. WWF wrestling does have some high-risk and dangerous moves at least though.

I don't think that too many TV prank shows are scripted though. Some of the shows pull pranks on actual people.

I can't stand a lot of reality TV anyway. It's shocking to me that anyone could think that it isn't scripted. I like to watch the real videos like "Most Shocking Videos" and other things that are not so made up. They have a reality show for everything though.

You said that game shows are set up though... A lot of the new game shows look like complete bullshit to me and that's why I don't bother. The older game shows I think were real though. Somewhere along the way they must have switched to being fake crap.

Not all, but most of the older game shows were fake. It was scripted by the sponsers to get viewers to watch their ads. Today's game shows are ALL fake for the same reason.

I hate to disappoint you, but the prank shows are the most fake of these shows. They must get signed permission to do those terrible things to people to avoid law suits. For example...you can't just walk up to somebody and pour juice or liquids all over them. Supposing they are allergic to it and have a bad reaction? But if they know what will be poured onto them ahead of time, they can know if it would hurt them.

Remember this. All TV is a business first, and entertainment second. Every thing you see on your TV is because someone knew they could make money from it. They were not thinking about how happy you will be to watch it.

[Stavros]

You seem like an intelligent guy, but that seems like a bunch of bullshit to me. If you're trying to hoist the concept of "editing" as some philosophical construct to justify assholes who lurk/post anonymously, I don't buy it.

It's not even a correct use of "edit". An internet forum presumably doesn't contain your picture to begin with. By not posting it, you've established a level of anonymity but you haven't altered, changed, or rearranged anything. That argument is like saying:

"I just edited 'The Grapes Of Wrath' by not changing anything. I was fine with how it was!"

Hopefully this isn't going to turn into a "A flute with no holes is not a flute. . ." type deal, I'm not a big fan of existentialism.

I had been reading Derrida after a lapse of some years, so in a sense it is a fair point, as far as the philosophy goes -but having said that do we receive information as neutral data, or do we neutralise it when we don't like it? I had the choice when filling in my personal details to add an avatar -I decided not to, same with the details that preserve my anonymity -I therefore edited the field of information. Roland Barthes comment on Proust sugests that we edit texts as we read, which is why we never read the same text twice, every act of reading is an original act. I don't think its that important re lurkers on HA so that's true.

What is interesting, possibly important is how it works in tv shows where people spend their own money phoning in a vote. In The X Factor [UK] this phoning doesn't happen in the pre-recorded stuff, but it was clear this year that the 'producers/editors' made a mistake by including too much material that made a mockery of people who want to be on TV but can't sing, it becomes either an embarrassment or a form of public cruelty -but as Debra has suggested, there are hours of filmed material and someone made a choice based on some concept of 'production values', 'what the public wants' or more likely, what the programme makers want you to see. I would not normally comment on this stuff as I don't watch it, but if people are being asked to phone it, at cost, for something that has been fixed in advance -and the finalists at least, are selected before the live programmes take place- then it is borderline criminality. There was a scandal with the BBC or ITV as a result of which one programme either ended or stopped taking calls, can't remember which one.

[loveboof]

There was a scandal with the BBC or ITV as a result of which one programme either ended or stopped taking calls, can't remember which one.

It was a tacky ITV gameshow. I doubt the BBC would do something like that.

I'd just like to point out that there is a difference between a show being formulaic and scripted.

Shows like X Factor (in the UK at least) follow a very strict formula, but they are not scripted. In fact it would be counter-intuitive for those talent shows to defy audience votes because the whole point of them is to rapidly market and publicise new acts based on what the public want to spend their money on.

This does not mean they won't plant certain people in the audition process - it has often come to pass that a few favourites have had prior industry connections to Simon Cowell, or that they will not create controversy with their opinions and who they save etc... (ie the formula for the show).

X Factor has been successful for a long time in Britain before you guys got it, and they have that formula down to a T.