Reality dating shows are problematic in the best way

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Reality TV is the most exploitative and ridiculously embarrassing form of entertainment. It is also one of the best forms of passing the time. 

Now I’m not talking about the rather wholesome shows, like The Great British Bake Off or The Amazing Race, which usually makes you have the desire to apply and go on these shows even if you have no talent to bake whatsoever.

What I am talking about are the best types of reality TV, the shows where love is the only thing on contestants’ minds, (or rather a more physical type of “love” if you know what I mean) filled with petty gossip and the most cringe dates. I’m talking about The Bachelor, Too Hot to Handle, Love Island, and Love is Blind — quality television at its best. 

It takes a particular type of person to agree to go on shows where they tell millions of viewers about their sex life. 

And it takes another type of person to not enjoy these shows. Every tear, every villainous confession of a stolen lover, and every exit interview they do while being evicted from some kind of paradise is worth the watch.

Is it the fact that these poor women and men voluntarily reduce themselves to humiliating stereotypes? Or that Too Hot to Handle labels every contestant as a lovable horn dog, barely capable of understanding that the point of the show is to stop them from having sex?

Yeah. 

There is something about shows like this that elicits pure joy, like two women starting drama over a man who won’t even end up with them in the end, or the idea of two men sizing each other up for the sake of looking super “manly” in front of the camera. 

So, if you are like me and find yourself recording The Bachelor every Monday night while bingeing Love is Blind and Too Hot to Handle on Netflix, I have one thing to say: you are a hero, and you have excellent taste in trash TV.

Forget the sob stories and bonding moments between two women who have only known each other for a week but have somehow become best friends. Cue the eye roll. 

Instead, focus on how much you can learn from watching horn dogs fight for attention.  

It truly is the world’s best source of advice on what not to do, ever. Don’t make the decisions the idiots on the screen make, and your life will be better than you ever expected to be. 

Not only that, but you’ve just spent the last two hours doing something really valuable: studying the effects of a scripted production trying to show “real people” while finding out the best way to truly, completely waste your time.