After four seasons of Sunday dinners, shots and sexcapades—in different continents and with a revolving seventh housemate—I still watch Jersey Shore. Not because I want to be them in any way (seriously, I’ve stopped wearing so much bronzer as of late), but because it’s a phenemon that took pop culture by storm. Fist pumping is now a permanent dance move, Ed Hardy shirts are officially unwearable; the letters GTL aren’t randomized from the alphabet and gorillas aren’t just jungle animals anymore. The extreme side of Seasode is piece of millennia Americana and it will be imitated forever, like Saturday Night Fever, The Breakfast Club and 90210. Our kids will ask us what it was like to watch the original episodes air on MTV…I mean, they’re already dressing up like them for Halloween! I don’t think the show would’ve lifted off as quickly and as loudly if it weren’t for abdominal display case and marketing genius, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. His decision to name his six-pack made him unforgettable and the show even easier to mock, and also lead housemates to coin terms for hook ups, friends-of-hook-ups-who-aren’t-hot, dance moves and whatever else they could get their unique lingo on. He was Pauly D’s main man, Sam’s controversial confidant and king of the Jersey Shore smush room. …but that was a long time ago. Since the first season, every girl has lost weight and every guy has upped the scoreboard. Snooki wrote a book, Pauly D released some tracks, JWoww had a fashion line for a while and Deena finally got on the show. And it’s sad that the show’s first frontman is now the last person in the room who everyone leaves and the second person they’re serious about actually evicting. All season, he’s seemed more lonely and depressed than ever before: clashing with everyone in the house, picking fights with anyone outside the house and not having anywhere to go in between. Reality television may not be “real” but the people still are. They are their own characters and screenwriters and acting coaches and directors; they bring their work home with them because they are that piece of work. It may not take as much skill or talent as actual acting, but I feel like the emotional investment is pretty sizable, growing exponentially with the rate of your fame. Since the genre is still relatively new in the history of television, the effects are only starting to reveal themselves: Newlyweds filmed a broken marriage, Teen Mom lead to a serious suicide scare. It’s just sad to watch a person decay, right before your eyes. And yet, its millions of viewers can’t look away. Though last night’s episode was slipped with understated drama that seems bound to blow up, I also gotta remember that it’s an old cliffhanger trick of clever editing. Oh, and that it isn’t taped in real time since Season 5 is already wrapped. And if my roommates and I were paid $100,000 per episode to play around in Italy, I’d stir up some juice too. Once I rewrap my head around the unrealities of reality television, I realize The Situation’s gonna be justtttttt fine.
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After four seasons of Sunday dinners, shots and sexcapades—in different continents and with a revolving seventh housemate—I still watch Jersey Shore. Not because I want to be them in any way (seriously, I’ve stopped wearing so much bronzer as of late), but because it’s a phenemon that took pop culture by storm. Fist pumping is now a permanent dance move, Ed Hardy shirts are officially unwearable; the letters GTL aren’t randomized from the alphabet and gorillas aren’t just jungle animals anymore. The extreme side of Seasode is piece of millennia Americana and it will be imitated forever, like Saturday Night Fever, The Breakfast Club and 90210. Our kids will ask us what it was like to watch the original episodes air on MTV…I mean, they’re already dressing up like them for Halloween!

I don’t think the show would’ve lifted off as quickly and as loudly if it weren’t for abdominal display case and marketing genius, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. His decision to name his six-pack made him unforgettable and the show even easier to mock, and also lead housemates to coin terms for hook ups, friends-of-hook-ups-who-aren’t-hot, dance moves and whatever else they could get their unique lingo on. He was Pauly D’s main man, Sam’s controversial confidant and king of the Jersey Shore smush room.

…but that was a long time ago. Since the first season, every girl has lost weight and every guy has upped the scoreboard. Snooki wrote a book, Pauly D released some tracks, JWoww had a fashion line for a while and Deena finally got on the show. And it’s sad that the show’s first frontman is now the last person in the room who everyone leaves and the second person they’re serious about actually evicting. All season, he’s seemed more lonely and depressed than ever before: clashing with everyone in the house, picking fights with anyone outside the house and not having anywhere to go in between.

Reality television may not be “real” but the people still are. They are their own characters and screenwriters and acting coaches and directors; they bring their work home with them because they are that piece of work. It may not take as much skill or talent as actual acting, but I feel like the emotional investment is pretty sizable, growing exponentially with the rate of your fame. Since the genre is still relatively new in the history of television, the effects are only starting to reveal themselves: Newlyweds filmed a broken marriage, Teen Mom lead to a serious suicide scare. It’s just sad to watch a person decay, right before your eyes. And yet, its millions of viewers can’t look away.

Though last night’s episode was slipped with understated drama that seems bound to blow up, I also gotta remember that it’s an old cliffhanger trick of clever editing. Oh, and that it isn’t taped in real time since Season 5 is already wrapped. And if my roommates and I were paid $100,000 per episode to play around in Italy, I’d stir up some juice too. Once I rewrap my head around the unrealities of reality television, I realize The Situation’s gonna be justtttttt fine.

Thursday Throwdown: Snooki vs. Ne-Yo Remember how mad people were when the girls from The Hills were on the cover? Though I’m (sadly) a fan of both shows, I’m glad to see Ne-Yo speaking up about a publication’s compromising lack of authority in its original niche. However, I’m not really sure how he feels: it seems like he’s torn between blaming the magazine for going so far from music to sell more issues, and also trying to recover from shock that in today’s reality, maybe this tangential direction is where a music medium needs to go in order to keep a revenue. Isn’t that what MTV discovered ages ago? But to add insult to injury, the coverage presented by Los Angeles radio station KIIS FM completely sidesteps the issue: obviously, Ne-Yo doesn’t despise Snooki personally (at least, not in a way pertaining to this issue), but what she represents - no matter how sweet, funny and adorable Snooki may be, she is still a star of a reality show that has nothing to do with music (besides DJ Pauly D and their infamous fist-pumping). This conversation not only reveals that the cover of a magazine may no longer be a coveted place of authority, AND that an Internet post on a radio station will sacrifice the integrity of the artist and his justified point of view to collect more interaction on the online poll. Because the more people who answer the question, “Is Ne-Yo just jealous of Jersey Shore’s success, or is Snooki’s Rolling Stone cover a travesty?”, the larger numbers their publishers can show to potential advertisers, and convince them to place a few pricey pixels online. No wonder Ne-Yo spoke out over social media, it’s probably the most trustworthy platform where people can actually say what they want without crafty censorship or manipulative filtering! And, it’s perfect for speaking directly to an audience, the same audience who watches The Hills and Jersey Shore and convinced too many people in suits that we won’t put in our time or pull out our wallets unless one of our reality show heroines are in the headlines. I mean, that’s why I clicked the link on the radio’s website in the first place, and that might be why you’re reading this post. So then who should I really blame every time I see an orange-hued brunette riding a rocket as I wait for my coffee by a mag stand? I’ll be punishing myself for the rest of the month by not watching my favorite, guilty pleasure television show…until a new cover comes out, that is.
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Thursday Throwdown: Snooki vs. Ne-Yo

Remember how mad people were when the girls from The Hills were on the cover? Though I’m (sadly) a fan of both shows, I’m glad to see Ne-Yo speaking up about a publication’s compromising lack of authority in its original niche. However, I’m not really sure how he feels: it seems like he’s torn between blaming the magazine for going so far from music to sell more issues, and also trying to recover from shock that in today’s reality, maybe this tangential direction is where a music medium needs to go in order to keep a revenue. Isn’t that what MTV discovered ages ago?

But to add insult to injury, the coverage presented by Los Angeles radio station KIIS FM completely sidesteps the issue: obviously, Ne-Yo doesn’t despise Snooki personally (at least, not in a way pertaining to this issue), but what she represents - no matter how sweet, funny and adorable Snooki may be, she is still a star of a reality show that has nothing to do with music (besides DJ Pauly D and their infamous fist-pumping). This conversation not only reveals that the cover of a magazine may no longer be a coveted place of authority, AND that an Internet post on a radio station will sacrifice the integrity of the artist and his justified point of view to collect more interaction on the online poll. Because the more people who answer the question, “Is Ne-Yo just jealous of Jersey Shore’s success, or is Snooki’s Rolling Stone cover a travesty?”, the larger numbers their publishers can show to potential advertisers, and convince them to place a few pricey pixels online.

No wonder Ne-Yo spoke out over social media, it’s probably the most trustworthy platform where people can actually say what they want without crafty censorship or manipulative filtering! And, it’s perfect for speaking directly to an audience, the same audience who watches The Hills and Jersey Shore and convinced too many people in suits that we won’t put in our time or pull out our wallets unless one of our reality show heroines are in the headlines. I mean, that’s why I clicked the link on the radio’s website in the first place, and that might be why you’re reading this post. So then who should I really blame every time I see an orange-hued brunette riding a rocket as I wait for my coffee by a mag stand? I’ll be punishing myself for the rest of the month by not watching my favorite, guilty pleasure television show…until a new cover comes out, that is.