This weekend, TLC -- which no longer has anything to do with learning, and everything to do with cruelty to people -- will debut its new reality series, "Geek Love," which follows the speed-dating scene among sci-fi dorks at various Comic-Con type conventions. Basically, it's a window into a world of lonely desperate people searching for a connection beyond what they get from their television sets and action figures. It's an incredibly easy premise to make fun of, and of course, the overriding temptation is to point and laugh at the overweight geeks with their Chewbacca mating calls and homely geek women wielding light sabers.
But that's the point, isn't it? That's exactly what they want. They want us to point and laugh at the misfortune of others, which serves a dual purpose: It boosts our own egos by comparison, and it boosts the profits of the cable networks that exploit the fringes. It's mean-spirited television gawkery. Of course, "Geek Love" is not the first of its kind; it's simply the latest in a series of reality shows designed to elicit our mockery and mean-spirited derision. After the jump, we'll examine four more reality shows that prey upon our collective schaudenfreude.
Virgin Diaries: How can you not make fun of this show? It's about 30-year-old virgins who are completely and hilariously clueless about sex! Of course, TLC insists that they're not exploiting these virgins; they're celebrating them! "A lot of stories about later in life virgins talk about it like a problem. We want to show that this is something that can be celebrated." Right. Because when I see the GIF below, my first instinct is to celebrate the love of two people that have finally found one another and will bask in the joy of their simultaneous de-flowerment. Uh huh.
Toddlers and Tiaras: "Toddlers and Tiaras" is perhaps the most cruel of all these reality shows because it takes pre-adolescent girls and subjects them to our collective judgement. These girls -- five or six years old -- aren't allowed to be "girls," they're infantalized women buried in three inches of pancake make up and dolled up to look like American geishas. Why? So their selfish mothers can feel good about themselves? What do we get out of it? Security in the knowledge that we're not as horrible as the parents, who scream at their daughters for having fat arms or for eating too much junk food. And, of course, these poor girls are going to grow up to be just like their despicable mothers.
16, 17, 18 19 Kids and Counting: It's not that the Duggars are just kookoobananas, they are. It's that they're raising an army of loony tunes nutjobs that will grow up to be cast members of "Virgin Diaries" and continue the shame cycle of American reality television. And how do they feed those kids? Keep them clothed? The profits they make from a show about how messed up it is to have 19 kids (and a miscarriage), of course, all the while feeding into the TMZization of the Internet. Why do we watch? Because we can point and laugh at how horribly irresponsible, selfish and narcissistic it is to flood civilization with a troop of wackjobs created in their own image under the guise of religion. Hey Michelle: Your vagina is not an assembly line equipped to poop out your own production of Oliver. Put a lid on it, lady, and save some of the world's resources for the rest of us.
The Kardashians: It's one thing to exploit the lives of geeks, virgins, over-populaters or even the obese. But I think it crosses the line when you build a show around mentally retarded people. That's low, even by reality show standards. Those poor women; they can barely string a coherent sentence together, and I'm pretty sure they'd get their asses handed to them by Forrest Gump in a game of Chutes and Ladders ("What's a chute?"). Yet, we laugh and point at these mentally impaired celebutards who are forced into Botox treatments and plastic surgery whenever they are disfigured by wrinkles and laugh lines. The sad sisters are even forced to share a limited number of brain cells. Moreover, no one will love the sad things; their husbands keep leaving them. And we, the viewer, we point, and we laugh, as we watch these unfortunate brain damaged women try to navigate complex obstacles, like stairs, or face difficult questions, like which shoe goes on the left foot, and which goes on the right.
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I would argue that “Toddlers and Tiaras” provokes fist shaking and rage, not pointing and laughter.
Besides shows based around kids, these people chose to be on display.
Sure, Virgin Diaries and Geek Love are solely created for people to gawk and poke fun at, but I’m pretty sure if you polled the people who actually watch the Kardashians, The Duggars, and Toddlers & Tiaras, you would find that most of the audience isn’t watching with disdain. Talk to a fan of the Kardashian shows and you’ll find a fan of the Kardashians themselves (what that says about us as a culture is something else altogether). The only time those shows are served up to the rest of us for mockery is when they’re on The Soup.
I’m shocked there hasn’t been a SNL sketch combining the Duggars and the kissing family.
I can’t wait for Tebow to be on Virgin Diaries.
My favorite bit of irony in that FFC/Lowes debacle was that the FFC continued to call TLC “The Learning Channel” in regards to the one show where its appropriate.
Oh, and if you watch Geek Love this weekend, I’m TOTALLY not the geek that talks about posting on a TV blog called Warming Glow.
Actually, I believe the term “The Learning Channel” still applies because when you look at these shows, see the people on it, and most importantly, realize that people enjoy watching them, you learn exactly how fucked up we are as a species.
*Pushes up nerd glasses*
Um Chewbacca is a character in Star Wars, and is a Wookie. His name is Chewbacca but the mating call that poor bastard attempted was of the Wookie. Any Wookie could have made it, as the female Star Wars fan in the video proved.
How long did they leave up the definition for nerdgasm? Long enough for us non-nerds to phonetically sound out the words? I don’t know – these might be actors playing nerds.
There are two ee’s in Wookiee
NEEEEEEERD OFF! 3:00. After school. Behind the dumpsters. Bring your BlasTech DL-44.
Impostor nerd. You know conflicts of this sort are resolved by a role of a 32 sided die.
I read everybody’s gushing posts about Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and Remedial Chaos theory. There are more of you out there.
TLC has to be the single greatest argument against the defunding of PBS. And for that I am thankful.
Shouldn’t it be 16, 17, 18 19, 20, no wait, still 19 Kids and Counting?
i wasn’t gonna watch this show because of this (and other angry nerd reviews) but then i started getting blasted with tweets about it so i checked out a replay. it’s actually sweet and while yeah, they make fun of some nerd stuff, this is not “cruelly engineered” or really anything like you said. i think your post says a lot more about you than it does this show. i know you need to post something, but how bout not bringing all your baggage to the boards?