Ms. Burtan met us via the Chicago Extension Office. That is, she was a friend of Janelle and the Shots in the Dark crew. After meeting up with us at one of the more legendary Wizard World Chicagos, she joined the group both here and at Newsarama, on occasion. She's here to lend some professional insight into a rather modern addiction . . .
Perhaps because I have spent the past semester poring over textbooks on addictions, perhaps because as a psych grad student I am overeager to find patterns everywhere, perhaps because I have watched one too many episodes of My Strange Addiction on TLC (the last lady was addicted to her breasts. Her breasts!!), I am starting to suspect that reality television has become far more addictive over the past decade or so. Come with me, if you will, on a magical journey through my loose logic.
I Can’t Quit You, Reality TV
The barebones definition of having a process addiction, or an addiction not involving a chemical substance of some kind, involves the compulsion to keep doing a set of behaviors no matter the consequences. The pull to engage in behaviors such as gambling, sex, playing video games, watching hours of The Little Couple on TLC, etc. is akin to pursuing the chemical high of a drug. The problem is that television watching is such an everyday task, something done so easily even while doing ten other things, that it becomes easy to keep swimming in denial. I have often defended my Kardashian-spawned-show-watching as nothing but a small diversion from my otherwise hectic life. That is, until I tried--and failed--to give it up for one week.
I take full responsibility for my own compulsion to using reality television as a way to unwind, and perhaps for what you might call my lack of willpower or moral ineptitude. The problem is, real addiction is not a matter of will or morality, but rather complex biological, psychological, and social process. The same way drug dealers manufacture new, cheaper, and more dangerous highs that become more alluring to chase, reality television executives are toying with our psychology to do the same.
Pleasurable, Numbing Feelings
Something to which you are addicted has to somehow activate the pleasure center--or numb the pain center--of your brain. Reality television has slowly evolved into a formulaic combo platter of these two qualities; scripted and predictable enough to be somewhat mindless, yet containing enough information, or human drama, or sexy people, to get you interested and feeling good. These pleasant feelings might be based on the fact that your life is nowhere near as awful as whatever group of misfits is doing in whatever competition on whatever remote desert island. Or, in the case of CBS’s Kid Nation, you might feel there is justice in the world after all because Zach finally got his gold star, dammit. Either way, you feel good or numbed and associate the show you watched with this comfort.
Curiosity & the Bystander Effect
Human beings are an innately curious yet somewhat cowardly species. Our evolutionary predecessors had to be inventive and risk-taking enough to try things like talking and walking upright, but not so brazen as to jump into the firepit. Furthermore, the more bystanders witness an event in which they could be of help, the less likely each person is to actually help; we spread responsibility to so many others that we lose our own sense of obligation and action. This makes me think we all yearn to see something we haven’t seen before, but ideally from a safe distance where we don’t have to actually get involved. We want to gawk and stare at real people but without having to feel responsible for stopping those moms from making their preschoolers gyrate in leather (TLC does it again: Toddlers & Tiaras). Reality television has increasingly stopped to lower levels to give us this luxury while also letting us judge, mock, and impersonate away, often without any social consequences to ourselves.
Intermittent Reinforcement
As anyone who ever sat at a slot machine or waited for a phone call from a date knows, intermittent reinforcement is incredibly addictive. When you reliably get what you are waiting for, you get bored; when you never get it, your desire for it becomes extinguished over time. The sheer scheduling of reality television has become more intermittently reinforcing. The writer’s strike left the ripple effect of not only creating gaps for supposedly writer-less reality shows to fill, but also rebooted midseason cycles, meaning that more and more shows developed followings not only in the fall, but in the winter, spring, and summer. Fan favorites are now shown with chunks of seasons occurring here and there, such as my dearly beloved Ghost Hunters, The Real Housewives of... series, or the rotation of horror that is MTV’s Teen Mom (Fall), Teen Mom 2 (Winter), and 16 and Pregnant (summer). Just as you are starting to get bored of the show you were watching all winter, you get hit by another nugget of potential joy and mindlessness. The crest of anticipation and the waves of finales comes paced at random times throughout the year, and without too much order to it, you don’t get too used to the these highs and lows, keeping you addicted. And should you forget you liked a show--surprise! Reunion special.
Accessibility
When casinos open up new locations, more locals develop gambling addictions. When you have television coming to you more and more at your convenience over time (thank you iPad, cellphones, Netflix, Roku, Hulu, HuluPlus+, and DVR systems everywhere), it comes as no surprise that more people could develop both healthy and unhealthy behaviors in relation to it. Today, producers want to give you every flavor and more. You crave seeing how people do movie makeup? You have FaceOff (Syfy). You want to see animals barking at ghosts? You have The Haunted (Animal Planet). You want to see a jail? Boom, you got Jail (SpikeTV). You have whatever you want, whenever you want it, and if you don’t like it, you can find something new in a click; when the high is so easily obtained it also becomes nearly impossible to avoid.
Familiarity
The psychology of interpersonal attraction involves the idea of proximity and familiarity breeding interest: the more you are around something and the more you feel close to that thing, the more you are attracted to it. At first, reality television had that fresh and clean new feel; what are those crazy MTV Real World kids going to do next? By the early 00’s, it was no longer shiny and new and this was somewhat comforting and attractive. Recycling and reconfiguring old reality stand-bys became the norm and shows endlessly slid down the pipeline harping on one idea, no matter how ridiculous (e.g. people freak out in total darkness: see MTV’s Fear, ABC’s Dating in the Dark, and Syfy’s upcoming Total Blackout). Now we watch reality television because after a decade or so, we know drill--and don’t mind it as much.
More Likely Behavior Reinforces Less Likely Behavior
The honing of reality televisions’ scripts (ahem) over time means shows today are edited much tighter. Today when you start watching a show, you start with a teaser that tells you outright that something somewhat overhyped is going to happen. You want to see this thing happen, but it will likely happen around minute 27 or 51, depending on the length of show. You watch and wait for this thing, partly to mock it, partly to enjoy it, always thinking you have to watch the whole show to really get why this overhyped thing happened in the first place. Before you know it, you’ve watched minute upon minute of awfully boring television only to reach something you knew would be overhyped (and sure enough, it was!) but you did it anyway. This is not entirely your fault; based on behavioral psychology, if the thing you want comes after the thing you don’t want, you are more likely to do the thing you don’t want to do. The little nugget at the end reinforces the crap at the beginning and by next week, you are ready to do it all over again.
Obviously, there are some things about reality television that defy explanation and are instantly addictive, such as watching Padma Lakshmi of Top Chef say things in a dubbed, creepy monotone. God help me, I always think she’s going to have inflection. But that being said, there are many elements of reality television that can be seen as being manufactured to keep us hoooked. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is between you and your DVR.
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