So I’ve got this idea for a killer reality TV series, I’ve had it for awhile actually and I’m gonna lay it on you, but please promise me you won’t steal it, I like you and wouldn’t want to have to track you down and feed you to the pigs.
Everyone has watched the mother of all reality shows, Survivor, at some stage or another. It was the original reality show (except maybe Big Brother? Not too sure…) and people lapped that shit up because it exploited our twin desires to indulge our voyeuristic tendencies and fantasize about what it would be like to be ‘stranded’ on a tropical island with a bunch of complete strangers.
The show was wildly popular and has spawned no less than nine-fucking-teen seasons (according to WikiAnswers, but I’m not sure how this is even possible? If they make one a year, this means they started in 1991, wtf?!). I’ll admit, I still watch them. It’s just such a rad way to watch human beings interacting with and manipulating one another. If you got a hold of all 19 seasons and watched them all, I swear to god, you’d be able to write the most mind-blowing thesis about the human mind when augmented through the lens of ‘reality’ TV.
But anyway, enough of that bollocks, I think I’ve introed the fuck out of this thing, let’s get to the juicy bits already!
My reality TV show would be called EXISTOR, and yes, it would be written all in caps like that, because it would be THE BEST REALITY TV SERIES EVER!
The premise is dead simple. You launch a MASSIVE worldwide viral campaign calling for entrants from the age of 18 upward, then select 42 of the people who apply, making sure you get an accurate worldwide demographic and you dump those fuckers unceremoniously on an island in the middle of fucking nowhere, say ‘too-de-loo muthufukkahs’, and never interact with them again.
Meanwhile, the island is rigged to hell and back with literally thousands of cameras and mics, all remotely operated, as well as about 30 broadcast-quality live cams that the contestants are given to do whatever they want with, but that’s it. There are no cute little challenges to determine who gets the rice or not, there are no immunity idols and there is no getting voted off the island.
It’s not Survivor, it’s EXISTOR, there is one goal, and only one goal – don’t die.
The audience would watch as the people on the island formed natural alliances and built real shelters and hunted and cultivated their own food, because basically, those people we dumped on the island? They’d never leave. That would be their LIFE, and we’d get to watch it all either in highlights packages every week, or live from the cameras we give the contestants or the thousands of other cameras around the island, which the audience would be able to flick through and operate themselves… somehow (I’ll leave that to the tech guys to figure out).
The only interaction between us and them would be when we sent technicians to fix the cameras and drop off new cameras and batteries for the contestants, but even those people would be deployed in the dead of night and, like fucking ninjas, would creep around and swap out dead cameras with new ones.
Over time, the contestants would fall in love with one another, they’d have children on the island, a whole new generation would grow up on camera and take control of the island and we’d get to sit back at home, in the comfort of our living rooms and watch the miracle of human life unfold before us, untainted by the promise of reward or fame or any of the other bullshit that makes reality TV anything but.
People would die on the island. They’d get married, they’d promise to love one another for all time, they’d cheat on one another and in a jealous rage, they’d fight and maybe even kill one another, and we’d keep the cameras rolling, always rolling, for all time.
And who knows the effect it would have on us? Would we even be able to watch it? Maybe we need the hosts on TV and the elaborate immunity challenges to remind us that no matter how real it feels, it’s not real.
I can see it now, the initial hype would be HUGE! People would watch non-stop, they’d be glued to their TVs, completely addicted, but over time their attention deficit would cause their interest in the show to dwindle. Then one day, years later, they’d read about one of their favourite contestants dying on the island, or falling pregnant, or falling in love, and they switch back to EXISTOR, and there they’d all still be, but they’d be different and the contestants would tell their kids about the world they came from, a polluted world that was ruled by machines and guns and war and they’d explain why they chose to leave that world and never come back.
And 100 years into the show, children would be born that wouldn’t even understand what the cameras were and they’d walk barefoot, quiet as still water through the jungles and forests of the island, hunting wild boar, completely unaware that they were being watched by billions and billions of audience members that knew more about those children and their parent’s lives and their parent’s parents lives than those children would know or ever care to know.
EXISTOR. You heard it here first 😉
-ST
When they’re done well, gameshows and reality TV shows can provide some pretty unique insights into human behaviour that we probably would never be exposed to otherwise.
