By Galen Simmons
As I previously mentioned, I get bored very easily. One of my favourite cures for boredom is TV And since I get bored easily, I watch it A LOT. I watch it at work and at home and when I can’t watch it, I think about what my life would be like if it were being watched on a weekly basis by millions of people. This, of course, makes me paranoid that I’m being watched as part of some weird and unbelievably boring Truman Show. Then I realize the ratings for a show like that would never survive today’s competitive prime time schedule. Maybe they’d put me on during the day.
Anyways, if my life were to be broadcast by satellite to other incurably bored people like myself, I think I’d want it to be a comedy. I like the idea of being part of a light-hearted satire where all serious conflicts in my life can be solved in at least 20 minutes. There would, however, have to be some changes I’d need to make to my life in order to make it reality show friendly.
Five things you need for your life to be a reality show (alternate title: why my life is not a reality show):
1. The first thing you have to do is choose a small group of people (between four and 20) for whom your entire life will revolve around for roughly six seasons and a movie. These people may irritate you or make it impossible to live a normal life, but that won’t matter as long as your audience is entertained.
2. Every week you need to be involved in a major conflict of some sort, whether it’s a conflict directly involving you or one in which you’re somehow dragged into. You can only imagine how stressful this must be, which leads me to my next point…
3. You’ll probably have to become an alcoholic. Many reality shows employ the use of a common “hangout” place where all the main characters meet to establish their various conflicts at the beginning of the show, and explain their solutions at the end. While some of these hangouts are rather tame, a lot of characters prefer to hang out at a favourite drinking hole (Karma?). While this may seem harmless at first, you’ll eventually realize that you spend a good portion of your free time everyday at a bar vacuuming down booze. If that’s not at least mild alcoholism, then I don’t know what is.
4. You’re going to have to surrender any privacy you once had. In any good reality show, friends and family drop by seemingly at random. This keeps the audience on its toes by providing plot turns at exactly the right time. It’s too bad the “right time” isn’t always so convenient for the character whose doors are seemingly always unlocked.
5. Finally, your life will need theme music… you can have Skrillex.
