Angel+Mar’s+Final+AmEx+2013+Speech

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Reality Shows

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Reality shows. You either love them or hate them. I hate them.

What is this reality? These spoiled little piglets in their fancy fabrics, their gaudy jewels, and staged arguments-their absent morals and abject stupidity on full display. TV is a disaster zone. There was a time when TV was entertaining-or at least funny. Now, every channel is the All-Humiliation Network and every show that comes out is worse than the one before it. What ever happened to the History channel? I remember when I was in elementary school every day after school I would wonder what documentary they had scheduled for the day. Whether it was about Hitler's Nazi Germany or the French Revolution my 8 year old mind always found it intriguing. Now, I come home and check the History Channel only to find a Pawn Stars marathon. Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty interesting TV show but they show the same episodes every damn day. MTV is another prime example. From being a channel focused mainly on music it ditched music for tv shows like 16 and pregnant or the infamous Jersey Shore. Now, Jersey Shore just shows us exactly how we shouldn't behave and the stupidity behind being materialistic and plastic. With the main characters either being “buff” or “hot” it gives the wrong impression on teenage girls that if you want to be popular and have your own TV show, you need to wear fake tan, loads of make-up and act slutty. Not to mention that everyone seems so glued to it that they don't realize that one else in the world gives a crap. “ Oh no, this person had this happen to them” “ OMG I know right?” Frankly, no one cares! What makes it so entertaining to watch three guidos go “GTL”? Heck, if people are obsessed with watching Italians tan on the beach I should might as well record myself tanning on the beach and make millions of dollars in a couple of days. That's how this whole scheme works, right? Or why is it so important to know what Snooki had for breakfast? Is that really what makes them so worth watching? Another reality TV show that everyone seems to hate is Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. I really don't know much about this show but from what I've heard I really don't want to watch it. For those who don't know, it is about a hillbilly family in Georgia where a 7 year old girl participates in beauty pageants. She is really spoiled and her constant bickering is what makes people cringe and hate this pointless show. All it does is set up a bad influence for the young viewers of the show which will then make them try to act like Honey Boo Boo. Today, with entertainment's push for more reality TV shows, we are sinking lower and lower into the abyss of mediocrity and scandal. So why are reality shows favorable to TV channels? Well they are obviously much cheaper to produce than any fully scripted program where you would need to hire professional actors, and a full staff of writers and set designers. All you need to do with reality TV is come up with some idea and find some people on the street who can loosely follow a script and agree not to sue if they get injured. And there you have it, a reality TV show. No clever writing, no thought process. Now, some may shrug at this and think that I am putting too much importance on the type of TV we watch. After all “it's only TV”; but it is until it isn't and as kids grow up wanting to be like Kim Kardashian, and we become less sensitive to peoples suffering, we must realize that what we watch and what we learn has a hand in shaping our fragile society. In the America I grow old in, I want to see reality TV shows like Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore to be eradicated and never produced again. I want educational documentaries to be televised on History Channel all day- no more of that Pawn Stars marathon crap. Overall, I just want to see the production of pointless reality TV shows to come to a halt.

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