My Personal Interest

As someone who grew up with constant access to an array of Australian reality shows, I grew accustomed to accepting reality tv as a standard part of everyone’s typical weekly schedule. However, my younger self might be shocked now to hear my sudden interest in reality tv. It wasn’t the little details about the shows’ contestants or the plot lines that captivated my attention; I had seen the same habits and strategies roll over a hundred times through each of the popular reality shows. My interest sparked with reality tv in realizing the layers there were to be picked apart during my nightly viewings. I noticed two main layers to reality tv, one side being lighthearted viewing about the simplicities of ‘who’s wearing what’, and ‘who likes who the most’. The other side highlighted the trends in society I had not yet noticed. I consider myself a sucker for anything that sparks an array of annoying, unanswered philosophical questions, and reality tv suddenly transformed from a surface-level habit into a thought-provoking activity.

Rotating between shows like “Beauty and the Geek”, “Love Island” and “Big Brother” most nights of the week, I pinned reality tv as the perfect indicator of society’s extremities. Being exposed to the same types of scripts and casts brought my attention to the trends that emerge in society. Particularly, reality tv inspired me to consider digital marketing and writing from the perspective of damaging trends that can be viewed on shows like ‘Love Island’. I started to consider the effects of reality tv and other media platforms alike that may promote young audiences to participate in cosmetic surgeries to look like the shows’ contestants.

As a student studying writing, with a passion for marketing and digital media, I could not ignore the prospects that reality tv offered me. Juggling watching multiple reality shows keeps me up to date with what the current trends are in fashion, beauty and even the dating world. Like clockwork, these shows also graduated a fresh round of influencers at the end of each show’s premier who would go on to flourish on Instagram and TikTok. Although the popular reality shows show no obvious intention of provoking deeper meaning or substance, the shows allow me to switch off my brain for an hour each night during the week; a refuge that I am sure many Australian viewers also turn to.

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