Reality TV ... Scary ?

I LOVE reality TV.
There I have admitted it in caps.
I was trying to recall which show first hooked me, and I do believe it was the original Trading Spaces with Ty and Paige !
That crazy hunky Ty with cute as a button Paige keeping him in line, on time and within budget. The designers which could either WOW you with their creations or leave you crying for weeks on end while you sandblast hay that has been glued to your walls. (seriously Hildy what were you thinking ??)

Reality TV has morphed into a whole other animal since the hi-jinks of Ty.

My next must see was Big Brother. At first I was satisfied with the thrice weekly shows on TV ... after 2 seasons though I purchased the live web cam link to watch them 24/7. Yes watch them sleep mostly due to the time change difference from the east to west coast, but I have also witnessed things on the 24/7 cams that must make the participants Mothers cringe and go into hiding indefinitely.

I am not sure why I am so drawn to the drama of others except to think that it is nice to know drama is not just reserved for me and my family.

I am guilty of watching "The Hills" and "The City" which I'm sure just kills my older teen/20 somethings nieces and nephews. I DVR the "Housewives of the OC,NYC,ATL" and the "Bad Girls Club" too.
(for the record "The Amber's" are annoying, but annoying enough to get arrested in a foreign country over ??? .. ok more on that theme later)

I am fully aware of the creative editing that is done on these shows. I know it more certainly because I have subscribed to the 24/7 feeds of the Big Brother house. What you see and the order they portray it is not always how it actually played out.

While I obviously have an "issue" with reality shows, as of late I am finding some of them quite disturbing.
No .. not the ones that contain full grown adults, you signed on the dotted line deal with it, but more the ones that film families with young children.

Ahh ok, so yes I do watch Jon and Kate plus 8, Little People Big World and the Duggars.

These family shows all have their own unique dramas. Amy and Matt Roloff. I like Amy I think she has to work hard and have a ton of patience to keep Matt from jumping the shark on his next "visionary project". It leaves her often seen as the naggy, bitchy wife, but I have to side with her most of the time. Who REALLY needs another pumpkin catapult in your backyard ??

The Duggars. Are these folks for real ?? 18 kids all with J names ??
Ummmm .. in my reality world watching experience I think they are indeed the most real of them all. I do not agree with the choices they have made for their children. (girls in prairie dresses serving as "helpers" to the younger Duggar kids) In my eyes the boys but more clearly the girls are kept from really exploring other options as adults. Homeschooling,jurisdictions and the outfits (ok I went back to the clothes.. sorry) at times reminds me of religious compound living.(HBO's Big Love show comes to mind)
All that said, I do believe that they have the right to believe in whatever it is they want to believe in. This is the USA after all. I don't seem them as a dangerous cult like some have compared them too on message boards ..but I do believe their children are not given the opportunity, good or bad , to see how the real world lives. The children seem to be happy,some of them are downright funny (Jinger cracks me up) overall just good kids. Something we don't really see that often on reality tv.
The Josh got married episode though .. set me over the edge a tad. The father/son talk the night before the wedding was demeaning to his new bride.. Grrrr .. the turning over of Anna to her new authority husband Josh ..Grrrrr. Talk about setting woman back a hundred years !
So while I am still on the fence about the Duggars, I have seen worse on reality TV where kids are concerned.

OK OK OK this brings me to Jon and Kate plus 8.
When this show first aired I was as sucked in as millions of other viewers.
How could you not be? Adorable twins, a set of just huggable sextuplets and what appeared to be a "normal" parents whose world was changed overnight with the chaos of it all.
Anybody watching the early shows could not help but feel for Jon and Kate. Poor Kate looked exhausted trying to keep up with it all and her over the top OCD tendencies for cleanliness and order. Jon pitched in as much as could. Sometimes they had helpers .. Aunt Jodi, Beth, Joan the laundry folder but the show did give you the impression that for the most part Jon and Kate were a dynamic duo of parenting.
The kids didn't seem fazed by the cameras too much, after all the sextuplets were raised with studio lighting installed in the ceiling and cameraman all around. For them this was their normal. The twins were young too when the show started, barely out of toddler hood themselves. Mady was never shy about showing her displeasure in front of the cameras, if anything it made this show more real. Any parent knows meltdowns will and do happen. As a parent though I don't know if I would want to explain to Mady years from now that she had to take one for the team because it made good TV.
Brave thing to do when you still have to get her through the teen years, lets hope Mady develops a better sense of humor by then.

The show has changed A LOT in the last few seasons.

The Gosselins have been on wonderful vacations, received many freebies and appeared on the talk show circuit many times. They have also been the subject of many a message board on the net.

Ok here is where the scary part of reality shows comes in.

There are message boards and blogs out there that were developed soley to discredit Jon and Kate and to "save the children" from the cruel world of being reality show participants without a vote or voice to say otherwise.

Look Kate Gosselin has not been portrayed in a positive light for some time now. Some of her worst moments have been recorded for all to see. Once again if you are an adult and want to participate so be it, deal with it. Whether or not you like Kate or not really doesn't bother me at all. I won't defend her either way.

What is scary is how far the message board/bloggers will go to make their point to "save the children" from what they see as exploitation.Their Mom and Dad making a buck off the kids backs to get vacations, appliances, cash and now a new house.

In their efforts to be saviors, these bloggers and message board participants have exposed where these people live with Ariel views of their new home along with their address. Sure in the days of Google Earth you don't have to be a computer geek to find this yourself but do we have to post links to take folks there ?

There are crazies on the net .. that is the scary part.
How does this help the children ?