Back in 2000, a group of friends and I got really hooked on season two of the TV show Survivor. I didn’t watch season one, or any season since, but for some reason (probably because we just needed an excuse to get together and drink beer) we met weekly to watch 16 castaways venture into the Australian Outback, locked in a battle of wits against each other and the elements.
We were still in the protozoan era of reality television. Back then, the only Kardashian we had really heard of was Rob because of the OJ Simpson trial (real reality TV). The conventions of the genre hadn’t really been established. We weren’t really sure what to expect. Then the unexpected happened. Mike Skupin, the season’s early front-runner for possible Survivor champion, passed out and fell into a fire. He ran screaming into the water. The burns on his hands were so severe, he became the first person in the show’s then-young history to be medically evacuated.
It was riveting TV. We didn’t want him to die or anything, but, you know, holy crap the dude nearly died! For our entertainment! Suddenly all those Romans screaming for blood in the Colosseum didn’t feel so ancient or alien. I guess being awful is just deeply ingrained in human DNA.
Sixteen years later, we’ve become so desensitized by reality TV sensationalizing people being shitty to one another, or having shitty things happen to them, that we don’t bat an eye. If Michael fell into the fire today we probably wouldn’t even look up from our game of Candy Crush (do people still play that?).
But as much as I hate it (and hate myself for it), I still get roped into reality TV from time to time. Like, now I’m into the Naked shows. Because I guess the only logical place they could go from exposing everyone’s bullshit for all the world to see was to exposing everyone’s bullshit while they didn’t have any clothes on.
Naked and Afraid is crazy because it’s Survivor without any payoff. At least with Survivor, if you make it all the way to the end, you get $1 million. With Naked and Afraid, you don’t get shit for making it through the end except a re-evaluation of your PSR (primitive survival rating) depending on how well or poorly you do. A PSR isn’t even really a thing. And to get the hell out of there, you need to hike to an “extraction point” after you’re totally emaciated and dehydrated and haven’t eaten for 21 days. You don’t even get to meet Jeff Probst.
Yet, there they are, two people who just met, bare-assed, trying to build a shelter out of sticks and leaves and stuff and hoping not to catch dysentery from unpurified stream water, just for the glory of it. It’s like, have our standards gotten that low? I might consider sequestering myself with a bunch of strangers on a remote island in the South Pacific if the light at the end of the tunnel was $1 million. I could buy a whole lot of Magic cards with that kind of money. But what am I going to do with a high PSR? I could say to you hey, my PSR is 8.5, and you’d be like, yeah, but you’re still a loser who collects Magic cards, and you’d be totally right.
Further down the spiral from Naked and Afraid is Dating Naked, which I just discovered but is amazingly enough in its third season.
If you haven’t seen it (it’s on VH1, which is buried deep somewhere in your Dish Network channel listing), it’s kind of like what would happen if The Bachelor and The Bachelorette were happening simultaneously in the same house and no one was wearing clothes. It’s about as stupid and contrived as you’d imagine, so of course, I can’t stop binge-watching it on Hulu.
I love that everyone who goes on the show believes they’re going to find “true love” or “a real connection” in such a hopeless situation. Like, sure, love can really happen anywhere, because it’s irrational and completely stupid, but if he or she is so desperate for attention that they’d go on a show like this, I’m not sure this is the person you want to bring to Thanksgiving dinner.
But what bothers me the most about it is, sure, these people are naked, but all the goods are obscured by blurry dots. With Naked and Afraid, the people’s butts aren’t blurred out, so at least you can see those, but Dating Naked censors all of it. I think it goes back to that theme on lowered expectations. Like, even though “naked” is in the title, I can’t even really see naked people because these stupid dots are in the way. Yet, I watch it anyway, even though I’m being cheated. Even though we’re all being cheated. The lesson here is people will get away with as much as you let them. Be strong, America. Demand truth in advertising.
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