AACC students love to watch reality television.
Among their favorite shows are “Love Island,” “Too Hot to Handle” and “Jersey Shore.”
“It makes you remember that you’re not the weirdest person out there,” Tamaya White, a second-year visual arts student, said. “That’s reassuring for sure.”
Reality TV has been around since the late 1940s, when “Candid Camera,” created as a radio show, switched to TV and became a viewer favorite.
Fifty years later, “The Real World” followed a group of young adults who lived together in a house, where cameras captured their interactions for a few months.
More recently, AACC students said they can’t get enough of reality shows like “The Traitors” and “Love Is Blind.”
They’re not alone. A survey by Talker Research found that the average American, age 21 and older, watches reality TV four times a week.
White said she often finds herself watching her favorite reality shows to wind down and relax.
“A lot of the miscommunications I find really funny,” Aaron Reckley, a second-year graphic design student, said. “Because it’s always one person saying something, another person taking it the wrong way, and then suddenly a full-on fight breaks out. And it’s like, ‘All I did was call you pretty.’”
This is the norm for shows like “Too Hot To Handle,” which sits at No. 4 on Nielsen’s Top 10 streamed programs in 2024.
First-year transfer studies student Alena Engel noted she loves watching women on reality TV.
“Women, I love,” Engel said. “I love them because they’re dramatic and they bring [chaos]. … They’re always like, ‘I need to talk to you about this one girl and tell you what she did,’ blah blah blah. Or ‘The Real Housewives.’ They’re like, ‘Oh my God, that b – – – -.’”
“I think you have to go into it knowing that this is not truly reality,” communications professor Haley Draper said. “There’s still pressure to do certain things and be a certain way for ratings and for money and celebrity status.”
Engel recalled one of the most memorable scandals she witnessed on unscripted TV, during the Kylie Jenner lip-kit era, which played out on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
“When, like, Khloe got cheated on with, what’s her name? Jordyn Woods,” Engel added. “Kylie Jenner’s best friend. … That was crazy.”
The season 16 finale of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” showed this particular drama occurring and amassed the most viewers the show had in three years.
“I’ve seen some, arguably, very outrageous relationships between two people that should not be mixing whatsoever. Or ever,” Reckley added. “And … they’re certainly interesting dynamics. It’s funny to see.”
