>>There's a delightful show available on Netflix called The Repair Shop. It's in the same genre as Great British Bake Off, which I call "Soothing British People Being Nice To Each Other Over Low Stakes Things". Each episode several things are brought to a repair shop, and fixed up by the artisans there, and then returned to their owners. It's lovely.<<
Cool.
One thing I've seen in "reality TV" is a totally predictable, potentially very dangerous exploitation of humans' tendency to mimic other humans, especially humans in authority. So for instance, what's the first rule people learn about cooking? Usually it is some version of "Don't rush, because a kitchen is full of things that are sharp or hot, and you could get hurt." Cooking reality shows tend to use time limits, often unreasonably short ones, which pushes people to rush, because it's "entertaining." I saw one show where two different people got injured in the same episode, because they were rushing. That's not just bad for those people. It's encouraging all the viewers to exacerbate a known bug in human wetware by making it seem okay not only to rush, but to push other people to rush and get them hurt, and to enjoy watching that.
I find it off-putting, beyond the embarrassment squick that the shows also run on. Humans are very imitative. When I see "entertainment" that encourages their worst habits, I worry how much damage that's doing. And these shows don't even come with "Don't try this at home, because rushing in the kitchen gets people hurt."
>>(Also, small typo alert, instead of finite planet, you have finite planed.)<<
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_serpent
Re: Hear Hear
Date: 2020-05-17 06:10 am (UTC)Cool.
One thing I've seen in "reality TV" is a totally predictable, potentially very dangerous exploitation of humans' tendency to mimic other humans, especially humans in authority. So for instance, what's the first rule people learn about cooking? Usually it is some version of "Don't rush, because a kitchen is full of things that are sharp or hot, and you could get hurt." Cooking reality shows tend to use time limits, often unreasonably short ones, which pushes people to rush, because it's "entertaining." I saw one show where two different people got injured in the same episode, because they were rushing. That's not just bad for those people. It's encouraging all the viewers to exacerbate a known bug in human wetware by making it seem okay not only to rush, but to push other people to rush and get them hurt, and to enjoy watching that.
I find it off-putting, beyond the embarrassment squick that the shows also run on. Humans are very imitative. When I see "entertainment" that encourages their worst habits, I worry how much damage that's doing. And these shows don't even come with "Don't try this at home, because rushing in the kitchen gets people hurt."
>>(Also, small typo alert, instead of finite planet, you have finite planed.)<<
Fixed, thanks!