Reality TV has escalated from observation into deliberate psychological cruelty

Evidence

Ever since An American Family, reality TV has provoked feelings of guilt and complicity in the audience. To what extent are we responsible for the suffering we are watching? With Celebrity Big Brother this summer, those feelings became acute, almost unbearable. The programme became a prolonged exercise in intense cruelty, which made the early Big Brother, not to mention An American Family, seem quaintly genteel. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 771

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Pays off the reader’s earlier claim (ch54 adjacent) that poverty TV frames cuts as natural disasters — here cruelty itself has become the televisual content.
• XREF: connects to: Reality TV packaged contempt for misfits alongside their redemption — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 240; Reality TV traded narrative craft for cheap manipulation that mirrored ordinary viewers — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 235; Reality TV monetized loathing and villainy, not admiration — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 238 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Reality TV and gaming shifted from rewarding contestants to humiliating losers #expands (0.93) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 372
• Reality TV packaged contempt for misfits alongside their redemption #expands (0.92) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 240
• Reality TV monetized loathing and villainy, not admiration #corroborates (0.90) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 238
• Reality TV traded narrative craft for cheap manipulation that mirrored ordinary viewers #expands (0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 235
• Reality TV blends real and staged content to harvest attention cheaply #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 853