Your "Reality" Life

There are hundreds of reality shows being broadcast into America's living rooms, oh hell, these days you have to include bedrooms, kitchens, minivans, and iPods as well. Worldwide 1577 reality shows have been created.

What was a summer novelty has turned into a survivor. And what have they wrought? Are they just innocent entertainment fodder? Yes, but with a further reaching effect.

Their breadth - everything from UPN to PBS, from ESPN to the Food Channel, as well as the depths to which they will plumb casting any D, E or F-list celebrity or person of trivial fame for these shows has created the universal condition whereby everyone now believes that their life, no matter how mundane, should be broadcast on television for all the world to see. What if we found out "reality" was closer to Jim Carreys' Truman Show?

It extends beyond the medium of television. Fame more than accomplishment, cruel tragedy rather than heroism insures interest in a published biography. Youtube (Broadcast Yourself!) uploads hundreds of independent films...didn't they used to be called "home movies" on the internet. Every day millions of bloggers log into their personal sites posting articles under the wildest of illusions - that they've done something or written something worthy of investing the time to read their post and that, in fact, people can find it.

All of this of course is occuring with our own soundtrack, iPod buds choreographing our expressions, our walks, our distractions. Internally we can feel just where the camera should go if there was one, looking just over our shoulder.

People who grew up with the internet or iPods, that whole digital revolution, are the first generation that spend more time in the electronic environment than they do in the natural environment. So we are definitely going to try and launch social-marketing campaigns that encourage people to just unplug, just to pull out of the virtual electronic environment and try to live more than half their lives in the real world.

Where do you live? What have you accomplished that is so worthy of our attention?