SWK: Hi BB, it feels fitting we're exploring this topic for an issue about horror. This topic is like the not-so-secret underbelly of the industry, the unsettling reality in reality TV, or the corn syrup in the medicine.
BB: Fitting indeed! Reality TV is kind of spooky in general. As viewers, we’re never quite sure what’s real or scripted, and both options could be horrifying. There’s usually some sort of moral code present as part of the format of these shows, even if it’s absurd like in the case of Too Hot to Handle, where contestants are reprimanded for hooking up. These moral codes are essential for the drama to unfold. If there’s no morality there can’t be anyone behaving badly.
SWK: Right, it creates a system or a set of expectations around behaviour on these shows for contestants, and for viewers. I think this is partly why when a contestant pulls a grift, it throws us off as viewers.
BB: There was an article that came out following season 2 of Too Hot to Handle that revealed the show’s winner, Marvin Anthony, appeared in not one, not two, but four reality TV dating shows in the span of a year. In addition to Too Hot to Handle, he starred in Les Marseillais vs Le Reste Du Monde, Les Princes et Les Princesses de l'Amour, and Love Island France, “falling in love” with multiple women and taking home $55,000 in the process. He’s certainly not the first person to make a career off of reality TV dating, but damn we were rooting for you, Marvin!
SWK: Wow, he's turned falling in love on television into a full-time job, in English and French. I think reality TV contestants are by default, clout chasers. Everyone goes on these shows to gain some level of fame, money, followers and/or a nice all-expenses-paid vacation. But Marvin's off-screen behaviour hinted at something more than just clout chasing. His pattern of going on these shows and representing himself as just "a guy looking for love" to viewers as well as the women on these shows feels like it tips him from clout chaser into grifter territory.
BB: It’s grifter territory for sure. Especially since reality TV dating shows like Too Hot to Handle or The Bachelor hold “being there for the right reasons” as the highest moral standard.
SWK: Yeah, these shows create their own standards of behaviour and we adapt to them as viewers, we're easy to sway!
BB: Unfortunately, these shows also attract participants who are actually looking to find love. Too Hot to Handle is slightly more puritanical in its moral code—it chastises the contestants for being young, hot, and wanting to have fun (how dare they!) and teaches them to “truly get to know each other”. Marvin knew the part he was playing and delivered what most of the viewers were there to see—an Fboy finally learning to love. When it turned out he wasn’t interested in that, could we really be surprised? After all, that’s why he was cast in the first place.
![Marvin and Melinda from Too Hot to Handle. Caption: "We made it! [squeals]"](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6262220a9a75cf520759bda4/6335d479b59029b33898fa7c_melinda-marvin-too-hot-to-handle.png)
SWK: We know reality TV is about the illusion, but as long as the shared contract we have with producers is fulfilled—basically, entertain us with trash—we're happy to go along for the ride. There are agreed-upon limitations on how much fakeness we expect or a certain level of sham we know we're participating in.
BB: Absolutely, the contract supports the fantasy (whichever type it may be) at any cost. So in the case of Marvin, we had to believe he was falling in love for the show to work. In other shows like the Real Housewives franchise, the contract between the stars and producers is similar: the stars must pretend that their relationships are authentic for the show to work. That’s not to say that the women on the Real Housewives shows don’t form genuine connections but their encounters are heavily mediated by the show. There needs to be just enough “reality” to keep the viewer invested.
SWK: Yeah, the Marvin type of grifting feels different from the catfishing we see on The Circle, where catfishing is an accepted part of the game and viewers are let in on the setup. We might end up rooting for a contestant pretending to be Lance Bass or a hot girl, or feeling like they're playing the game well and in fact deserve to win based on how well they manipulated other contestants. In these instances, we're more likely to reward catfishing behaviour, perhaps because we've consented to it from the jump and feel we're still aware of the narrative we're consuming.
BB: I think it all depends on the type of fantasy we’re buying into. The fantasy with Melinda and Marvin was that they were the perfect couple falling in love. With the catfishing contestants on The Circle, that’s kind of its own fantasy because we’re in on it—we get to live vicariously through the catfish. In shows like Selling Sunset or the Real Housewives franchise, the stars slowly morph into unrecognizable versions of themselves through plastic surgery so really we’re all getting catfished as viewers, physically and mentally. We’re the fish now.
SWK: (Insert fish noises here) There's a sincere living the fantasy moment about watching catfishing unfold in the cheery, upbeat game show tone of The Circle. It feels less harmful than a real-life experience, especially when other contestants meet each other on the show and find out someone is fake, but don't seem too bothered by it and recognize it's part of playing the game. This tone is a stark contrast to a show like Catfish, which feels like it's exploiting its subjects, catching them in their most humiliating moments when the ugly truth is revealed.
BB: Right, so much depends on the tone of the show. A light-hearted tone gives us permission to root for a contestant that could easily be villainized in a different context.
SWK: On the subject of grifting in reality TV, we can't forget the whole Bachelor in Paradise scandal with Jenna Cooper. She was publicly humiliated with a series of texts allegedly sent by her about how her relationship with Jordan, the guy she got engaged to on the show, was fake and that she had a sugar daddy. She worked with lawyers for two years to expose the fake texts and clear her name, but not before Bachelor Nation turned on her and Jordan dumped her. It was like a reverse grift situation, where she had to prove to the audience she was for real. The way she was treated, compared to a known grifter like Marvin, felt gendered, and reflects other gendered issues in the reality TV show world.
BB: Ah the ol’ reverse grift! And then, of course, there are the reality TV stars who commit straight-up fraud, like Teresa and Joe Giudice who were indicted on federal charges. It seems like some stars fall into this trap where they need to maintain the appearance of their extravagant wealth and they are willing to commit fraud to do so. The shows monetize the fallout of the crimes, which results in these stars making money off their own misconduct. They can do no wrong. There’s no such thing as bad press, I suppose.
SWK: Yeah, in the world of reality TV, even crime can be spun around and integrated into the storyline. The grifters and fraudsters on reality TV shows are also reflective of the great summer of scams of 2018 and the steady rise of grifters in recent years. Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, the Fyre Fest dude, the Tinder Swindler, etc. Scamming has become normalized in our everyday lives, and in pop culture.
BB: We’re definitely fascinated by people breaking the law and getting exposed online, especially if they’re already famous. Reality TV gives people the opportunity to see a grift play out, it’s like true crime in real-time.
SWK: There is something deeply grotesque and disturbing about how entertained we are by the manipulation, the lying, and the over-the-top wealth. The crystal candlestick holders, the mirrored tables, the fake flowers, the $60K children's birthday parties of the Real Housewives franchise. The lavish paid vacations for hot people trying to find love, the thousands of fresh cut roses of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. It's absurd and gross. But like true crime, we can't look away and we keep watching.
BB: So are we signing up to be grifted when we watch these shows? We know we’re supporting the wealth of reality TV stars simply by watching.
SWK: Probably! We sign up to be grifted, and we are giving it our attention, but it's also not real for us. We don't have to live the lives of reality TV stars, and even when we get sucked in, we can always look away or look at something else. It's a painless grift for us as viewers, the way we get to watch, or not watch.
The viewers at home are dying to know…
Favourite reality TV grifter:
SWK: I was really here for the Jenna Cooper redemption story, where she un-grifted herself in a highly legal and public fashion.
BB: Tom from The Real Housewives of New York, whose affair gave us one of the best lines of reality TV ever from Countess Luann: “How could you do this to me… question mark.”
Most improved grifter:
SWK: Teresa Giudice recently got remarried and judging by the height and cost of her wedding hair, she's no longer in jail!
BB: NeNe Leakes from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, who proudly wears (and sells) a sweatshirt with her own mug shot on it. Now that’s a redemption story.
SWK: Hi BB, it feels fitting we're exploring this topic for an issue about horror. This topic is like the not-so-secret underbelly of the industry, the unsettling reality in reality TV, or the corn syrup in the medicine.
BB: Fitting indeed! Reality TV is kind of spooky in general. As viewers, we’re never quite sure what’s real or scripted, and both options could be horrifying. There’s usually some sort of moral code present as part of the format of these shows, even if it’s absurd like in the case of Too Hot to Handle, where contestants are reprimanded for hooking up. These moral codes are essential for the drama to unfold. If there’s no morality there can’t be anyone behaving badly.
SWK: Right, it creates a system or a set of expectations around behaviour on these shows for contestants, and for viewers. I think this is partly why when a contestant pulls a grift, it throws us off as viewers.
BB: There was an article that came out following season 2 of Too Hot to Handle that revealed the show’s winner, Marvin Anthony, appeared in not one, not two, but four reality TV dating shows in the span of a year. In addition to Too Hot to Handle, he starred in Les Marseillais vs Le Reste Du Monde, Les Princes et Les Princesses de l'Amour, and Love Island France, “falling in love” with multiple women and taking home $55,000 in the process. He’s certainly not the first person to make a career off of reality TV dating, but damn we were rooting for you, Marvin!
SWK: Wow, he's turned falling in love on television into a full-time job, in English and French. I think reality TV contestants are by default, clout chasers. Everyone goes on these shows to gain some level of fame, money, followers and/or a nice all-expenses-paid vacation. But Marvin's off-screen behaviour hinted at something more than just clout chasing. His pattern of going on these shows and representing himself as just "a guy looking for love" to viewers as well as the women on these shows feels like it tips him from clout chaser into grifter territory.
BB: It’s grifter territory for sure. Especially since reality TV dating shows like Too Hot to Handle or The Bachelor hold “being there for the right reasons” as the highest moral standard.
SWK: Yeah, these shows create their own standards of behaviour and we adapt to them as viewers, we're easy to sway!
BB: Unfortunately, these shows also attract participants who are actually looking to find love. Too Hot to Handle is slightly more puritanical in its moral code—it chastises the contestants for being young, hot, and wanting to have fun (how dare they!) and teaches them to “truly get to know each other”. Marvin knew the part he was playing and delivered what most of the viewers were there to see—an Fboy finally learning to love. When it turned out he wasn’t interested in that, could we really be surprised? After all, that’s why he was cast in the first place.
SWK: We know reality TV is about the illusion, but as long as the shared contract we have with producers is fulfilled—basically, entertain us with trash—we're happy to go along for the ride. There are agreed-upon limitations on how much fakeness we expect or a certain level of sham we know we're participating in.
BB: Absolutely, the contract supports the fantasy (whichever type it may be) at any cost. So in the case of Marvin, we had to believe he was falling in love for the show to work. In other shows like the Real Housewives franchise, the contract between the stars and producers is similar: the stars must pretend that their relationships are authentic for the show to work. That’s not to say that the women on the Real Housewives shows don’t form genuine connections but their encounters are heavily mediated by the show. There needs to be just enough “reality” to keep the viewer invested.
SWK: Yeah, the Marvin type of grifting feels different from the catfishing we see on The Circle, where catfishing is an accepted part of the game and viewers are let in on the setup. We might end up rooting for a contestant pretending to be Lance Bass or a hot girl, or feeling like they're playing the game well and in fact deserve to win based on how well they manipulated other contestants. In these instances, we're more likely to reward catfishing behaviour, perhaps because we've consented to it from the jump and feel we're still aware of the narrative we're consuming.
BB: I think it all depends on the type of fantasy we’re buying into. The fantasy with Melinda and Marvin was that they were the perfect couple falling in love. With the catfishing contestants on The Circle, that’s kind of its own fantasy because we’re in on it—we get to live vicariously through the catfish. In shows like Selling Sunset or the Real Housewives franchise, the stars slowly morph into unrecognizable versions of themselves through plastic surgery so really we’re all getting catfished as viewers, physically and mentally. We’re the fish now.
SWK: (Insert fish noises here) There's a sincere living the fantasy moment about watching catfishing unfold in the cheery, upbeat game show tone of The Circle. It feels less harmful than a real-life experience, especially when other contestants meet each other on the show and find out someone is fake, but don't seem too bothered by it and recognize it's part of playing the game. This tone is a stark contrast to a show like Catfish, which feels like it's exploiting its subjects, catching them in their most humiliating moments when the ugly truth is revealed.
BB: Right, so much depends on the tone of the show. A light-hearted tone gives us permission to root for a contestant that could easily be villainized in a different context.
SWK: On the subject of grifting in reality TV, we can't forget the whole Bachelor in Paradise scandal with Jenna Cooper. She was publicly humiliated with a series of texts allegedly sent by her about how her relationship with Jordan, the guy she got engaged to on the show, was fake and that she had a sugar daddy. She worked with lawyers for two years to expose the fake texts and clear her name, but not before Bachelor Nation turned on her and Jordan dumped her. It was like a reverse grift situation, where she had to prove to the audience she was for real. The way she was treated, compared to a known grifter like Marvin, felt gendered, and reflects other gendered issues in the reality TV show world.
BB: Ah the ol’ reverse grift! And then, of course, there are the reality TV stars who commit straight-up fraud, like Teresa and Joe Giudice who were indicted on federal charges. It seems like some stars fall into this trap where they need to maintain the appearance of their extravagant wealth and they are willing to commit fraud to do so. The shows monetize the fallout of the crimes, which results in these stars making money off their own misconduct. They can do no wrong. There’s no such thing as bad press, I suppose.
SWK: Yeah, in the world of reality TV, even crime can be spun around and integrated into the storyline. The grifters and fraudsters on reality TV shows are also reflective of the great summer of scams of 2018 and the steady rise of grifters in recent years. Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, the Fyre Fest dude, the Tinder Swindler, etc. Scamming has become normalized in our everyday lives, and in pop culture.
BB: We’re definitely fascinated by people breaking the law and getting exposed online, especially if they’re already famous. Reality TV gives people the opportunity to see a grift play out, it’s like true crime in real-time.
SWK: There is something deeply grotesque and disturbing about how entertained we are by the manipulation, the lying, and the over-the-top wealth. The crystal candlestick holders, the mirrored tables, the fake flowers, the $60K children's birthday parties of the Real Housewives franchise. The lavish paid vacations for hot people trying to find love, the thousands of fresh cut roses of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. It's absurd and gross. But like true crime, we can't look away and we keep watching.
BB: So are we signing up to be grifted when we watch these shows? We know we’re supporting the wealth of reality TV stars simply by watching.
SWK: Probably! We sign up to be grifted, and we are giving it our attention, but it's also not real for us. We don't have to live the lives of reality TV stars, and even when we get sucked in, we can always look away or look at something else. It's a painless grift for us as viewers, the way we get to watch, or not watch.
The viewers at home are dying to know…
Favourite reality TV grifter:
SWK: I was really here for the Jenna Cooper redemption story, where she un-grifted herself in a highly legal and public fashion.
BB: Tom from The Real Housewives of New York, whose affair gave us one of the best lines of reality TV ever from Countess Luann: “How could you do this to me… question mark.”
Most improved grifter:
SWK: Teresa Giudice recently got remarried and judging by the height and cost of her wedding hair, she's no longer in jail!
BB: NeNe Leakes from The Real Housewives of Atlanta, who proudly wears (and sells) a sweatshirt with her own mug shot on it. Now that’s a redemption story.