So, I have this job. I like the work, it pays well, and offers fascinating coworkers. (I’ll skip the Trumpcultie militia members who still refuse to cover their damn noses with masks.)
Backstory: for various safety reasons we can’t bring in earphones or our own players. We have to listen to radios, which in my area are usually commandeered to heavily auto-tuned pop music or Country-Western. (These people freak out about silence.)
Some of my work group are *absolutely addicted* to a morning radio show’s ‘Cheaters’ drama. They might actually be more dangerous than the Trumpers (although there seems to be a lot of understandable overlap in the two groups.)
Basically, the show hosts pretend to take calls from people worried that their significant others are cheating on them. In the case of a local radio station, the gimmick is a supposed ‘Staycation Setup’ where the station calls the suspected cheater and offers them a luxury getaway to a local hotel. For free, as a promotional deal, no taxes. The only ‘catch’ is that the cheater has to be convinced to name the person with whom they want to share the hotel suite.
Inevitably, the cheater names someone other than their worried significant other. The station reveals the aggrieved person is listening on the line, usually just after that person lets loose with a burst of bleeped-out profanity.
The station lets it play out, often with a token offer of relationship counseling.
My coworkers eat this up.
I’ve snarked that it’s fake.
They don’t care. I’m not sure they knew or not, but I’ve been told: ‘Shush, you, we’re in it for the drama’.
It’s really bad drama. It’s banal drama. I don’t actually give a crap about the characters.
It’s easily researched to be fake, if you know *anything* about libel laws and the FCC.
My coworkers don’t care that no one in the history of this show has, on the air:
Said ‘Not interested, sorry.’
Challenged the name and location of the hotel. (The hotel doesn’t exist.)
Agreed to the ‘prize’ but given the name of their anxious significant other.
Asked if bringing a threesome is okay.
Asked if just going by themselves is okay. (Writers on deadlines would kill for this.)
Asked for a copy of the station’s legal policies on promotions and prizes.
Brought up FCC rules and regulations about when a station can air a recorded statement.
My coworkers don’t care that the ‘cheaters hotel’ gimmick is a long-known and documented entertainment script run by hundreds of radio stations, and supported by some fairly-big studios churning out recorded sessions by actors. Even when they can plainly hear that it’s the *same actors over and over* playing different roles.
I can’t fault the actors. Money is money.
Fantasy has its uses. I write fantasy.
C.S. Lewis took Tolkien to task for fantasy mythmaking, as a ‘lie breathed through silver’. Tolkien answered him with a good-if-bombastic defense of fantasy (even though my rationalist self cringes at some of his core excuses.)
Terry Pratchett’s iconic Death character in the Discworld novels muses that humans must learn to believe in little lies, before they can make concepts like Justice and Mercy a reality.
It’s fine if the fantasy is openly even just entertainment, but the pretense that it’s reality is exactly why we have 20% of America convinced that Donald J. Trump was somehow a great businessman.
Anyone actually paying attention (to anything besides Fox News and rightwing tabloids and radio) knew that ‘The Apprentice’ scripted reality show saved Don the Con from ending up as a used-car dealer in Queens. Or in prison in 2008.
It also shows that these folks are happy to trade verified realities for fraudulent fantasies. And they don’t have the mental toolset of skepticism and information research to guide them away from the most dangerous crap.
Another terrifying side effect of this Larry-King-Live scripted relationship drama is that it doesn’t teach anyone how to be in a real relationship. Believe me, I listen to the bad life choices these same coworkers seem to make over and over again. It’s depressing.
Today, Brad is cheating on Tracy, and Tracy catches him!
Tomorrow, a white Christian Dominionist military coup happens right under people’s noses…and they’ll be treating it like a fake radio drama.
These days when the cheaters section comes on, I just put in earplugs and whish we could bring in our own music.