Essays on the convergence of psychology, media and tech by a licensed therapist and former TV editor
Love Is Blind, on Netflix is an imperfect piece of reality TV that captivated many of us this last little bit. It was uneven and a bit confused about it’s own format, but there were parts of it that were more ‘real’ than almost any reality scenes I have can remember. I will focus on […]
Scandal! A continuity flub from a pickup-scene sets the internet ablaze and now the “reality” of reality is being questioned afresh. As a former reality TV editor there was no time in my long career that I thought reality tv was real. I have recorded my own voice in a whisper when needing to make […]
When I told my father I was going back to school to get my masters and become a psychotherapist he replied with a question: “You want to sit in a room all day and hear people talk about their dicks?” As I think and write this many years later I can’t remember a single conversation […]
photo credit: Pol Ubeda Hevbas
The Shadow Self is a psychological concept that describes the negative and disowned parts of ourselves.
Read this, please. In fact there is no reading required, but you do have to click on it. The very learned, accomplished and insightful Jaron Lanier will lay out some concepts for you, and I will perform the usual meta-riff below which may or may not be directly related to the above piece that mother […]
Trigger warning: I’ll be discussing female plastic surgery, POC, and sexism even though I am white, cis gendered and my pronouns are him/his. In this post I am exploring the ways that reality TV manipulates our consciousness…the vehicle is an article that focuses on plastic surgery and female body image. With social media we are […]
If you watched this story unfold it was corny AF, of course, but most expressions of intimacy on the screen are. I remember cringing at sex scenes when I was young…not just because I was uncomfortable with sex, but also because my young brain knew that it was phony baloney. This relationship, and the way […]
One of my favorite Instagram tags is #subwaycreatures because it is full of point-and-shoot ridiculousness that speaks to diversity, civic engagement and humor. If there were an upside down world of subwaycreatures it would be the street-fight hashtags and the YouTube fight pages. Both are born of cultural schadenfreude and both are possible thanks to […]
If a reality show is going to have legs, it has to have a great cast. Having a good cast is a complex alchemy that is very much like a band. It’s not about skill, or experience or looks or likability, though that’s all a help. A good cast is about chemistry. In many instances […]
This article, by the intelligent and culturally engaged Amanda Hess, is a series of short essays about the way that fan culture has affected (infected?) election politics. The theme I am drawn to jump off from is the mirror between reality TV subject and the public. Namely, if any member of the public can easily […]
