The Influence Of Dating Shows

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English fashion model Georgia Jagger has made the bold statement that “Reality TV rots people 's brains”. This seems to be a common opinion among many people. Which leads one to wonder why these reality programs are still created year after year despite all of the constant criticism. The reality T.V. show that continue to reel in audiences on a weekly basis seem to be those which have to do with finding love. These types of shows can, and are often, altered to keep the genre from going stale, but essentially they all serve the same purpose. Dating shows aim to match up complete stranger in an attempt of finding “true love”. Although most shows recycle the same program with slight differences, their audience does not seem to go down. The reason …show more content…

One of the more popular dating shows in the past decade is The Bachelor. This show is described as, “True love gets the reality treatment in this long-running dating game, in which a successful bachelor romances a number of beauties. The list of possible paramours is reduced each week until he gives a final red rose to one of them” (TVGuide.com). In this program a bachelor choses to give roses to those he would like to stay in the house. This is typically given to those he would like to get to know better. The bachelor’s decision is based on the multiple interactions made with the contestants, such as dates, or simply observing how the women interact with one another. On some occasions the bachelor will either hand out more, or less, roses than expected. Ultimately, the point of the show is for the bachelor and the contestant which he desires most to fall in love and live “happily ever after”. However, a majority of the time this does not go to plan. According to statistics from the article “The Data Behind The Bachelor & The Bachelorette”, “Only two-thirds of the seasons end with proposals. Then out of those …show more content…

A drastic change from the average dating show. According to MTV.com, the program’s description reads, “If your perfect match was standing right in front of you, would you even know it? MTV selected 10 gorgeous single women and 10 hot single guys and put them through an extensive matchmaking process to find their perfect match.” The premise of this show keeps the main objective of helping singles find true love, but it is done so with a creative twist. Before the contestants are even sent to the location of the game show, or even met anyone who will share the experience with them, their “perfect match” has already been discovered through a dating website style algorithm. It is then there goal to discover who their perfect match is out of the ten possible matches. This is done by competing in weekly challenges and interacting with each other. At the end of every episode they all pair up and are told how many correct matches have been made, but the catch is that the contestants do not know which couples are a match. If by the end of the designated time all ten matches have been found, not only do they find love, but they split a cash prize. In the article “Why Do We Tune In To Reality TV?” the author discusses the multiple reasons as to why reality television is so popular and explains that, “Some were drawn to shows like Temptation Island because they found the singles "so beautiful" and "like people they

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