You may call reality TV a ‘guilty pleasure’ or, if you’re feeling less charitable, ‘trash’ or ‘train-wreck TV,’ or perhaps, like the respected broadcast journalist Ted Koppel, you may wonder aloud if the genre marks the end of civilization. The truth is that vastly more of us are watching reality TV than not, and those who avert their eyes are still haunted by its apparitions. One study found that college students who claimed not to watch reality TV still knew specific details about these shows. But even for those who really don’t watch, these programs have become part of the cultural ether. Elements from them reach us via product lines, online posts, advertisements, snippets of conversation, and references in the media.

We know why reality TV shows keep getting produced. They’re relatively quick and cheap to make, and they’re potentially very profitable. From the supply side, it’s a no-brainer. But why do we keep tuning in? Research has suggested that people get several different ‘gratifications’ from these programs. Though we might not wish to admit it, one of these is voyeuristic pleasure. We're excited and curious to watch people in their unguarded moments, particularly when we suspect there might be a disaster on the horizon. But paradoxically, another reason people tune in is for social connection. This connection happens when fans hold viewing parties, chat with their friends about developments on the shows, and engage with the content through interactive websites, social media feeds, and message boards.

Of course, there are other things we could be watching. But one unique appeal of this genre is that it involves real people reacting to (more or less) real-world stimuli, which facilitates our putting ourselves in the participants’ shoes in ways that scripted TV does not. Archetypes, the lifeblood of reality TV, further help us to make connections with these characters. Disparate and over-the-top personalities who fit into broad, easily recognizable social categories (Mom, Cheerleader, Nerd) are sought out by producers to form the vertebrae of many of these shows. And indeed, the performers themselves grab hold of these archetypes and play up to them.

It may seem counterintuitive that a genre focused on zany personalities and extreme cases could have anything to teach a sociologist about our own ordinary lives. Yet scholars have long argued that we can learn about core features of society by looking at the extremes. The same behaviors that make reality TV participants fascinating to watch are also present within our culture. These people are larger-than-life versions, for instance, of our own materialism, our obsessions with our bodies, and the steps we take to mold our children in our own images. In presenting these people, the reality genre turns over stones that scripted programming leave undisturbed. These programs cast a searchlight on the center as well as the hidden nooks of society. Reality TV’s perimeter is not all-encompassing, but even its absences are instructive.

For all of its larger-than-life aspects, the genre reflects how dearly we cling to simplistic, collective notions about who and what is legitimate and ‘real.’ It spotlights the categories and meanings that we take for granted as essential, biological, and unshakable. But in doing so, it allows us to poke at these ideas, revealing the socially constructed natures of what we consider to be ‘true,’ ‘normal,’ ‘healthy,’ ‘legitimate,’ and ‘good’—in areas ranging from relationships to wealth or child rearing. In effect, it exposes reality itself to be a social fiction. To be clear, to point out that many of our everyday distinctions are social fictions is not to suggest they are unimportant. Just the opposite: these fictions shape our experiences of the world in crucial ways. As the sociologists W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas have pointed out, ‘If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.’ Many of the categories we use to organize our worlds are at once ‘unreal’ in that they are socially manufactured and ‘real’ in that they impact our lives. Reality TV, has much to teach us about those unreal realities.