Is this the real world?

The long running MTV show “The Real World” is in Brooklyn this year. You’d think that maybe being in Brooklyn they’d be keeping it real. Now, I’ve never watched it but I found this amusing. The show highlights eight roommates living supposedly in “the real world.”

But the amusing this is out of the eight you have these three:

1) Transexual Katelynn Casanelli, 24, computer geek who is a Tae Kwon Do black belt.

2) J.D. Ordonez, 22, a homosexual competitive swimmer and dolphin trainer.

3) Sarah Rice, 22, a bisexual sexually abused artist.

That’s just a typical slice of life, right?

I remember when MTV first came out. I loved it. Watching videos. Men at Work. The Hooters. The Talking Heads.

But Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Lester Bangs in the movie “Almost Famous” nailed it when he said the music industry was in danger of becoming simply “an industry of… cool.” There’s no better way to succinctly define what MTV has aspired to become.

But in order to be cool and edgy MTV has had to keep pushing the envelope. But the envelope only had so much elasticity. I think that the envelope is gone. Torn to shreds. There are no rules anymore so in an effort to shock, the entire network has just became a freak show parade of 15 year old girls yelling at their parents they want a Beemer, 19 year old transsexuals arguing with a Mormon at 2:30 in the morning, and the existential angst of spoiled high cheekboned rich kids deciding who to sleep with next.

Are they trying to convince young people that despite their own experiences that this more accurately represents reality. I mean, do young people even watch this stuff anymore or does it seem to them like Rolling Stone always seemed to me, aging hipsters struggling to seem relevant?

H/T Aint it Cool