Your experience with Reality TV

Know anyone who's ever been on Reality TV? Candid-Camera shows count.

You yourself been caught on camera?

Personally this scares the shit outta me. I don't want my 15-minutes-of-fame to be spent without my permission and in a shitty non-entertaining manner.

Lemme know if you, or anyone you know, has had an experience on reality- or candid-television. What show, when?

Game shows count!

I've worked on one (Last Comic Standing). And I also appeared on a very shortlived MTV show where people sat in a trailor and confessed deep dark secrets and embarassing stories. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of it.

And to quell your fear about being ambushed in a shitty non entertaining manner and aired to millions... they cannot do that without your written permission. So if Peter Funt were ambush you from inside a potted plant, he can't air the bit without you signing away the rights. The thing is most people are so caught up in the moment and want their 15 minutes of fame that they sign whatever you slap down in front of them.

The only time this does not apply would be on something like Dateline's "To Catch a Preditor" series. So stay away mingling with teens online and you should be alright.

Wow, I know how to kill a thread.

My antics have only ever garnered attention from school newspapers.

this thread has the potential to be much more interesting than its title alone led me to believe.

because based solely on that, i just came here to say that my experience is generally "shutting the TV off".

My roomate has been on springer twice.

I caught a few episodes of the first season of survivor. Thats my experience with Reality TV

hotcurry is right about them not being able to air any footage of you without you signing a written release. The problem with hidden camera/prank shows is that this does not prevent them from pranking you in the first place, they still just pick some unlucky schmoe and fuck with him or her, and then think it's going to all be OK, because they're offering the person the cance to be on TV.
I saw a show recently (I think it was on VH1) about people who've had bad experiences with reality TV. One guy that was pranked on a hidden camera show at an airport, with the TV personality dressed up as a security officer. It was really horrible and rediculous what they were making this poor guy do, and it being at an airport (and this was after 9/11 and all the new security protocols) the guy felt like he had to comply, or be arrested. Anyways, the victim is suing the TV show, as well as the airport for a shit load in punitive damages.
I think that it's horrible that these shows are allowed to impersonate police officers (and other officials) and get away with it, when anyone else who did such a thing would be charged with a crime.
Maybe if more people start suing instead of signing the release for their 15 minutes of fame, then these shows will stop.

something vaguely similar happened in Belgium a while back, this hidden camera show pulled a prank at a morgue where they had an actor made up as a corpse lie on a slab.
the morgue employed these middleaged/elderly immigrant ladies, of the highly superstitious sort, to clean the place.

i'm sure you see this coming but when the ladies were cleaning around the table with the "corpse" the actor would lurch upright and shamble towards the cleaning ladies while uttering some scary moans and such.

at any rate, the cleaning ladies exited the morgue in such a haste they fell down the concrete steps outside and suffered some quite nasty broken bones not to mention mortal terror. (something tells me scaring old superstitious ladies like that isn't too good on the old ticker either)

Lucky they didn't cut off his head, put a stake through his heart, or set him on fire!

Cause that's what I would've done. I keep my eyes open for signs of the impending zombie apocalypse.

I would totally love to see a prank show backfire like that on those fuckers. Like if Ashton Kucher were to punk someone like Shuge Knight, and have Shuge just beat the piss out of one of Kucher's lackies, or better yet Kucher himself. Or even better still, pull out a nine and cap the phule.

I used to work with Mandy from 1st season Temptation Island. It makes me strongly question any validity to the "reality" portion of reality television, as in real life she wasn't bitchy at all and was about 30X more attractive than she was on the show.