In important ways, “reality” TV is more artificial than the scripted alternative. That is because the act of having a camera pointed at you and microphones gathering your every utterance alters your behavior and very thoughts in a way that having a script to guide your words and actions constrains.

Thus, the reality yearned for by viewers is far more illusive than it first appears. Nothing observed remains unaltered, and nothing is revealed by an examination under the condition of surveillance. The artificiality of this simulacrum of reality is assured because the camera itself causes those exposed to it to act like they believe versions of themselves would act in such a situation.

It becomes a simulation all the way down — and up, right on to the viewer, whose reactions also become those of the ones they imagine a viewer like them should have, and would have if the contestants on screen could but observe them too.