Springerfield

When I came home from the hospital after my stem cell therapy, I had to stay at a large hotel-like guest house with my mother. There were a number of reasons, but the long and the short of it is we could not avoid eachother for several, several weeks. It was an amazing house in a beautiful part of town, but being trapped in ~300 square feet with somebody that already somewhat drives you bonkers will fray anybody's nerves.

The view from my hospital room during the therapy. Mom was here too.

A lot of this had to do with cable TV. I'm a person who can entertain myself for hours with one thing, whether it's a book, knitting, videos, etc. Mom, on the other hand, gets bored very easily. It's just the kind of person she is. Since neither of us were interested in getting lost in the big city trying to find some fun, this meant Mom watched a lot of YouTube and especially television.

Mom doesn't really tend to like casual, funny or uplifting TV. I had to ask her to stop watching Forensic Files, because hearing every detail of horrific murders and violent sex crimes for hours on end started to bother me around day 10. (Mom also refuses to wear headphones.) After that, she started watching the next thing down on the grand tier list of all TV shows: Jerry Springer.

I'm not a bleeding-heart, but something strikes me as intrinsically wrong about the Jerry Springer show, and all other shows in that genre such as Dr. Phil, Maury Povich, Steve Wilkos and so on. A stern older man in nice clothes talking down to young people doesn't strike me as good TV. It gives people of my mother's generation and earlier a thing to point to and say "See? Kids these days are ruining this country with their drugs and hip-hop and pre-marital sex, back in the 50's/60's/70's we would never __________."

Harmless old-timey fun. Young people can cherry pick too.

Recently, I was browsing Reddit. I deactivated my account long ago when I got sick of the same old memes and "discussions," but occasionally I like to kill time by checking out some old haunts. I check the front page, some technology subreddits, some related to video games, and... r/trashy. The subreddit's own stickied post, written by a moderator, says: "/r/trashy is a celebration of trash: people, things, media, etc. that boldly and shamelessly violates social conventions and cultural norms. Satisfy our voyeuristic drives by sharing trashy images, videos, stories, and fashion. All forms of trash are eagerly welcomed."

Reading the posts on this subreddit, I was forced off my high horse and faced with a conundrum. Why do I love seeing pictures and videos of people drinking while pregnant, urinating in public, fighting in Wal-Mart, defacing art and generally being disgusting, offensive human beings... and yet goofy, light-hearted Jerry Springer is what sets me off? Some fully-clothed "strippers" having a staged slap fight is Sesame Street in comparison. 

Sample r/trashy post. Took a minute to find a good example that wasn't NSFW.

There isn't any closure on Reddit, unless a commenter chimes in with a news article. You look, say to yourself "that's horrible," maybe leave a comment, then you move on to the next one. Nobody announces "You ARE the father," there's no jeering crowd or jilted ex running backstage to cry. No staff roll, just the knowledge that somewhere in the world, somebody changed a diaper on a store display or wrote political graffiti on a goddamn crab.

So why do I do it, and why is it "better" in my mind than trash TV? I'm not entertained, or at least I'd like to think not. But if I don't find some enjoyment in it, then why do I go down the rabbit hole every other week? I asked my older brother for his opinion and he offered that, while different, Jerry Springer and r/trashy fill the same needs for different people.

It makes sense to me. I'm not a fan of theatrics or unnecessary showmanship. In the time it takes to watch an episode of Springer, I can watch my fill of street fights and ugly breakups on Reddit with time to spare. Comparing Dr. Phil to something I might look at is like comparing Operation! to an anatomy textbook. I want the gritty details and I want them now, not scrubbed clean, neatly packaged and handed to me by CBS. It's not realpolitik.

Someone with a smartphone and no shame is better than TV in my opinion.

That still leaves the question of why I look in the first place, even if it disgusts me, upsets me or makes me angry.

I tend to view myself as humble, but the truth is I think of myself as "better" than almost all of the people who end up on the front page of r/trashy. You can talk all day about the intersection of drug use, poverty and poor education in practically any area in the United States. I certainly did in a number of college classes; there's an example of my privilege right there. I'm not a bad person, nor am I ignorant; I know some people weren't "raised right," given the same sort of societal training that I was. I know hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people have it infinitely worse than I could ever imagine, right here in my own country.

But to a certain degree, I think there's some schadenfreude in all of us. A paper by the American Pychological Association titled "Self-Esteem, Self-Affirmation and Schadenfreude" found that "the misfortunes of others can evoke schadenfreude because they provide people with an opportunity to protect or enhance their self-views." In other words, watching somebody be publicly shamed or ridiculed (say, via a post on the Internet) for something that that damages my ego gives me gratification. Put even simpler, r/trashy reinforces that my behavior and morals are correct and good by putting counterexamples up for everyone to laugh at.

So when I laugh at some people brawling at a Chuck E. Cheese, I'm not laughing at the fight itself, or the fact that people think it's okay. I'm not exactly lording it over them that I know not to do such a thing. The shared understanding that such behavior is not okay is just comforting, in a strange way.

Image credits:
Lucky Strike ad: Silberio77 [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]