Reality TV / Vlogs

Taking a break from beach dreaming in my Belize Countdown...to bring you something a little different, a slice of my life, I guess you could say...and other ways I've been spending my time.

It all started, I believe, with Martijn Doolard, the Dutchman who bought a rustic, century-old mountain cabin in the Italian Alps. I was looking for entertainment, for an escape, and YouTube was readily available on the TVs in the house, on my laptop and my iPad. I'd often take the latter to bed with me and watch as I trailed off to sleep. The mountain aesthetic and slow-pace of Doolard's solitude on a hillside, remodeling the quarried stone structures on his secluded property and cooking over a firepit gave me peace. It was a bit of social media escapism.

Here's Doolard's YouTube channel, in case you want to check it out: https://www.youtube.com/c/MartijnDoolaard

I'm not a very handy person, so watching all the DIY remodeling and construction was fascinating to me. He pays respect to both nature and Italian Alps culture and I was actually learning something as I watched. And like I said, the peaceful aesthetic would most nights help me wind down before sleep. I binged the first 20-plus episodes shot over the last year, and at some point last month, caught up to where he is currently. He vlogs every Monday, encapsulating a week-in-the-life of Martijn Doolard.

Following the YouTube/Social Media Algorithm, several similar vlogs were recommended for me to watch. The ones with scantily-clad young woman enjoying nature were natural clickbait, so I started watching vanwives (lesbians in Nova Scotian wilderness), the Cottage Fairy (single woman living simply in the Washington mountains), Isabel Paige (living "her best life" with a boyfriend, also WA), Stephi Lee (nomad artist living in a van) and Nikki Delventhal (single with dog in Prius). There are links to all their channels below, if you'd like to preview some of their content.

What these vloggers offered was escapism and maybe a little inspiration for my minimalist, live-off-the-land ideal. That's how I'd like to spend the remainder of my days. And yes, there was a little curious voyeurism.

But let's face it, at it's core, it's simple entertainment. It's like all the "reality" portrayed on voyeuristic televised shows on cable. I was just getting what I felt was a little closer to reality on YouTube. But to be honest, there's NOT a lot of difference here. These slickly-produced 20-30 minute day-in-the-life vlogs were a big commitment (and sometimes production, involving camera people, drones, scripts, etc.). They were hardly a slice of "real life," as they try so hard to portray.

Take for instance, shoots and reshoots. As an example, we'll consider a scene in Doolard's cabin build-out vlogs. He'll take his pull-behind trailer down the narrow mountain roads with his mini-SUV. There will inevitably be shots from behind the wheel, from his property as he departs, from the destination as he arrives. Now, Martijn doesn't have a film crew following him around. This isn't a documentary in the classic sense. It's a single YouTuber with a couple cameras and a drone and some tripods. So in order to get all those slice-of-life shots, he has to set up the camera, considering framing, lighting, sound, etc., then film himself driving, then stop the car and go back for his equipment. If the camera is out of focus, the tripod falls over or the clouds suddenly obscure the lighting, he's likely to reset and refilm the shot (like in the movies). And while he might be catching raw moments in his life, they are staged and filmed. They might not have been scripted, but a lot of time and effort goes into being a one-man film crew.

These are things that normal viewers may not consider. They've been lulled into believing what they see actually happened as they see it on-screen, forgetting there's sometimes "story boarding," reshooting and editing involved, like on a reality TV show.

I'm sometimes even lulled into forgetting that what I'm watching is mostly staged. These vloggers, or content creators, are "acting" for their own camera to produce "quality" content that they can then monetize. And many of them make a decent living, for minimalist type lifestyles.

Some of them even have an interesting back story. As Jasmine Cherry points out in this long-winded video (you can skip to 13:27 for relevant content), there is an element of privilege. These vloggers have the money, equipment and time to shoot and edit and upload these 20-30 minute videos, on average. For some, it becomes a full-time job with a livable income stream as a result. Others go so far as to hock wares, even their own creations, on their channels, while still others will grovel and beg for support--through Patreon, GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sources.

And let's remember, it's SOCIAL MEDIA on the Internet...everything is not exactly how it seems! (i.e. you can't trust everything you see on the Interwebz). Take everything, even these "reality" vlogs with a grain of salt (or a pitcher of Margaritas!). Again, content creators are, in a sense, actors putting up a perception of their reality. Take, for instance, Isabel Paige (not her real last name), who was outed by Ms. Cherry, as painting a very skewed picture of her reality--living in the wilderness in a tiny home she built. In reality, her family owns a farm where they once grew weed (legally, of course) and had an ON-GRID VACATION HOME. This was never shown, of course, or explained on Isabel's vlog until she was outed. She and her boyfriend had been living large in her parent's vacation home in the Washington wilderness, about 30 minutes (not an hour, as she claimed) from the nearest town. In fact, there were modern neighborhoods nearby in her river valley. They were not roughing it in a poorly-accommodated tiny house in relative seclusion. She's one of the privileged class who had no problem downplaying her financial situation and even groveling for money to sustain her simple lifestyle. Um, grifter much?

So much for the fantasy of living honestly and modestly off the grid and off the land...

Why did I take a break from the positivity of my Belize countdown to talk about this? Because people are being duped by these new reality stars. Nikki Delventhal was once a model, hairstylist and contestant on The Bachelor. She isn't homeless and surviving nature in her car because she HAS TO. But all of her vlogs center around her "roughing it." She's a little more transparent about her privilege and doesn't beg for money, but she does have a Patreon account with subscribers who support her channel. It's just a replacement for reality TV shows, like "Survivor" or "Big Brother," shows that I cannot believe are still going decades later!

Lowest common denominator entertainment is what I call it.

I turned to YouTube as a replacement for cable. I got sucked into the "real life" drama of these people living "off grid," or untraditionally. It vibrated on my frequency...and to be honest, I got tired of falling asleep to Eckhart Tolle, Mooji or hypnotic music videos that play all night. This was my relaxing, alternative escape.

When I learned yesterday of the "real life" drama between vloggers Cherry and Paige, I was knocked back to reality. Anyway, we'll get you back to the Belize Countdown here shortly. In the meantime, check out any of these vloggers' YouTube channels:

vanwives: https://www.youtube.com/c/Vanwives
The Cottage Fairy: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheCottageFairy
Isabel Paige: https://www.youtube.com/user/pinsandneedleswithme
Stephi Lee: https://www.youtube.com/c/StephiLee
Nikki Delventhal: https://www.youtube.com/c/NikkiDelventhal

Again, these are shared for entertainment purposes only...and yes, I'll admit, a couple of them were/are guilty pleasures. Enjoy!

Tax Evasion leads off Sunday Morning...REALLY?!?! CBS!

This morning, CBS Sunday Morning led off with a story about tax evasion and people cheating on their taxes. Okay, I understand it is April 15th, but I've had my tax return for months now, so why is this a story. The 100th Anniversary of the Titanic disaster is much more compelling to me than the end of tax season and how people "cheat" Uncle Sam. I mean, I didn't hear them talk ONE TIME about all the loopholes that billionaires and corporations use to cheat the system. Instead, they focused on hardworking individuals and questioned their moral character. REALLY???

Look at it from an everyday Joe's perspective. Let's say your Uncle Sam was a financial mess who bummed money off you every year to the tune of thousands. The last you heard about your frivolous uncle was that he was driving down Wall Street just throwing handfulls of one dollar bills out the window of his gas-guzzling H2. Tell me how you'd feel about loaning him an extra $100 next week. Do you think your moral compass would guide you toward your wallet? Or would you tell a white lie that you just didn't have it this week?

Is that really cheating him? Even if the government told you that you HAD to give him the money, I wouldn't think twice if you fudged your way out of it. Now, let's get onto something more interesting CBS. Who's vetting these stories anyway?!?! Where are the feel-good stories that drew us into your program years ago?

Black Pop Culture History: The Jeffersons

When The Jeffersons hit the airwaves in 1975, I was a 6-year-old living in a white middle class neighborhood, attending a parochial school that had barely a handful of black students. The local country club where most of my friends spent their summers did not allow people of color. We belonged to the Jordan Y for that very reason. The most black kids I had been around was in a pee-wee football league at Riverside Park. To me, the Indianapolis park at 30th and Riverside Drive was “inner city.” Needless to say, I was pretty far removed from the African-American experience.

My parents didn’t let us watch All in the Family, so I doubt I saw the spin-off about an African-American couple “moving on up to the Eastside” when it first aired in '75. I do remember watching it a few years later, but didn’t think anything of its mostly black cast. By that time, other shows like Good Times and Sanford and Sons had also hit the airwaves, so I was reasonably accustomed to seeing “sitcoms of color,” shall we say. (Yeah, just try to get the Sanford and Sons theme music out of your head now, LOL!!!)

You may ask, “Why highlight a 70’s television series in honor of Black History Month?” Well, The Jeffersons is the longest-running series with a predominantly African-American cast in the history of American television. It received eight Golden Globe and eleven Emmy nominations, including six consecutive Lead Actress Emmy nominations (1979-1985) for Mrs. Jefferson actress Isabel Sanford. She won in 1981 and became only the second black female to do so. Gail Fisher was the first in 1970, winning an Emmy for her role on the hit series Mannix (annotated, Wikipedia).

By the the time Mrs. Jefferson won her Emmy Award, my family had moved to the Northeast side near Arlington High School. The popular CBS sitcom more closely reflected the neighbors I grew up amongst, including many middle to upper-middle class black families. Maybe that too lessened the shows impact on me as an adolescent. Still, you didn’t see many of those families represented on prime time television. And you certainly never saw mixed marriages. By the way, none of my neighbors had housekeepers, at least not to my knowledge, so maybe we were just a solid middle-class neighborhood. Either way, it was a much different neighborhood and more culturally diverse than Broad Ripple. My paper route took me close to the feared Jamestown Apartments at 46th and Arlington. I no longer attended parochial school, but a more integrated public school, IPS No. 106 (aka Robert Lee Frost School). In hindsight, I am glad my parents made that move when I was just nine years old.

The Jeffersons is significant not just for it’s record run on television, nor for it’s sizeable audience (finishing just behind Dallas and 60 Minutes in the Neilsen ratings for 1981-82 season), but for paving the way for other popular shows, like The Cosby Show and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It’s cultural impact did not go unnoticed by Bret Fetzer, who wrote on the Super 70’s website, “The black and white mix of the cast allowed for a sharply satirical take on race relations, which managed to have a genuine sense of hope while never glossing over the complexity of racial tension…” The show broke a number of television taboos, depicting an interracial marriage in the Jefferson’s neighbors, Tom and Helen Willis, and an African-American transgendered character, as the Racialicious blog points out. These were no small matters in the late 70’s. In fact, the former led to a research paper shared in 1976 at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Speech Communication Association in San Antonio, Texas.

Sure, the characters occassionally represented negative ethnic stereotypes, but they weren’t down-and-out, living on the lower East side. George Jefferson was a self-made man, whose dry cleaning business had flourished. These were not your typical urban themes of the other popular “sitcoms of color,” like those mentioned above. The Jeffersons had their own live-in maid, who provided much of the comedy, in my opinion. I used to love watching her disrespect her employer and put him in his place. The show is still as funny today as it was back then.

So hats off to Isabel Sanford, Sherman Hemsley, the cast and crew of The Jeffersons for making history and an indelible mark on the American television landscape!