Love is blind and Naked Dating

there are two uh new reality TV shows at least new in Britain one is Love is Blind which had the reunion uh event today and uh the uh Steven Smith who's a gym owner uh had um picked a partner they'd got married and it hasn't worked out so they're now waiting for an analment and naked dating which is being presented by Ryland I I believe I'm meeting Ryland in about a month so I I will ask him about his experience of presenting this show um but uh it's both both shows seem to me to be deeply well both controversial and both deeply exploitative now I had a long chat a series of chats with a fellow called Nick Thompson who was in series two of the American version of love is blind and he found the experience quite disturbing and in fact he set up an organization called Yukan which I think is a very good organization in the states and I think we should have something similar here uh an organization to deal with the uh sort of Destruction which is wrought by reality TV and by production manipulating the events to make a good story and make people look like villains or Heroes to reduce reality to a simp simple conceit of artifice to reduce people's lives and experiences to something that can be edited and presented on television as good entertainment my argument is that the manipulation doesn't stop with the end of the filming the manipulation continues uh and particularly in Britain the uh regulations which are now governed by ofcom rules uh means that the production company is still paying and supervising psych psychiatric support for people who've been on reality TV shows is still interfering in their lives for another 18 months by law given the fact that the the interference is the problem in the first place I find that law put out under Boris Johnson's government because he couldn't be bothered to reconvene the um committee hearing into the problems with love Island and Jeremy Kyle uh it means effectively that production now has complete control over people and I and I would strongly urge while that ofcom uh ruling is in place that people should not get involved in reality TV it's too dangerous reality TV however it may appear to you on ITV Netflix Paramount plus uh whether it's clothed or unclothed whether it's blind date or uh naked dating or blind attraction or or or naked attraction or or or whatever it is doesn't matter doesn't matter what the formula is whether you're standing in a box and there's nothing between you and the camera or whether you're uh in a in a um in a room for a month you are subject to stress and emotional triggers which can have a huge impact on you but most importantly as the subject of this television experiment you lose agency now many actors lose agency uh simply by the process of rehearsing and then performing uh under the direction of production they are often protected by their agents and by their management and by unions reality TV personalities very rarely have access to agents and almost never have access to Union representation and their parents their family their friends their Partners very rarely understand or can appreciate the sort of stress that they are put in because what they see is what we see on television they don't see all the hours of discarded pointless um television footage and experience that they go through to make an entertaining and a compelling story that story is not theirs that story has been edited by people in a gallery Sometimes some remove from where it was filmed and they think they've done very well and suddenly they emerge on television as this great villain and some of their um scenes are into cut or edited out of sequence to make them look even worse sometimes they're edited really well I had a really good edit but it didn't stop the manipulation that continued after the program finished so I'm I'm very disturbed not only by the perversion of marriage and you've got you've got these people saying oh marriage marriage should be between a man and a woman and this and that well yeah fine okay I I I I I don't enter into that debate what on Earth do they have to say to Something Like Love is Blind is marriage something that should be arranged in a pod um having having not seen the partner is something is marriage something that that should be arranged for entertainment is that legal is a marriage arranged under those terms legal legally binding I should have thought I should have thought it was a it was something that was entered into without full consent I should have thought annulling such a um such a legal Arrangement was quite easy and I should have thought that any um Authority that entertained that sort of arrangement was living in some sort of Cloud Cuckoo Land or some uh some sort of um legal framework which is very questionable as for naked dating um I don't think it really matters whether things are pixelated or not pixelated uh they're not much to write home about I suspect and uh it's it's salacious anyway after a while you probably don't notice that these people are running around the place without clothes on um it's exploitative isn't it I think it's exploitative I would love to know I would love to know how Ryland feels I suspect after a while he doesn't really notice that all the contestants all the performers are naked and probably isn't terribly important but it is odd isn't it it's odd as indeed is a naked attraction odd and I think [Music] slightly slightly um scarless somebody is making money out of that I don't know whether it's a good thing I would love to know your thoughts on it and I would love to know if you've been on naked attraction or you've been on naked ating or you've been on Love is Blind please get in touch because I'd love to know what effect it's had if it's had um a positive effect great if it's had a negative effect in any form I would love to hear hear from you I'd love to hear what your thoughts are if you've been on any reality TV show please get in touch um and you can I think there's an email address for me at the top of this um site and and please please do make contact if you've been on reality TV I've been fairly outspoken about reality TV I think the I think reality tv as a concept is a very interesting concept it's it's a little bit like um you know the milram experiment or um it's a little bit like a scientific experiment you're part of that Strange World um but I think it goes beyond that and I think once once you surrender agency in that format it's very difficult to get it back I I think in my own experience it took me about five years I'm I'm I'm just about back to normal but in the process I um I've gone through cancer and and and it doesn't take much to trigger that level of anxiety which I think contributed to my illness um [Music] and uh those trigger those trigger moments it can be extraordinarily slight but it's about feeling a loss of control it's about feeling that somebody is trying to take advantage and that I find really disturbing now um and it doesn't really matter who it is I don't I don't respond well to it but anyway um do let me know what you think and and and if you've seen these programs I'd be really interested to know what you think of these programs I'm afraid I've not managed to um track down ryland's program because it's on a channel I don't subscribe to um but maybe I wouldn't be that interested anyway as I say I don't imagine it's very much write home about um and uh and I think I would be a little bit of a shame I think I feel a little bit ashamed watching it um but I certainly will um make a point of asking Ryland about it and asking particularly um uh you know as a as a job what's it like and I remember meeting Ryland about five years ago and I thought he was a very thoughtful and interesting young man I I also I've also enjoyed his book so um you know this is not this is not just a figure who's moved around this is somebody with thoughts and feelings and somebody who I think will be very articulate about his participation um and I don't think he would have done it if he just felt that he was participating in some sort of meat market so I I would be interested to know exactly um what he brings to that experience and how he how he helps to um modify or moderate the negative impact of that experience and whether or not um he shares with me my concerns about the reality TV phenomenon as a whole as he's been through quite a lot of it