The most significant idea of Chuck Klosterman's, "What Happens When People Stop Being Polite", is that reality T.V., such as The Real World, isn't actually reality after all. The Real World has had a number of seasons. Although each season has different people each time, the individual personalities are the same from season to season. In each season there's almost always a man of color, a gay man or woman, a drama starter, and other people from total opposite backgrounds. Each character seems to be given a role to take on and they have to portray that role to the best of their ability.
Chuck states on page 36, "They have to behave as if what they're doing hasn't been done before. Real Worlders always get into arguments, but you never hear them say, "Oh, you're only saying that because you know this is going to be on TV," even though that would be the best comeback 90 percent of the time." What Chuck means is that people on The Real World have to pretend like they aren't on TV even though they clearly know cameras and film makers are standing only a few feet away. But people seem to love reality TV. Why? Because we seem to think that reality TV can actually relate to our everyday lives unlike other shows or movies.
I feel almost bad for these people that are being picked and forced to be one personality because majority of the time the person they are told to act like isn't who they truly are. You may be of color and that's who they are to act or point out all the time even though they may be a genius that could find the cure for cancer but that doesn't matter because that's not as interesting to what is said to be pure reality.
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