by Emma Wheatley

Titled “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” TLC’s newest reality show revolves around a 6-year-old pageant princess named Alana growing up in McIntyre, Ga. Alana, whose nickname is “Honey Boo Boo,”hams it up for the camera, burps in between sentences, and explains that her family spends $1500 on pageants every year. I stumbled upon this TV show a few weeks ago, and my outlook on reality television has been permanently changed. For the worse.

“You better redneckognize” and “a dolla makes me holla” are two of Alana’s most famous sayings. One possible reason for the fact that these phrases are so widely known may be that every other word out of her, and every other family member’s mouth, is unintelligible. There are multiple instances on the show in which subtitles are placed at the bottom of the screen because it is so hard to understand what the people are saying. From their constant mumbling to their poor grammar, it is a wonder that subtitles are not always in place.

One particularly disturbing moment is when Alana’s mother, June, explains what “Go Go Juice” is. She proudly tells the world of her ingenious idea to regularly feed her 6-year-old daughter a concoction consisting mainly of Red Bull and Mountain Dew. This apparently helps Alana get pumped up for performing in pageants. However, she takes a bit of a liking to the beverage, and starts to drink it more regularly. Side effects include her literally bouncing off the walls, pulling her mother’s hair and shouting things that are likely words, but sound like animal calls.

This is the type of show that can provoke a person to wonder what they are doing with their life. Watching it, there were many times when I thought, “Why don’t I just turn it off?” or “There has to be something better I can do right now.” If this is where reality TV is headed (not that it was ever on a particularly promising path) I do not want to continue buying into it. I’m not completely sure what watching hillbillies yelling at each other and eating obscenely large amounts of food every day is going to do to my brain, but I don’t really want to find out.

Instead of watching some of America’s finest citizens live their lives, I plan to live my own, and leave the reality TV watching to people with nothing better to do.