Dr. Danielle Lindemann

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124 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard Mar 2025

Dr. Danielle Lindemann’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Ologies with Alie Ward · Reality TV Sociology (‘TRASH’ TV) with Danielle Lindemann · 5 Mar 2025 podcast

So-

Right. And that's one of the major ways that reality TV has changed over time. More and more now we have people who already have influencer followings, right? And are going on these shows in order to increase their number of followers or get a hosting gig, become kind of a personality.

A lot of people will say, well, you have to have like a narcissistic personality to go on the shows. I don't know if that's necessarily true. Well, I think part of it is people wanting to increase their number of followers, right? The whole like famous for being famous thing. But at the same time, I also think people don't necessarily know what they're getting into, which might seem naive, right?

We should know what we're getting into at this point. Reality TV has been around a while. We kind of understand. I mean, having never been on a reality TV show, I don't really know, but I would imagine it's one of those things where you think you know what it's like and then You get in there and you realize it's so much worse than you thought that it was.

Oh, is it by design? I mean, I guess I can't really speak to the motivations of the people who create the shows. But it seems like it's both, right? Like some of the things like they need to have bright lights on at all times. And that's not, you know, that's constraints of filming. But that's also something that's going to be like a psychological torture device.

They certainly cast for people with certain psychological profiles. Sometimes they'll say that's to weed out people who are not fit for the show. probably, but also, right, it's to, you know, put people together who are going to trigger other people because these shows are conflict-driven.

I can't speak to what's in the producer's mind or the showrunner's minds, but it seems like that's the bread and butter of reality TV, right, is this kind of like these psychological manipulative tricks. Not every show, but a lot of the shows.

Yeah, I really appreciate that question because oftentimes when people are talking about the impact of reality TV on our culture, it's negative impact, which I think is absolutely there. especially because reality TV traffics and stereotypes, right? So like if the only black people you come in contact with are people who are being stereotyped on reality TV, that's going to be a negative impact.

But at the same time, if you look at, you know, for instance, queer representation, and reality TV has not been perfect in terms of queer representation. There's stereotyping there, too. But I mean, even going back to the real world, people are probably too young now to remember Pedro Zamora, who was this gay man in the real world San Francisco.

And he was living with AIDS. But not only was he a gay man living with AIDS, but he married his partner, Sean, on the show. They had a commitment ceremony on the show. And even though people are often portrayed in unidimensional ways on reality TV, he was really portrayed as a multidimensional person. He wasn't just like that gay guy.

And he was really the first gay person or person living with AIDS that many people kind of got to know. And I would say that had a tremendous impact on the culture. And in terms of queer representation, reality TV has really been at the vanguard. you know, it was telling queer stories before scripted TV really started to catch up, trans stories, right?

Again, in terms of trans representation, there's absolutely some problematic representation in reality TV as well. But just sort of, you know, exposing people to people with queer identities who they might not have otherwise come into contact with, I think that has been a hugely positive impact on our culture.

No, I mean, it tends to be a pretty female-driven genre. It's more often women on the shows. Women are more likely to tune in than men. I do think there's some effect of men... feeling like they are going to be more stigmatized for admitting that they watch the shows.

I hear a lot of stories from people who'd be like, oh, my boyfriend or my husband says he doesn't watch, but then he's in the background commenting like, didn't Madison get eliminated last week? So I think, yes, it's definitely a more female-driven genre.

And I also think that plays into maybe why it's more stigmatized because genres related to women and femininity tend to be more stigmatized or kind of looked down on. There was Duck Dynasty, Big Tuna. There are some kind of more masculine-driven shows. But yeah, for the most part, it's a pretty feminine genre.

Yes. How has it evolved over time? Well, it's certainly become more conflict driven. It's really interesting because if you watch the original Real World, I remember at the time thinking that was very conflict driven. Yeah. Looking back. It's like just Kevin sitting there being, yeah, I'm a little angry, right?

But I think oftentimes people, and this is just in general, like sociologically, people tend to think, want to feel like we're moving towards something or away from something. So I often get asked the question, like, why are these shows more and more outrageous? I don't necessarily think they're more and more outrageous.

I think, you know, there were outrageous shows in the year 2000, right, with the world's deadliest beast worms, number five, right? There were like five iterations of that show or The Swan. There were like these crazy shows that probably wouldn't happen now.

I don't think it's getting more outrageous. I think it's getting more conflict driven from the early days, for sure. And then there is that connection to social media that we talked about that is really like part and parcel of reality TV now, right? Like people are going on to increase their followings or they're going on to have followings. The two of them are really tied together now.

I do think in recent years, there has been more of an awareness of stereotypings like post-George Floyd, post-Me Too, moving forward from there. I mean, at least they're giving lip service to the fact that there are stereotypes involving gender and race on these shows. It'll be interesting to see if that's just like a blip or whether we move forward from there.

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