The website is easy to use.

The website is user-friendly. Confession time: As much as I love talking about highbrow cinema and philosophy, after a long day of working in the content mines, I just want to sit down and watch a bunch of real estate agents argue about completely pointless drama. I’m not alone in that; more than half of Americans watch reality TV, and nearly 50% of television is now unscripted. We’re flocking to hits like The Great British Baking Show, Vanderpump Rules, or If Love Is Blind, to see normal people’s authentic reactions to extraordinary scenarios, whether they’re baking a princess cake, falling in love, or (spoilers!) telling off Tom Sandoval.

Another confession: I’ve never watched Vanderpump Rules, but people just talk about this stuff all the time, so if you have opinions on Tom Sandoval, let us know!

Ostensibly, the draw of reality TV should be its authenticity: people reacting unscripted to wild situations. But as our thirst for realness increasingly dictates our viewing habits, it’s gone well beyond the baking tent to pervade most aspects of modern life. Now we all want to be real, and yet as our search for authenticity deepens, why do we all seem to feel further removed from reality?

Well, let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition: Is Authenticity Fake?

Okay guys, before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to this video’s sponsor, Blinkist. I’m sure many of you are like me in two ways: one of those ways is you like books a lot and you want to learn about a lot of different things, the other thing is you’re very busy and often quite tired, so have a hard time getting through all those books.

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So if this sounds good to you and you want to spend some of the limited time that I know you have (because we’re all busy) learning a lot via a library of very good books and podcasts, check out Blinkist. Now you can go to blinkist.com/wisecrack and if you do, you can get a 7-day free trial and 25% off your premium account. Again, that’s blinkist.com/wisecrack - 25% off, 7-day free account. What is there to lose? And again, if you want to be like me, maybe start with Michel Foucault, and then jump in the comments and we can talk about Discipline and Punish.

But speaking of people the Foucault read, let’s get back to talking about Marx. For as long as pretentious dudes have used the phrase, well, as a philosopher, they’ve been asking questions about what reality is.