Spring Break
The Daily OrangeAt 20, MTV's 'Real World' acting like a spoiled brat
By Nathan Mattise
Posted: 2/18/08, 10:33 PM EST Section: Feature
Needless to say it was an interesting dynamic to process the first LGBT individual I ever "knew" within eight hours of watching "Power Rangers" on the same TV. By the time Dan in Miami or Genesis in Boston came around, I had a basic understanding of what was going on.
You could say the same thing for trying to deal with life's vices. Sure my mom said "say 'no' to drugs" or "cigarettes are bad," but it made sense when I met Ruthie from Hawaii at age 13. Ruthie literally drank, drank then drank some more until she passed out and needed paramedics on the very first episode of the season. She proceeded to then drive home drunk, scare her roommates to the point where they needed to have an intervention and disappeared from the season for a while to attend rehab. In two years when I played high school basketball and we'd have the standard athlete shindigs, I didn't need any more reminders from mom to realize I was bringing a bottle of water and only staying for an hour.
Today my younger brother and his friends aren't watching "The Gauntlet III" and learning about either of those things. They don't even learn about mature romantic relationships, race, religion, politics or anything the old "Real World" cast members used to sort of, well, teach me. They watch for the drama, the challenges that require bikinis and the hilarity of every single testimonial by Coral. If that's the world that's real today, maybe it's time to finally take up reading.
Nathan Mattise is a pop-culture columnist for The Daily Orange. His columns appear every Tuesday. He attended the Real World open casting call on campus back in 2004, was brought back for a second interview and then immediately dropped because he was too lame. He can be reached at nzmattis@syr.edu.
You could say the same thing for trying to deal with life's vices. Sure my mom said "say 'no' to drugs" or "cigarettes are bad," but it made sense when I met Ruthie from Hawaii at age 13. Ruthie literally drank, drank then drank some more until she passed out and needed paramedics on the very first episode of the season. She proceeded to then drive home drunk, scare her roommates to the point where they needed to have an intervention and disappeared from the season for a while to attend rehab. In two years when I played high school basketball and we'd have the standard athlete shindigs, I didn't need any more reminders from mom to realize I was bringing a bottle of water and only staying for an hour.
Today my younger brother and his friends aren't watching "The Gauntlet III" and learning about either of those things. They don't even learn about mature romantic relationships, race, religion, politics or anything the old "Real World" cast members used to sort of, well, teach me. They watch for the drama, the challenges that require bikinis and the hilarity of every single testimonial by Coral. If that's the world that's real today, maybe it's time to finally take up reading.
Nathan Mattise is a pop-culture columnist for The Daily Orange. His columns appear every Tuesday. He attended the Real World open casting call on campus back in 2004, was brought back for a second interview and then immediately dropped because he was too lame. He can be reached at nzmattis@syr.edu.
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