The main cause of stress is .... people

Last night I had a really good night's sleep - for 2 hours, then I was awoke and couldn't get back to sleep.  Today will be mostly a glazed expression and bags under my eyes, both of which look really good on me!

At around 3.30 I gave up with sleep, made a cup of tea and turned on the telly.  It was grim and  I ended  up trying to doze off again whilst watching Food Network on the telly.  Dull as it was, it didn't prove soporific.  As with every reality show nowadays (such a middle-aged word there .... 'nowadays') nothing could be achieved calmly and in good time.  Both shows I watched were about cupcakes.  I would have imagined one cupcake show to be more than sufficient, but if you have little imagination, there is always mimicry, so there are at least two.  If I could steel myself to watch more Food Network telly, I may discover 5 or 6. One was following the owners of a cupcake business and the other was four different cupcake companies "battling" to provide their product to some premiere event.  As seems to be the case with most reality TV shows, the point was to take on ridiculous burdens, then repeat every cliche ever uttered about time being tight and the amount of pressure they have chosen to take on.  This is what I hate most about reality TV.  Everything is a big deal, everyone is under so much pressure, time is always critical.  

If you run your own cupcake business, how can you suddenly "find" that you have 24 hours and several thousand cupcakes to produce?  Did the cupcake order fairy visit in the night and dump this massive order from her icing shimmered buttocks?  No.  If the workload is unachievable or extremely difficult because of the time and staff available that may make your reality TV show more appealing to a certain kind of audience, but it can't be good business sense.  In the real world, it smacks of bad planning and poor customer service.  We don't need constant stress in our lives, now and again is more than sufficient, more than that is either someone desperate to show how busy or important they are; or someone unable to say no.  Piling work on your employees until they reach breaking point is much to be frowned on in employment tribunals.  In television production, however, it is assumed to lead to compulsive viewing.  For all producers out there, a word to the wise - it doesn't.  

Reality TV bears little resemblance to the real world, but it is worryingly the case that the real world is increasingly becoming like reality TV.  Are they turning us into a society obsessed with creating stressful situations?  Shows like Eastenders led the way in suggesting it is acceptable to scream at everyone all of the time, no marriage can have a happy ending, it is perfectly acceptable to walk up to someone in the street and thump them and you can work a few hours a week in the local pub and yet have a good standard of living - apart from the 3 months in which you descended  into drug addiction and prostitution, but you've cleaned up now, disappeared, been on a celebrity reality show and now you are back with a new contract, a slimmer figure, different hairstyle and a miraculously repaired soap life.  Already people talk as if they are under constant pressure all of the time.  The economy is not great, unemployment is high, the cost of living is high, decent healthcare and education are becoming increasingly out of the reach of the average salary.  These things can and do and cause stress.  But people are starting to talk as if everything causes stress.  Travel on any train - at least one person will be constantly on the phone, emphasising ever other word, insisting that they are not taking it any more, but revelling in calling everyone they know, telling them all about what it is, recounting the minutiae of their daily life as if it were a blockbuster movie.  

Buying a few antiques at a flea-market - you've got one hour, a camera crew and an expert haranguing you and in that hour you have to have a major disagreement with the person you went on the reality show with.  Looking for a new home to buy - you will be shown several by the robots disguises as humans better known as 'Kirsty and Phil'.  Kirsty and Phil wouldn't have much of a show if you had realistic expectations of what you could buy, what you want and if you were happy with the first or second house they showed you.  Therefore you have to have a ridiculous wish list for your new property,  you need to move in the next 3 days because you are expecting a baby, an elderly relative is moving in with you, you are following your dream - reality shows love everyone to have a dream ... not a substantial one, just something fluffy that will bugger up the whole show until, as if my magic, your dream home appears 20 seconds before the show ends.  Equally when you find a house you are happy with, it is touch and go as to whether your offer will be accepted.  Everyone is on tenterhooks.  You can't talk to the estate agent - because you aren't a celebrity, Kirsty and Phil have to do that for you and then keep a straight face so that the audience doesn't guess what the reply is.  The audience, meanwhile, has probably died of boredom and is better occupied sniffing sugar through a rolled up TV guide.  At random intervals during the show, the camera finds Kirsty and Phil alone discussing how stressful it all is for them.  What is stressful about showing someone round a house? Open the front door, walk round, leave.  That is all.  Kirsty and  Phil will get paid regardless.  Where is their actual stress?  Do we believe they are under stress? Do they think we believe it?  The mad thing about Kirsty and Phil land is that their clearly is no stress involved, they tell us there is, but there clearly isn't.  No clocks are ticking, no food is burning, no hungry customers are waiting whilst in-need-of-cash michelin-starred chefs vomit obscenities in every other shot, no over-the-hill businessmen are waiting in the boardroom/staged loft to fire, hire or throw money at the contestants.   

In many of these shows, arguments abound - which goes back to the Eastenders model of interaction.  Nobody gets taken aside and warned about their explosive temper, because that is what makes 'good telly'.  It doesn't make good commuting, a pleasant walk through the park or a good night out at your local, but we've seen it on the telly, we see it on the street.  

Everything comes good  before the end of the show - nothing is actually resolved, it was all staged anyway, so we don't see anyone tackling real issues, we just see a miraculous turnaround and then at least one person, if not everyone in front of the camera, will cry.  I blame Little House on the Prairie for this and Charles Bloody Landon.  Not an episode went by without Pa crying, and Ma looking on, her face glowing with pride and her eyes wet with unshed tears.  The real Ingalls were Pioneers!  They had travelled for weeks in all weathers, across unexplored territories with their entire home in a wagon, taking their young children with them.  But no, Pa cries at the drop of a hat, and Ma is about as tough as a wet tissue.  He was the first crybaby, and now everyone is at it.  The positive outcome is less easy to replicate in real-life.  If from the start your project is poorly planned,  your team is argumentative and non-productive and you don't work steadily  towards your goal, chances are you won't get there. Reality TV does show us this - the "Apprentice" teams regularly screw up, but I suspect the producers prefer that, it makes better viewing.  

Modern life is in danger of becoming an unplanned, mismanaged nightmare where everyone rows for hours, resolution appears as if dropped from the heavens and without any actual intervention by anyone involved and then at least one person will sob as if they were Gwyneth Paltrow accepting an Oscar.  The inference is always that the 'stress' was caused by time or by the nature of the task, or the pressure of being before a camera.  The programmes lull us into forgetting that stress is caused by people.  Whether the workload is imposed upon you, or you have taken on, a person or group of people brought about that situation.   It isn't a good model for running a life, a business or even making a cupcake.  But by far the worst of  all the modern reality crimes is that is poor television and yet it is still taking over from decent dramas or documentaries in all the schedules. Shame on the television networks for doing it, but most of all, shame on us for providing the demand.