Why on earth do I keep watching these Real World/Road Rules challenges?

They're always idiotic. And even the characters I liked on the Real World come off looking bad. Immature even compared to their shows of origin.

Yet I get sucked in, can't let go. I will never allege, however, that these shows are any good. Just that I have trouble resisting.

And they sometimes make me feel dirty too, though in a far more trivial way than the above post. That book has had me on edge all ten days I was reading it.

One paralell, though. CT. Ugh. Not that he's in any way evil like the murderer in True Story, just that he totally had me fooled. He was such a jerk to his housemates on his Real World, but he always kept insisting that he was trying really hard and misunderstood, and I wanted to believe him so badly I did.

Some people can be extremely convincing. Helps when they've got an editor working their cause, of course.

And those Real World editors. They are notoriously dishonest, but the weird thing is how they cop to it, just slightly after the fact. They just finished their RW/RR Challenge series, and end with a reunion/tell-all show, where most of the telling is about how openly, aggressively they distorted the truth? Seriously. It's like a hatchet job on themselves. Or a laugh job on what chumps we are, how easily and effectively they conned us.

Good God. Professional con artists. Loathsome creatures.

And I was just starting to feel clean again.