YouTube: Reality Show Contestants Aren’t Here to Make Friends

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Sometimes it’s the simplest video cut-ups that are the most effective, and here’s another one of those “wish I’d thought of it” clips. Via the blog FourFour, it’s a montage of reality show competitors (see how many you can name, kids!) insisting they’re not interested in attaining any level of chumminess with their fellow contestants. Sure, I knew I’d heard that statement a few times on TV, but not this much:

After a while, the continual repetition starts to seem more like a desperate effort at convincing themselves than us. But they’re right, “this is not America’s Next Top… uh, Best Friend” (my favorite moment of that whole clip). Therefore, consider me inspired. I’ve decided to adopt this attitude from now on, and so to all you sassy commenters (and Mother Jones employees who find my presence on your hallowed web pages offensive): I didn’t come to the Riff to make friends! I came here to, uh, write about French techno, I guess. And win the million dollars. I get a million dollars for this, right?

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate