Dillards 48: Proselytising Prick Preaching to People

[JenniferJuniper]

1 hour ago, louisa05 said:

I read a couple articles about that show (and many other reality shows) when I did a paper in grad school about reality television. They are paid people that the producers bring in to appraise items. Some were people that the staff had previously used, most were not. So the notion that they are all Rick's personal "buddies" of longstanding is a bit silly. They are also waiting in the wings at filming because everything is pre-arranged. So there is no calling in the "let me call a buddy of mine", there is a pause while said "buddy" comes into the scene for filming as producers already called him. And they are getting paid by The History Channel for each appearance.  

I know a woman who appeared on House Hunters with her husband years ago.  She says that aside from them correctly identifying the house they bought, everything was completely staged.  They never considered the other houses on the show; they were found by the producers and the tours of them, like the "coffee shop decision conversation", were all scripted.  In fact they had already closed on their house when they filmed most of those scenes.

Reality shows are like those drinks that look like juice but actually only contain 3% fruit.  They are mostly not real.

[louisa05]

7 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

Reality shows are like those drinks that look like juice but actually only contain 3% fruit.  They are mostly not real.

Exactly. That's why it is a bit crazy to speculate too much about the Duggars and their actual personalities or relationships with each other based on the show. When they are not scripted, "writers" and producers go through hours of tape to create a story and create characters. The personalities of the kids that we see on the show are not necessarily real at all but are likely just personalities assigned to them by "writers"and created by splicing together footage as needed. Jinger was assigned to be Jessa's sidekick as far as I can tell (having not watched all that much) and a passive one at that. Now, it may be true that Jinger and Jesssa are close (and that would be reasonable as they are close in age), but that doesn't mean that Jessa is the leader and Jinger is the passive follower in all things just because that's what has been depicted on the show. That is how the show was edited. 

Competition shows are notorious for creating situations and manipulating situations in order to elicit reactions. The first example that comes to mind is an incident on season 1 of Project Runway when another competitor supposedly wrote on a picture of another contestant's child with a marker and drama ensued. No one fessed up to doing it (to this day) and cameras had not caught anyone in the area. I'd bet my bank account that producers did it to ramp up some drama between the designers. There are several documented examples of such things on other competition shows. Another common way to make sure there is drama is to keep the alcohol flowing. If you ever watched The Bachelor or The Apprentice, you'd know that there was often unlimited alcohol being thrown at them at critical times. Drunk, or even buzzed, contestants are going to get more emotional and make for better television. Obviously, not a trick they can use for Duggar drama so they probably have to rely more on editing and creating situations in other ways. (Or that explains why it is so boring!)

[Oh_Dear!]

 

wait... jim bob is peepaw? Never heard that one.

sammy is definitely a cutie though.

mine more of Izzy being a sweetie.  He’s also a cutie. 

[mizandry]

I find it sad that my first reaction to seeing this picture of Sam, next to "Aww!" was, "His limbs are free!!!"

[onekidanddone]

Sometimes I get the vibe Derick wants to go all Poisonwood Bible, and it skives me out.

[nastyhobbitses]

35 minutes ago, Oh_Dear! said:

Izzy being a sweetie

Don't you mean "manipulating his great-grandmother with his wicked manipulative ways"? /s

[Gillyweed]

Izzy is so tall!! When does he turn 3?

[JenniferJuniper]

35 minutes ago, louisa05 said:

Competition shows are notorious for creating situations and manipulating situations in order to elicit reactions. 

And never more evident than in last week's Survivor finale.  The producers actually changed the rules of the games to place someone in the final three rather than let him to be voted out.  And lo and behold, that person won a million dollars.  The show liked his PTSD military story line and they were determined from the outset that he be the one to win.

The tweets at the end of this link pretty much sum up how many people felt about it.  One of my kids has been watching the show for a long time now and she says she'll never see another episode.  https://www.moviefone.com/2017/12/21/jeff-probst-defends-new-survivor-finale-twist-integrity-game/

Let's hope this sort of over-pushing of the envelop kicks off the beginning of the end for "reality" shows.  

[HarleyQuinn]

I hate all the different names for "grandma and grandpa" "Meemaw, papoo,mami, etc" it all sounds so ridiculous. (no offense if this is how you were raised) I never understood why you can't call more than one person "grandma"  

 

[apandaaries]

Let's hope this sort of over-pushing of the envelop kicks off the beginning of the end for "reality" shows.  

I doubt it. Reality show contestants/actors are FAR cheaper than completely scripted shows with real actors. They’ve been inventing drama since they started airing them, but they save the networks loads of money. The bottom line of the networks will always be most important to them, and easily manipulated* fame hungry folks seem in large supply...

*not that everyone on reality shows is a trash fire, but plenty are, and they aren’t usually protected by SAG.

[mizandry]

I only know my maternal grandparents, so I refer to them as "Grandma and Grandpa," but as a child I used to call my grandfather "Poppy" (and sometimes still do in my head).

I'm not entirely sure where the name comes from, but I suspect it was his idea, since he's my step-grandfather and my biological one was an evil piece of trash he worried about being conflated with when he married my grandmother in the late 90s. Luckily my step-grandfather was/is my favorite relative, and I miss him so much. He used to tell me all sorts of stories about his life and would even watch What Not To Wear with me and critique the outfits.  Before I started having major cognitive dissonance about Gogol Bordello, he would tell me about songs he'd heard from them that he really liked, just to show he cared about my interests. He's an amazing grandparent and I loved asking him for stories about his life. I suspect he made some of the stories up, but if that's the case -- it warms my heart that he wanted to impress me.

Anyways sorry I'm thinking about him a lot now - things with my family have been strained and extremely fraught for years so I haven't seen him since I was 14, because he won't get a Facebook and doesn't have his own phone. If I want to talk to him I have to go through the rest of my family. I'm also worried he'll be disappointed in who I've become as an adult, but that's a whole other thing not for FJ. fff

ETA: One hilarious thing he used to do was, if he was passing by, go, "Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all? ... Poppy!"  He did that a lot when I was 5.

[JenniferJuniper]

27 minutes ago, HarleyQuinn said:

I hate all the different names for "grandma and grandpa" "Meemaw, papoo,mami, etc" it all sounds so ridiculous. (no offense if this is how you were raised) I never understood why you can't call more than one person "grandma"  

Often it starts with a child not being able to pronounce the grandparent's preferred name and the baby name sticks.  Sometimes for generations.   Having been the first grandchild on both sides of the family, I am responsible for two odd grandmother names that stuck, one for 50 years and through many grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

[Fun Undies]

1 hour ago, louisa05 said:

It feels very foreign to us introverts. To me, friends are people I've known a long time and am very close to. 

And I do suspect that Jim Bob is a natural extrovert. I don't think that is a bad thing for him or anyone else, it just is not the perception most introverts have of what "friend" means so it seems strange to us. 

That's exactly how my husband described it!  He's an introvert, and has filled me in on the inner workings over the last 13 years

14 minutes ago, HarleyQuinn said:

I hate all the different names for "grandma and grandpa" "Meemaw, papoo,mami, etc" it all sounds so ridiculous. (no offense if this is how you were raised) I never understood why you can't call more than one person "grandma"  

 

I definitely agree it shouldn't be an issue of not being allowed to have two women, have the same name - in our case, it was two fold:  my Mom, being German, wanted "Oma" - and so my Dad, being a Floridian, still decided he was going to match my Mom, and declared himself as "Opa".  We did have two grandma's (one bio mom, and one stepmom on my husband's side), but my second child had a harder time saying grandma (and one lived out of state), so he called her "Nana", and it stuck ~ so we ended up with all these different names, but I swear it wasn't on purpose  (btw, my second child can now say "Grandma, when she's in town, but the other one is still Nana lol).

[HarleyQuinn]

Maybe I'm just an asshole but my when in-law requested to be called what the other grandkids called her - which isn't even a word - just something an older cousin called her when he was a baby like @jenniferJuniper said, I was like "nope." lol

@Fun UndiesOma and Opa I get, I have a set of grandparents in Germany and that's what I called them, obviously but I never referred to them as that around other non German speaking people. I know Nana is popular but when you get into the shit that Jill is above it's just grating. I get it, baby talk can be cute. I loved when my baby said "wuv" instead of "love" but there has to be a line. 

[LittleOwl]

In my family the maternal grandparents are Granny and Grandad, whilst on the paternal side is Nanar and Grandpa... No idea why!  I never questioned it really, I just knew that Granny was the one I could charm the most biscuits from!

My Godson renamed me when he was teeny weenie and couldn't say my name properly and he gabbled out Rahrah. It's stuck so much it's now used by everyone other than my godson that no one really uses my actual name anymore! 

[AprilQuilt]

A childhood friend of mine called her gran GaGa which is literally baby talk. We had to call her it too! I disdained it.

I probably have a low tolerance for this stuff bc I've only ever called one set of grandparents by their names - presumably that was their choice, I never asked.

When my dad and his brothers were kids they started calling their dad 'Gaffer', which in the region they grew up is a pretty standard term for a boss or a foreman. That's all he's ever been called in my family, and my boyfriend now calls him that too. Maybe that's a bit icky-cute. I don't care.

[Sky with diamonds]

1 hour ago, onekidanddone said:

Sometimes I get the vibe Derick wants to go all Poisonwood Bible, and it skives me out.

Alarm bells sure go off more and more about Derick. 

[momofsquid]

20 minutes ago, HarleyQuinn said:

Maybe I'm just an asshole but my when in-law requested to be called what the other grandkids called her - which isn't even a word - just something an older cousin called her when he was a baby like @jenniferJuniper said, I was like "nope." lol

Another asshole here. My mother wanted to be called Gran and and mother-in-law wanted to be called Nana. Both said it was to differentiate her from the other Grandma. But least one of them should be Grandma for crap's sake, and I would have felt silly calling either of them anything but Grandma. So they both got a "nope" from me. 

[Sky with diamonds]

1 hour ago, HarleyQuinn said:

I hate all the different names for "grandma and grandpa" "Meemaw, papoo,mami, etc" it all sounds so ridiculous. (no offense if this is how you were raised) I never understood why you can't call more than one person "grandma"  

 

I usually said Poppy and Nanny. An East Coast of Canada thing, I think. 

[JenniferJuniper]

1 hour ago, amandaaries said:

I doubt it. Reality show contestants/actors are FAR cheaper than completely scripted shows with real actors. They’ve been inventing drama since they started airing them, but they save the networks loads of money.

Definitely much cheaper but as the populace becomes less gullible and more tuned in to the *quality programming elsewhere, I think when Reality TV goes, it will go quickly.  The networks better be preparing to adapt.

*OMG, we just finished a binge watch of "Dark" on Netflix.  Great stuff.  

[onekidanddone]

30 minutes ago, Sky with diamonds said:

I usually said Poppy and Nanny. An East Coast of Canada thing, I think. 

The Jewish names Bubbie for grandma and Zadie for grandpa. I never used those names for my grandparents.  It was grandma and grandpa for my maternal grand parents and I called my other grand parents by their names. 

[apandaaries]

36 minutes ago, JenniferJuniper said:

Definitely much cheaper but as the populace becomes less gullible and more tuned in to the *quality programming elsewhere, I think when Reality TV goes, it will go quickly.  The networks better be preparing to adapt.

I wish that were true, but look at how many people still support Chump.  There are always people willing and eager to believe easily exposed lies.  IDK, from what I've heard, reality programming has become a huge cash cow, all alongside this new golden era of scripted TV.  Both have been coexisting for quite awhile.  Personally I wouldn't place any money on reality shows departing the airwaves anytime soon, but time will tell. 

[SapphireSlytherin]

As others have said - in our family, the oldest child of a specific generation "sets" the grandparent names. My mother wanted to be called "grandmama." GryffindorDisappointment came up with "Mimi." It stuck. My dad wanted to be called Paw. He's "Pop." 

I grew up calling my grandparents Mom-oo and Pop-oo, and Granny and Pawpaw. Mom-oo and Pop-oo were bestowed by my older cousins. I'm responsible for Granny and Pawpaw.

[victoriasponge]

My living grandparents go by Gran & Grandad, the ones who passed went by Grandma & Grandad. I go with 'Nan' when talking about a female grandparent in general. One of my friends had a 'Nonny' which I never get because they're a wholly British family, no foreign languages.

My mum's said she wants to be Gran because it makes her feel younger than Grandma. Suppose it's only fair to indulge her that. No way would kids in the family get to set the names, though. (Doesn't stop them from giving me nicknames from mishearings and mispronunciations when I was a kid though... Dad calls me 'muffet' from when he misheard me calling him a muppet. And that one has darned stuck, does get my attention quicker than my very common name, I suppose... So does Elf, my other childhood nickname.)

[Sky with diamonds]

39 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

The Jewish names Bubbie for grandma and Zadie for grandpa. I never used those names for my grandparents.  It was grandma and grandpa for my maternal grand parents and I called my other grand parents by their names. 

I like the Jewish names. I learned something new today, thanks.

I haven't had a living grandparent in years, but I don't think I could have used 'grands'. My niece and nephew call my parents nanny and poppy, the other grands grandma and grandpa. It actually took me by surprise, then again they are closer in every sense of the word to my side of the family. I actually like knowing they use Nanny and Poppy, it's sweet I think. It's rare to hear nanny and poppy where I live even though there's many east coasters in the city I live in.