REALITY TV SHOWS aren’t real but I didn’t learn this until I appeared in one when I was living in Zanzibar. Let me explain. This was back when I was dating Ali, a local man who liked to call himself a fisherman but was really more of a boat man, tugging tourists out to nearby islands and back to shore for vivid sunsets.
One evening, we were walking around around Stone Town, by the House of Wonders, when a couple from France tumbled out of a white van and asked us if they could stay with us for the night.
Ali and I looked at each other for a sec, gauging each other’s interest in an adventure like this—long story short, the couple were contestants on a French reality TV show called Pékin Express and part of the competition was to find lodging with locals as they competed in a variety of feats across Africa.
The two of us were still in love with each other and the life we were living, so we agreed to host this pair, Nicolas and Ingrid, for the night. But we didn’t realize that this also meant moving around the rest of the evening with their entire film crew, a scraggly group of cranky Europeans with tons of heavy equipment.
They started to complain about how late it was getting in the evening and insisted on filming the “good night” scene before they went out for dinner—they’d be too tired later to film it. So when we got back to the apartment, we were instructed to act out a scene in which Ali and I asked if our guests needed anything, and then say good night as we switched off the light.
It was absurd! It was only around six p.m. but we were rehearsing this going to sleep scene over and over again for about an hour, exhausting all of us.
And this is when I learned that reality TV is never real—it’s all rehearsed, scripted and coerced. Artificial reality. Artifice of the real. Contrived to feel live. Plotted and shot.
Nicolas and Ingrid gave us both a look like, “We’re so sorry,” and eventually the film crew left, and we were then free for the rest of the evening to actually talk off script. But by the time night did roll around, we were all too tired to say much besides, thank god this day is over, “good night, for real.”
There’s more to this story, but all just to say, it’s gotten me thinking lately about artificial reality as the precursor to artificial intelligence. These early days of taking real life and making it “seem” real was actually just one more stepping stone to the next stage and phase of this bending and warping we see happening with situations and stories, scenes and settings.
Ingrid left her black Rolling Stones t-shirt hanging to dry on the laundry line strung across our kitchen and that was the realest evidence left of this experience—otherwise, it would have felt like a dream.
Years later, we tried to find the footage of that episode on YouTube and came across it—season 7, episode 8. There’s Ali in his “I Heart Chicago” t-shirt that I bought him at Walgreens, and there I am wearing some frilly lavender purple shirt, a baby face of freckles and wide-eyed wonder.
Very strange to see one’s face on a TV show as a non-playing character, so to speak. I was part of their story but I was also living out my own story, and one was much more real than the other.
What's stayed with me wasn't the television show itself but the realization that reality had been edited before my eyes. The crew wasn't documenting a night—they were manufacturing one.
One evening, we were walking around around Stone Town, by the House of Wonders, when a couple from France tumbled out of a white van and asked us if they could stay with us for the night.
Ali and I looked at each other for a sec, gauging each other’s interest in an adventure like this—long story short, the couple were contestants on a French reality TV show called Pékin Express and part of the competition was to find lodging with locals as they competed in a variety of feats across Africa.
The two of us were still in love with each other and the life we were living, so we agreed to host this pair, Nicolas and Ingrid, for the night. But we didn’t realize that this also meant moving around the rest of the evening with their entire film crew, a scraggly group of cranky Europeans with tons of heavy equipment.
They started to complain about how late it was getting in the evening and insisted on filming the “good night” scene before they went out for dinner—they’d be too tired later to film it. So when we got back to the apartment, we were instructed to act out a scene in which Ali and I asked if our guests needed anything, and then say good night as we switched off the light.
It was absurd! It was only around six p.m. but we were rehearsing this going to sleep scene over and over again for about an hour, exhausting all of us.
And this is when I learned that reality TV is never real—it’s all rehearsed, scripted and coerced. Artificial reality. Artifice of the real. Contrived to feel live. Plotted and shot.
Nicolas and Ingrid gave us both a look like, “We’re so sorry,” and eventually the film crew left, and we were then free for the rest of the evening to actually talk off script. But by the time night did roll around, we were all too tired to say much besides, thank god this day is over, “good night, for real.”
There’s more to this story, but all just to say, it’s gotten me thinking lately about artificial reality as the precursor to artificial intelligence. These early days of taking real life and making it “seem” real was actually just one more stepping stone to the next stage and phase of this bending and warping we see happening with situations and stories, scenes and settings.
Ingrid left her black Rolling Stones t-shirt hanging to dry on the laundry line strung across our kitchen and that was the realest evidence left of this experience—otherwise, it would have felt like a dream.
Years later, we tried to find the footage of that episode on YouTube and came across it—season 7, episode 8. There’s Ali in his “I Heart Chicago” t-shirt that I bought him at Walgreens, and there I am wearing some frilly lavender purple shirt, a baby face of freckles and wide-eyed wonder.
Very strange to see one’s face on a TV show as a non-playing character, so to speak. I was part of their story but I was also living out my own story, and one was much more real than the other.
What's stayed with me wasn't the television show itself but the realization that reality had been edited before my eyes. The crew wasn't documenting a night—they were manufacturing one.
Looking back now, in the age of AI-generated images, videos, and stories, that experience feels strangely familiar.
Now I’m having conversations with my boyfriend about what’s fair game when it comes to AI-assisted storytelling and literary collaborations. Is it fair to use my face and likeness in his experimental micro-dramas? Is it fair for me to use any element of his life or likeness in my own creative nonfiction narratives?
It feels like we’re all being asked to consider what’s real in new ways—consciousness studies has only amplified the question of reality as fluid and bending, negotiated and strange. But some things remain real or real enough to defend and those of us who find ourselves at the intersection of the real and unreal in art making must keep having these conversations even when the question itself—about the nature of reality—is laughing at us!
Strangely enough, I found myself on the set of Un Posto al Sole, a popular Italian telenovela, when I was visiting Naples a few years ago. I was with a dear friend who I used to live with for a while in Zanzibar, and she adored this show that she fondly called, “sole sole” for short.
Every night when it came on, the house fell silent as she fixated on the story—no talking aloud—lights out for total immersion!
I grew familiar with the characters even if I didn’t understand the Italian dialogue and started to follow the drama that unfolded each week.
In Naples, when she told me she’d been invited onto the film set where they were shooting new episodes, I knew how important this visit would be for her and her young daughter, who also followed the show. Never mind that this would be a trek to a posh part of town in the middle of a heatwave, and that the set was all outdoors on the patio of a fancy mansion.
I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to make this journey with her—I was so miserable due to the insane, relentless heat—but I was also curious and up for the adventure of it all, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the dark apartment we were staying in with no air conditioning, so off we went in a taxi sputtering up winding switchback roads to the top of a hill where this luxury mansion had been converted into a film set.
A producer greeted us and walked us into a shady patch on the edges of the scene—two main characters, an older man reclined in a chair with his legs folded, drinking an espresso in the leafy shade of the patio, with an older woman dressed to the nines standing off to the side, trying to get his attention—and we watched as their dialogue unfolded.
Watching them run their lines took me temporarily out of one reality and into another.
And then I heard, “cut.” Scene over.
Now I’m having conversations with my boyfriend about what’s fair game when it comes to AI-assisted storytelling and literary collaborations. Is it fair to use my face and likeness in his experimental micro-dramas? Is it fair for me to use any element of his life or likeness in my own creative nonfiction narratives?
It feels like we’re all being asked to consider what’s real in new ways—consciousness studies has only amplified the question of reality as fluid and bending, negotiated and strange. But some things remain real or real enough to defend and those of us who find ourselves at the intersection of the real and unreal in art making must keep having these conversations even when the question itself—about the nature of reality—is laughing at us!
Strangely enough, I found myself on the set of Un Posto al Sole, a popular Italian telenovela, when I was visiting Naples a few years ago. I was with a dear friend who I used to live with for a while in Zanzibar, and she adored this show that she fondly called, “sole sole” for short.
Every night when it came on, the house fell silent as she fixated on the story—no talking aloud—lights out for total immersion!
I grew familiar with the characters even if I didn’t understand the Italian dialogue and started to follow the drama that unfolded each week.
In Naples, when she told me she’d been invited onto the film set where they were shooting new episodes, I knew how important this visit would be for her and her young daughter, who also followed the show. Never mind that this would be a trek to a posh part of town in the middle of a heatwave, and that the set was all outdoors on the patio of a fancy mansion.
I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to make this journey with her—I was so miserable due to the insane, relentless heat—but I was also curious and up for the adventure of it all, and I didn’t want to get stuck in the dark apartment we were staying in with no air conditioning, so off we went in a taxi sputtering up winding switchback roads to the top of a hill where this luxury mansion had been converted into a film set.
A producer greeted us and walked us into a shady patch on the edges of the scene—two main characters, an older man reclined in a chair with his legs folded, drinking an espresso in the leafy shade of the patio, with an older woman dressed to the nines standing off to the side, trying to get his attention—and we watched as their dialogue unfolded.
Watching them run their lines took me temporarily out of one reality and into another.
And then I heard, “cut.” Scene over.
I’d temporarily forgotten how hot I was, how worried I was becoming that I’d faint, that I didn’t have enough water, that I was getting a bad sunburn by standing outside in the middle of the day with the sun blazing down on all of us.
Now that the scene was over, I was back smack-dab in the middle of this miserable day, hoping I could make it back in one piece.
My friend looked at me delighted and seemingly unaffected by the weather—she’d just witnessed her two favorite telenovela stars in a scene she’d watch later and feel in her bones that she’d lived it with them!
I was happy for her and confused for myself and also delighted and amazed by my life that it had led me to the set of an Italian soap opera set in a fancy mansion atop a hill in Naples, looking out at the shimmering sea.
Now that the scene was over, I was back smack-dab in the middle of this miserable day, hoping I could make it back in one piece.
My friend looked at me delighted and seemingly unaffected by the weather—she’d just witnessed her two favorite telenovela stars in a scene she’d watch later and feel in her bones that she’d lived it with them!
I was happy for her and confused for myself and also delighted and amazed by my life that it had led me to the set of an Italian soap opera set in a fancy mansion atop a hill in Naples, looking out at the shimmering sea.
Set and setting. Situation and story. We’re making reality up as we go along, one choice, one scene, one decision, one turn at a time. I tend to think that because I write creative nonfiction—personal essays—autobiographical work—that I’m somehow more devoted to the truth—to what’s real, staying loyal to impressions as I lived them.
But these experiences stay with me as examples of all art as artifice—taking what’s real, or real enough, and making it even more real, or less, to make a story.
I’m not too sure what this means for AI and our collaborations or clashes with it, but I do believe that we’ve been bending reality as artifice—and art—long before AI (as we are beginning to know it) popped into popular consciousness.
Who gets to shape reality into a story? If we’ve always borrowed from real life to make art, how does AI in the mix alter the tenor and tone of such endeavors? Why does the acceleration of manufactured reality—art as artifice—feel so violating, when we’ve been doing some version of this forever?
Let’s see what kinds of stories linger, let’s see which stories stick.
But these experiences stay with me as examples of all art as artifice—taking what’s real, or real enough, and making it even more real, or less, to make a story.
I’m not too sure what this means for AI and our collaborations or clashes with it, but I do believe that we’ve been bending reality as artifice—and art—long before AI (as we are beginning to know it) popped into popular consciousness.
Who gets to shape reality into a story? If we’ve always borrowed from real life to make art, how does AI in the mix alter the tenor and tone of such endeavors? Why does the acceleration of manufactured reality—art as artifice—feel so violating, when we’ve been doing some version of this forever?
Let’s see what kinds of stories linger, let’s see which stories stick.
