I have an 18-year habit: The Real World. This supersedes my addiction to both booze and the Internet. To be fair, my Real World fixation wasn’t always consistent or life sucking. There was a time when I was on the wagon, when the Real World couldn’t drag me into its depths. This was in my mid to late 20s. 

When I started watching season one, I was an optimistic high school sophomore. I rooted for the romance between future meathead/hip-hop aerobiciser Eric Nies and Southern virgin Julie, and, of course, for the burgeoning rap career of Miss Heather B. All of these things seemed possible then.

And for the next two seasons, I kept watching, even though the cast was fairly boring and tragically average looking. Quickly, MTV fixed this snafu and started casting only good looking drunks with very few sexual boundaries. This was enthralling for a season or five, but then it got old. Not because hot drunk messes make for lame television, but because they’re annoying when you’re no longer one yourself (or at least trying not to be one).

By age 25—which I think is no coincidence, also the cut-off age for the show’s casting requirements—I went on a Real World hiatus. Suddenly, I was no longer enamored with twentysomethings whining about flings that were doomed from the start and their failed half-ass career attempts. These were certainties:

1) Any professional and creative aspirations cast members walked in with immediately took a backseat to skinny dipping and lesbian makeouts.

2) Anyone with a boyfriend/girlfriend back at home would either cheat on him/her, or disengage from the group entirely and spend most of his/her time on the phone bitching about how he/she is so misunderstood.

3) Whatever strong belief someone held on Day One (gays are gross, blacks are angry, that he/she was The Shit) would be questioned by season’s end.

But it wasn’t the predictability that bothered me so much as it was witnessing the unfolding. Their insecurities and self centeredness were splattered all over the screen, and I’d want to scream, “Get over yourself! Have some goddamn perspective!”

Then I gained perspective about perspective. A few years ago, watching these spectacles was no longer like puncturing an old wound, or watching home videos of my most vulnerable and disgraceful moments, and then shaking my head in disbelief because the person on the screen is not who I imagined myself to be.

Now when I look at the Real World, I don’t take it personally. I’m mixed with both gratitude and empathy—I sure as hell don’t want to be where these kids are at. The show captures (in fast-forward mode, via people who are easy on the eyes) that fuct-up, self-indulgent semi-growth that happens in your 20s—if you’re lucky enough to be part of the demographic that can afford such an indulgence. And that’s why it makes me sigh, wince and curse and find some sort of redemption and frustration in every character. It’s terribly, incredibly real. 

As a post-20s person, my ego still plows into my sensibility and sensitivity, but now that mess is less explosive, more of a shrug, an “oh yeah, I do that.” I don’t dare claim to be much more enlightened than I was back then; I’m just too lazy to fight my flaws now.  

But oh, how pleasurable it is to watch such a fight. Especially when it’s not your own.

(Above: An enabler.)