Soap operas (or as they’re now pretentiously called, continuing dramas) are bad for society. In order to continue the soaps in perpetuity, the writers portray characters - which are apparently meant to represent people you might meet in real life - as leaping from one scandal to another in a reactionary, overly emotive fashion, to the extent where people have taken this hot-headed and hyperbolic attitude so much to their hearts that most reality TV nowadays goes out of its way to copy this behaviour. Any Big Brother or X Factor contestant seems to convince themselves that they’re in a soap opera and accordingly overreacts to pretty much anything! I think people should calm down a little in general and realise that escapism can be found in much more realistic, intelligent and aspirational aspects in programmes that do not go on for ever and do not require a weekly phone-in. And on the subject of realism or lack thereof, wouldn’t it be refreshingly honest occasionally if someone on Facebook didn’t constantly pretend that their lives and relationships were rosy? Every now and again I’d prefer it if somebody just updated their status as: “Had a massive row with my partner last night about whether to get engaged, it was bitter. But still, that‘s life, we‘ll probably make up in a couple of days over a pizza and a shag.” Relationships are not perfect, and blindly attempting to convince all seven hundred of your ‘friends’ that nothing ever goes wrong is self-delusional.
