As Anti-Bullying week comes to an end here at YakkityYaks, we want to be a reminder that ACTION leads to CHANGE. We hope we have gotten that across throughout the week as we have teamed up with past and present Reality TV Stars, our Forum members, and fans on Facebook and Twitter to bring an awareness to the anti-bully movement. Hopefully together, we can help put a stop to it, and help those currently stuck in the situation and in dire need of help or just someone to talk to. Just because the week is over, doesn’t mean the movement stars here. We encourage you to keep the momentum going and keep us updated on your own personal initiatives!
As one of our biggest supporters throughout this week, Big Brother’s Shelly Moore, has provided the Yak with her story as well. Shelly is probably fresh on the minds of many Big Brother fans after her time spent in the house this past summer, which housed “newbies” and alums of the game alike. Shelly is no stranger, as we previously reported, to cyber attacks after reports of threats to Shelly herself, her job and her family surfaced while she was in the house and may have lingered after. Dwelling on those experiences, among others, Shelly has joins our initiative with other reality personalities to share her story below.
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I have never been bullied. That is a statement I can no longer make. It saddens me, it infuriates me, and it enlightens me. All too often in this world, we have the mentality of, it is not happening to me, so it can’t be that bad. It took hate, threats, jeers, and pure ugliness through the Internet, by people who hide behind sometimes clever, occasionally mean, and usually just a spur of the moment screen names for me to realize there is a problem much bigger than any of us realize. The harsh reality of “no one listens until someone dies” became more than a headline to me. I had become a statistic, obviously not one of the horrific suicides consuming young, barely a decade old children, but someone at the other end of the gun. A gun being pointed at me by people who don’t know me, but think they do through the popular TV genre called – Reality TV.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that reality TV for the most part is an edited, made for TV drama. Its sole purpose is to create entertainment, garner huge ratings and advertisers, and create water cooler talk so people, often known as fans, come back for more. It is one of the most popular forms of television today, consuming prime time slots on nearly every major network. And oh yeah, if you can’t get enough, there are marathons that play endlessly on certain channels, and even channels that play nothing but reality drama day in and day out. You can see hoarders, addicts, celebrities (that were made celebrities through reality tv), prison stays, crazy police encounters, survivors in nearly every climate and survivable condition, races, and my personal favorite…house guests. Each year a new twist on reality is spun of golden thread, given a name, a network, a crazy cast of characters and off they go. And right alongside the show comes a cast of bigger characters who evaluate, blog, analyze, argue, converse, and develop opinions that in many cases are extremely polarized. It is very rare with reality characters that you would hear the statement “he or she is alright.” Instead, the casts of these “reality shows” are either gods and goddesses or villains. There is not too much in between. You’re either a character or you’re not and to be a character you have to have the traits the audience wants to cheer or jeer. You can be classified as a god or goddess if you’re hot, entertaining, funny, charming, kind, social, look great in a bathing suit, and say and do all the things the “audience” wants you to say and do. Occasionally you can receive the highest ranking for gameplay, but it really depends on who or what or how you got there. It doesn’t matter if the entire game is set up for lies, deceit, and manipulation. If you ever once utter you hope to not play that way, get ready for the so-called fans to eat you alive. It is possible to be deemed a god or goddess and then fall from grace, just as it is possible to be a villain and have redemption. It just depends how many times you get to play the game or if the audience chooses to let you sneak by.