At 20, MTV's 'Real World' acting like a spoiled brat

By: Nathan Mattise

Posted: 2/19/08

Don't ask why, but I carry a 1995 Little League trading card in my wallet. Every so often I take it out, and I'm amazed at how much I've changed. At age 10, I was a 4'9," 82-pound boiling Crockpot of masculinity. Now at 22, I'm too self-conscious to share vital stats.

I felt similar growing pains last week when I came home to my roommate plowing through another episode of "The Gauntlet III." The last "Real World" cast I really followed was Hawaii, which is like comparing apples with…really, really terrible sour apples. For example, Irene from the Seattle cast was a real person who showed me that adults fight, and that disease can be really rough on an individual. CT on "The Gauntlet III" is a surreal idiot who shows me how to define the term "bro," "bra" or "brew" - depending on your pronunciation of the new-age meathead stereotype.

If I was a better writer I'd try to convey the sad story of what the "Real World" has evolved into. The show used to cast people you could actually relate to, and socially relevant things used to happen. Now "Real World" is set to leave its teenage years behind with the show's 20th season in March, and MTV set up The Real World Awards Bash for the occasion.

I can't really see folks from the show I used to watch snagging awards in categories like "Best Meltdown," "Best Phone Call Gone Bad" or "Best Brush With The Law." (If you want to vote, the voting opened online this week and it goes until Feb. 29).

Despite all that, I'm not complaining when a new episode of "The Gauntlet III" hits my TV screen each week. Not watching "The Real World" would be like taking away part of my being. If pop culture consciousness starts between the ages of 5 and 10, then we literally grew up together. I am who I am (and maybe if there are a large amount of other lame pop culture 'obsessers,' we are who we are) indirectly because of "The Real World."

Take sexuality for example. I never had the birds and the bees talk with my dad like he did with my grandpa. I simply snuck TV after lights out and let "The Real World" do the educating. I first encountered sexuality because of "The Real World: San Francisco." Cast member Pedro was an open homosexual who was struggling with AIDS.

Needless to say it was an interesting dynamic to process the first LGBT individual I ever "knew" within eight hours of watching "Power Rangers" on the same TV. By the time Dan in Miami or Genesis in Boston came around, I had a basic understanding of what was going on.

You could say the same thing for trying to deal with life's vices. Sure my mom said "say 'no' to drugs" or "cigarettes are bad," but it made sense when I met Ruthie from Hawaii at age 13. Ruthie literally drank, drank then drank some more until she passed out and needed paramedics on the very first episode of the season. She proceeded to then drive home drunk, scare her roommates to the point where they needed to have an intervention and disappeared from the season for a while to attend rehab. In two years when I played high school basketball and we'd have the standard athlete shindigs, I didn't need any more reminders from mom to realize I was bringing a bottle of water and only staying for an hour.

Today my younger brother and his friends aren't watching "The Gauntlet III" and learning about either of those things. They don't even learn about mature romantic relationships, race, religion, politics or anything the old "Real World" cast members used to sort of, well, teach me. They watch for the drama, the challenges that require bikinis and the hilarity of every single testimonial by Coral. If that's the world that's real today, maybe it's time to finally take up reading.

Nathan Mattise is a pop-culture columnist for The Daily Orange. His columns appear every Tuesday. He attended the Real World open casting call on campus back in 2004, was brought back for a second interview and then immediately dropped because he was too lame. He can be reached at nzmattis@syr.edu.