In my opinion, these talent shows also make big business on corrupt foundations. Have you ever voted for a contestant of your choice, out of your own pocket? There is really no point. What good is voting for someone who has probably little or no chance of winning? The majority of these talent shows contain staged acts and prearranged winners. People are already fixed to win.
You also can’t forget to acknowledge the amount of money created from these shows either. Have you ever wondered where your voting money goes? Well I can assure you that a colossal portion goes to people like Simon Cowell. This multimillionaire earns up to a whopping $95 Million a year. Mostly out of our own pocket. Surely supporting contestants means our money goes to help them? However this isn’t the case. It goes too stinking rich ‘judges’ that only have to say, ‘It’s a no’ or a ‘Yes from me’. The amount of money these shows raise easily top global events like Children in need. Think about it. Compared to Simon Cowell’s salary, more than 80% of the entire human race lives on less than $10 a day.
Let’s look at how these auditioning victims are portrayed. Before an act goes on stage, it’s usually given a short introduction (sob stories) of the positives and negatives of their life, although mostly the negatives. These so called sob stories in my opinion are just another way, of many, to wrongly exploit an individual; by either humiliating, or making them seem impressive only to be shortly proved wrong and laughed at anyway. These ‘sob stories’ can also make us wrongly feel sympathy for the contestants, which effectively persuades us to vote for them. Not only does it give some contestants an unfair advantage, it’s hardly relevant to the whole point of a talent show: ‘talent’.
Furthermore, these irrelevant ‘sob stories’ are hardly the legitimate biography, or way of introducing individuals to fame. And is this necessarily fair? For people to win a yearly talent show, and have all their dreams handed out to them? I think some elder celebrities would easily disagree. Before the time of auditions and public voting, people hard to work long and hard to earn their place in fame. This meant blood, sweat and tears, not auditioning, boot camps and finals. And now, it would somewhat appear, that younger generations have an easy access to fame. And do they deserve this either? Finally, it also defeats that proud and joyful feeling after earning something by working long and hard for it.
However, contradicting that point, for most celebrities today these shows are an easy entrance to fame and fortune. And despite all the humiliation, this is also one of the only few ways to gain public recognition. So maybe these shows aren’t all that terrible, although I still don’t think any of that is it enough to do the show justice. If the acts are still fake and fixed. And people are still continuously humiliated.
So I come to the conclusion: why do people even watch these shows? I ask myself that very question. However, Talent shows like the X Factor are the most frequently talked about show in social media. People absolutely thrive on watching these unfortunate contestants. For most it’s too willingly laugh at the hundreds of terrible auditions including bad singers and actors. Except, for me though, the only real positive about these shows is they kill time.
