And so, the cycle begins once again. A autumn with no episodes of my two favorite shows (but have been kept in very good company by the casts of Big Tips Texas & Scrubbing In) but with a lot of buzz among fans surrounding both of the shows that are closest to my heart, will now lead to an exciting several months ahead. Coming up on Wednesday, January 15th - or make that one week early on Wednesday, January 8th, we start a winter of drama in my very own Bay Area backyard with Real World Ex-Plosion, where the added spice of the cast's exes moving into the San Francisco loft will heat up what promises be an explosive season, if you couldn't tell from the title of this season. Shortly thereafter and likely after the Sochi Olympics, we'll have another season of The Challenge, for which 28 people who have been off social media during this time, will be on there.
And having just wrapped up our coverage of Rivals II in our last post that we posted earlier tonight, to kick off DC Blog's coverage of, and countdown to, Real World Ex-Plosion (the first full RW season to be covered on here, I only started blogging towards the end of RWPDX), I'd like to take a moment to talk & reflect on about something that, in the past two years, has had a profound impact on my relationship with this great show.
With Facebook and now Twitter registered on the NASDAQ index thanks to their record-setting initial public offerings, does it seem that social networking has changed how we all communicate? Well, it definitely has, and chances are you likely have at least one social media app downloaded onto your smartphone. And this new way of communicating has also impacted MTV and its longest-running franchise, and has also enhanced my long-time relationship with The Real World.
Aside from the great experience that comes with watching that and The Challenge (which I talked about in my first DC SocialPulse post during Rivals II), social media has played a game-changing role in how I'm able to interact with the show I have been watching for nearly 15 years going back to watching RW Hawaii when I was back in high school. It's the one TV franchise I feel most comfortable in (RW's storytelling & laid-back feel is more to my pace than The Challenge's intense cutthroat nature) and social media has really made my relationship with the show much more stronger.
On Twitter & Instagram, as of date I have gotten an interact - a reply, favored or retweeted tweet, a photo like, or that ultimate fandom moment of getting a follow - from well over 100 of the alumni. This extends to Syrus, Jon from LA and Kevin of the first NY season in the show's first generation, through to the recent generation extending from Brooklyn to now. Though I've had the great pleasure of talking with all of these great people since I joined, two (and soon to be, three) sets of people stand out, and they're those who I've been fortunate enough to have been on this ride with them since the beginning.
For the first cast I ever got to interact with (either in social media or in-person - which I haven't as of yet), just as soon as they returned home stateside from their stay in the Virgin Islands, the St. Thomas cast all got to their nearby internet device, logged into their social media outlets following the long vacation in paradise, and instantly became fellow Facebook friends & twitter followers with one another. And soon thereafter, many fans just like myself, fellow or forgotten friends from back in the day, and alumni who they were about to join the likes of, also sent friend requests or gave a follow to Trey, Robb, Laura, Marie, Latoya, Swift and Brandon. Together they became amongst the first to welcome Team St. Thomas into this unique, distinguished and, of course, dysfunctional family, all before their trailer debuted on Memorial Day weekend, before they amassed thousands of followers and a month before I joined twitter, which also coincided with season 27 premiere night on June 27, 2012.
Remembering reading their tweets and posts between after filming ended in May and in the month leading up to premiere night (and also where four of them went straight to their first Challenge in Turkey just two weeks after they got home, eventually they would have their social media embargo lifted just for them to help promote the show once they were eliminated), this cast became the first to really become well aware of the social media realm and the impact that it was going to have on them, preparing for the love - and hate - that they would get once the season took shape. And just as every MTV season's casts would do since, the STT cast tweeted and responded to all their followers back at almost every opportunity to help build that buzz. While their season might not stand out to me as much as other seasons though I did enjoy watching it, it was that social media interaction that I had with all 7 of them that became one of my favorite RW memories & made the season that much more enjoyable for me.
I was then able to follow four of them through their first Challenge - Battle of the Seasons, where Team St. Thomas' run extended right into December, to February when Trey's Ravens beat my Niners in the Super Bowl, right on into Rivals II & even to Trey, aka Walter, on The Price is Right just recently. And though the group dynamic has changed a bit since their reunion, I give them great praise for being so fan friendly to people like me like all the fish who live in the fish tank. You never forget about being that first one in any given category.
And then, for the season that came on afterwards in Portland, I was able to do what I wasn't able to do for STT, and that would be getting to know them in the lead up to the season, which actually began all the way back in November 2012. While I was focused on BOTS, I also followed what was going on in Oregon, increasing as filming continued on. So when Anastasia, Averey, Jessica, Johnny, Joi, Jordan, Marlon and Nia all returned to social media after taping wrapped up, I gave them (at least, most of them, not all were on twitter back then) a follow and started talking with them. My very first twitter mentions of Team Portland were just Follow Friday teasers to remind followers that they would get to know them very soon. And Marlon tweeted to me a tease of what was to come: "I'm excited. It's gonna be a good season, crazy drama. It was fun doing too. I hope people watching really get to see the realness of our lives. Definitely gonna be a wild ride."
During the long gap between the end of that Challenge and the buzz for RWPDX beginning in February, I was able to talk more & more with the cast in an efforts to establish a rapport with them before they would become well known, so when the trailer was finally released, I was able to grasp on to their season more than others. Throughout the season, I was able to interact greatly with all of them - where eventually five of the roommates would give me a follow (Marlon & all the girls except Joi), and I was more engaged with this show than ever before, thanks to watching a season I got to enjoy so much it became a standout one for me. I also live tweeted a lot of the show as well as getting scoop on their reunion from two of my followers for my blog too. And like STT, the Portlanders also became very fan friendly with their twitter followers, and tweeted with them a lot before and during the season.
And then after the now-famous/infamous, fight, four of them went on to Rivals II (which was the reason why the girls weren't on for the premiere & the guys until later on). As much as I was rooting for everyone (most that I got to know well too) to do well in Thailand, I was secretly rooting for Team Portland to do very well too. But I never expected Jordan & Marlon to make it to the final, no less make a great impact in their very first go. For them, it was full circle to what, no doubt, is the most amazing 13-month ride anyone could have. To have followed them from when they wrapped up filming back last year, through the winter as their season was being edited, then watching a great season I got to enjoy so much, and seeing them have a great rookie showing on Rivals II, it added so much more to how I got to enjoy RWPDX.
In the cases of both casts, and though I have had the great opportunity to interact with so many people in the RW/Challenge community over the past year-and-a-half & love everyone, I have grown a greater bond with the St. Thomas and Portland casts than any other RW cast I've watched, thanks in no small part to having talked to each of the 15 roommates. And unlike most people who would follow them during their season, I'm also lucky enough to have followed their progress the entire way, starting back when I joined twitter through watching these four seasons. Thanks to the buzz fans have talking about after this Rivals II season, we should be able to see more of them coming up this spring when Challenge 25 takes shape.
And for what comes up beforehand? I might not have followed the filming of Real World Ex-Plosion as much as I wanted to because of my full focus on Rivals II and then on other things during the offseason, even though it was filming up the way in San Francisco. But already, I've become good social media friends with Arielle, Ashley, Cory, Jamie, Jay, Jenny and Thomas. Already, three of them - Ashley, Jenny & Jay - follow me on twitter, and the entire original cast of seven strangers have interacted with me in one way or another on twitter or Instagram even before the trailer was released and after the revelation of the twist of their exes Ashley C., Brian, Lauren, Jenna & Hailey moving in. They, like the last two casts, have also become well aware of social media and once the season debuts, they'll likely be as fan friendly as most in the RWC world.
Thanks to the digital age we live in, The Real World & Challenge franchise has evolved from shows you could only experience by watching it on that little cable channel called MTV to one that you can not only watch on TV and MTV.com, but also on your tablet, smartphone and video on demand. And the show websites have evolved too, from offering just episode recaps, bios and cast photos, to now offering additional content such as the After Show, preseason Spy Cams and blogs, taking fans inside the RW experience just like the many members of the crew who watch over their every move. And thanks also to coverage by print & online media outlets, and to an extent blogs such as this one, it can also tell us who these cast members are. And in the case of those infamous fan forums, even down to some of their more interesting details, well before they are officially revealed to the rest of us, even as they are filming.
No cable channel is is best suited to getting viewers talking like MTV - proof being it's one of the most-liked brands on Facebook, and it recently became the first entertainment-based TV channel to reach 10 million twitter followers. And anyone who becomes an on-air figure there has been strongly encouraged by the big wigs and by production partners such as RW/Challenge production house Bunim-Murray Productions to get a social network presence, to get those people buzzing and perhaps bring more viewers in the door, even a tabloid. Just ask the Vegas XXV cast when a scandal involving one of their roommates landed a Southern gentleman named Dustin on the cover of US Weekly, following in the footsteps of the Jersey Shore gang and those Teen Moms. A good majority of this exclusive club of Real World, Road Rules & Challenge alumni are tweeters, and many of them are on Facebook - either regulars who fill up your timeline or relative novices getting used to this new way of communicating. Even Swift, for example, actually got some help getting into the twitter-verse when Challenge vet Laurel helped him out in downloading the twitter app to his iPhone.
Like Miley Cyrus and other sudden sensations, social media has made the casts of this latest generation of The Real World, The Challenge and other MTV shows even more well known than anyone can ever imagine back when the legacy series began over two decades ago, and yet they become that much more personal and intimate. The development of this latest phase of internet communication is now allowing fans the opportunity to communicate with these same people that we watch on television in almost the same way we talk to our friends and family, as well as interact with other fans too. After all, TV is, at its core, a one-on-one medium of communication. And aside from running into any of the over 250 or so Real World, Road Rules or Challenge alumni or, of course, that rare occurrence of being casted, it's the closest you can be to actually being part of this family, without actually being casted and exposing all of what you have in front of more than just friends & family.
In closing, my experience in the last year and a half of talking to so many of these people on twitter & social media has probably made the biggest impact on this great relationship I have with The Real World. Yes, I've been watching the show for almost 15 years now, going all the way back to those glory days of my adolescence and have seen its evolution, and yet still continue to be the pioneer in this tenure of reality TV & still follow that same playbook first conceived in SoHo in 1992. And this has allowed me to communicate with these same people who I've watched in a way I & many others could never have imagined when I first began watching with Hawaii in the summer of '99. And it's now time for Arielle, Ashley, Cory, Jamie, Jay, Jenny and Tom - plus Ashley, Brian, Hailey, Jenna & Lauren - to take the torch. And as always, I can't wait for the next chapter in this proud MTV tradition to take shape, and also being able to talk to them during these next few months. And considering the buzz surrounding this season, sure thought MTV decided to move this all up a week.
