This is why reality television is often so unsatisfying. We know it is, so we try to fix the problem of our unsatisfaction by consuming more of it. Shields says that this results from two simultaneous conditions of being: as a culture, we are, he claims, both “desperate for authenticity and in love with artifice.”[5] In being torn between the two, we ask too much of reality television: we ask it to give us what we want, when what we want involves an unholy synthesis of opposites. This conflict ensures that we go away hungry at the end of each episode, only to return the next time with the same old hopes for nourishment.