The Cheat Sheet

Speaking of MTV, the Village Voice got hold of a copy of the Real World contract. Some highlights:

• You may be humiliated and explicitly portrayed “in a false light.” (12)
• Interacting with other cast members carries the risk of “non-consensual physical contact” and should you contract AIDS, etc. during such an interaction, MTV is not responsible. (7)
• You’re not pregnant and you won’t become pregnant before the show’s done filming. If you do become pregnant, you’ll tell the Producer immediately—and pregnancy is grounds for dismissal. (38)
• You grant the Producer blanket rights to your life story. (49)
• Under ordinary circumstances, all of this would be considered a “serious” invasion of privacy. (11)

To that last point, in reality TV anything goes.

moneyries:

And the most misleading, click-baity tweet of the day goes to…..the Washington Post, which got 7,049 clicks to a random ‘Post Mortem” blog post about the death of a 92-year-old jazz trumpeter named Snooky Young.

For context, the tweet before, about a “Growing number of consumers pay[ing] credit card debt before mortgage,” got 296 clicks. The one that followed the Snooky tweet got 229. Our beehived Sn00ki, of the Jersey Shore, is—by all indications—still alive.

Right?!

Does MTV’s ‘Skins’ Break the Law?

[MTV execs are concerned] that some of the upcoming scenes could violate federal child-pornography laws and have ordered producers to tone it down….One scene in question, slated to air Jan. 31, showed a backside view of 17-year-old actor running down the street in the buff.