10 Horrifying Reality TV Shows You Won’t Believe Exist
Sometimes reality is more shocking than fiction.
Modern reality TV can charitably be called a mixed bag. The overwhelming majority of reality TV programmes have roughly the same intellectual value of a monkey riding a tricycle but are moderately entertaining rubbish that will briefly distract you from life.
But there are also a worryingly large number of reality TV programmes (My Super Sweet 16 and Geordie Shore for example) that make you lose faith in not only reality TV as a genre but television itself as a medium. The programmes we'll be looking at today don't fit into those two categories. They're worse...
10. I Want A Famous Face (MTV, 2004 - 2005)
This one is at the bottom of the list because, although it's full of people who are clearly emotionally damaged, the show itself is not actively harming anybody featured in it and is simply documenting their lunacy. Made on what appears to be a budget of £1.75, each episode of I Want A Famous Face follows a person in their disturbing quest to get plastic surgery in order to look more like their celebrity idol, along with a look at the recovery process in case said person having their face sliced open just isn't enough for you.
One episode features an Elvis lookalike named Jesse Garon who decides to have plastic surgery to look more like Elvis partly for a photoshoot for the cover of Playgirl magazine but, in the long term, to fend off competition from upcoming Elvis impersonators. What follows is an uncomfortable twenty minutes as Garon undergoes surgery and an acid peel with a painful recovery that affects his home life. We also get to see the Playgirl shoot but even the bizarre sight of Garon posing in painted on trousers isn't enough to wipe away the images of his surgery. It's incredibly unsettling to see people who have so little self-esteem that they want to look like someone they've never met in order to feel good about themselves or, in the case of Garon, are willing to alter their appearance for work purposes. It's certainly unnerving but these people would have had the surgery regardless of whether or not MTV was involved, and, compared to some of the other shows featured on this list, it's pretty tame.