The only really successful reality/competition shows involve a lot of sexual tension between attractive people.

The biggest loser is maybe the only exception. But it involves a supposedly unattractive person becoming a supposedly attractive person, so there's that.

All the other ones involve attractive people. Their intelligence is irrelevant. If this show doesn't include that, it's doomed.

Cue white guys whining about how hard it is to be a nerrrrrd. Right before making rape/racist/ableist jokes.

God, being a nerd is even harder than my lily white penis.

Hey, I heard a good one recently: What did the nurse say to the Puerto Rican quadriplegic in the rape crisis center?

I understand @1 is being cynical, but to provide one counter example: America's Next Top Model. Or Project Runway. Or Face Off, which is apparently successful enough for SyFy that in Jan they're running the 4th season in 2 years.

Competitive reality TV shows are like drawn out game shows. And I love game shows. I'll give this a shot, but I'm out if it's all misogynistic reddit types.

@6,
Yeah, but Top Model and Project Runway both revolve around attractive people and making people look attractive/glamorous. I'd never heard of Face Off before so I googled it, and after scrolling past that terrible, terrible Nicolas Cage fiasco, I saw that it's also a show featuring attractive people.

I just think the networks and cable channels believe, probably rightly so, that most audiences want to see hot people all the time.

So they better have some competition where the nerds have to calculate the weight displacement of models swimming in pudding or something.

Allowed but only if they let me compete for the title.

They'll probably make them do a bunch of math problems or build robots and shit. Boring!

I know two dudes on that show. Fully excited to see it happen.

If this show has even a single fingerprint of The Big Bang Theory on it, I will raze the studio to the ground.

Or rather, I would, if I gave a damn.

Fuck everything involving kevin smith

Kevin Smith can only tell the same story in his 50-or-so podcasts. He's got to mine new material from somewhere.

I will allow it, but I will not watch it.

@7 As opposed to non-reality shows, which never feature attractive people? I don't disagree with your assessment that it's tiresome to see the same type of faces in media, but it's not a reality-specific thing.

Who knows? If I catch any of it, I'll judge it then. It could turn out to be something kinda cool, or it could be patently offensive nerdsploitation bullshit like Big Bang Theory. Like @12 said, that show is horseshit and if this is a spiritual follow-on, then fuck it entirely.

@16,
No, it's definitely not specific to reality tv. I think it's just more obvious in reality tv... where you can tell some of the shows "stars" are there ONLY because they're attractive and have zero talent.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's an interesting concept and I'd probably check it out. But I also know I'm not the standard demographic tv execs look for in choosing programming (e.g., I despise both American Idol and Dancing with the Stars... still the two most popular shows, yes?)

I'm interested in what, if anything, they'll do to try to make it gender-equal... I'm guessing nothing much, given the title of the show, but I'm wondering if they'll even let any women compete. I think we're all more or less aware by now of the misogyny in nerd culture (h/t @3 and @6!), but I'm curious to see how much of it TBS will allow/perpetuate.

@19, the episodes I've seen, entirely apart from just not being particularly funny, relied pretty heavily on jokes about stereotypes of women, various races (holy shit, the treatment of the Indian guy's parents was so fucking racist), academics generally, and, of course, people on the autistic spectrum. You can enjoy all that if you want. It doesn't mean you're not a nerd. It just means you're an asshole.

@1 - Fear not, Urgutha. They picked only attractive nerds.

And oddly, no fat ones. Ballparking it based on PAX attendees, that reduced the size of their nerd pool by at least 80%.

@21, so it's the same as every other comedy, but the nerds and geeks are portrayed as actually nice decent people.

So I'm an asshole how?

@23, I don't know you. Do you enjoy something that exploits damaging stereotypes for cheap laughs? Then you might be.