After their plans to pitch in with a bit of community service were scuppered by an onslaught of paparazzi and hecklers, the producers of Real World Seattle remain undeterred in their quest to make the show’s cast “fully engage” with the reality of the city. The new plan is even grittier: According to a source, all eight members of the cast will spend the night in the Beacon Hill homeless encampment known as the Jungle.
Producers hoped that by capturing on video the conditions of the people taking shelter there, the show will bring attention to Seattle’s homelessness crisis. “At first, we were just gonna go give them, like, food or shoes or what not,” said cast member Jorsten Durch, 20. “But then someone was like, ‘dude, why don’t we just stay there with them instead of in our like fancy privilege Ikea loft for one night?’ It’s like, walk a mile in your moccasins, you know? Give something back. Pay something forward.”
The exact date of “Jungle Love,” as the project is tentatively entitled, is unknown, but cast members have been spotted around the Pike-Pine corridor, engaging in what the producers have called “homeless drills”: panhandling, loitering, and urinating/defecating on sidewalks.
“This isn’t something these kids take lightly,” said a source close to the production. “Rondy [Cotillion, cast member] even even came up with a little slogan that: ‘Go Big or Go Homeless.’ He was talking about getting a tattoo of it, but he got worried about it maybe getting infected during their big night at the Jungle. But maybe afterwards. Anyway, that’s how serious they take it.”
NOTE TO READERS: THIS ARTICLE IS SATIRE.
