“Dear Emo Joe, I think my mind is melting because I watch too much reality TV, should I turn that junk off?”

Emo Joe responds:

No way! Watch more. Soak your eyeballs in it until you can’t take another second of the madness. Why you ask?

First off, reality TV is very emo, in that it is overflowing with raw nerve passion, intense heartbreak and emotional unraveling. Reality TV puts all of life’s nasty little dramas in razor sharp focus. Reality TV is the windshield we peer through as we blast down life’s cruel blacktop. The folks on these shows are like the fine mist of splattered bugs that we occasionally clear away with our wipers. Reality TV shines a white-hot spotlight on a seemingly endless legion of dimwits and has-beens as they all attempt to out-peacock each other in the vicious TV barnyard.

Reality TV actually makes me ponder the deepest and perhaps most important question of the modern age, “Is my existence real if it’s not lived out on reality TV?”

But, you might wonder, what is the difference between reality and reality TV? Is there one? Is there a line in the sand? Let’s just sit back and ponder the word “reality” for a moment. One definition says reality is, “Actual being or existence, as opposed to an imaginary, idealized, or false nature.”

Do you think that reality TV is imaginary, idealized or false in its nature? What’s imaginary about such real life searches for essence and meaning like “Flavor of Love” or “The Cougar?” What’s idealized about the Darwinian “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette?” What’s false – besides various nips, tucks and enhancements - about the “Real Housewives?” Aren’t all these TV shows steeped in the sort of hard-bitten reality that you deal with each day as you slog through the muddy trenches of your own life?

Another definition says reality is, “Everything that actually does or could exist or happen in real life.”

Couldn’t 20 people really get stranded in a jungle somewhere, wearing only bikini tops and tight shorts and be forced to eat six inch bugs, pit themselves against each other in brutal contests of strength, and form Lord of the Flies style alliances, or else they’ll be banished from reality TV forever? No different than most people’s average day at work or school.

Another definition says reality is, “Something that has real existence and must be dealt with in real life.” Kind of like when the Kardashian girls have to seriously deal with a major shopping crisis. These are real people, flesh and blood, just like you and I, who are forced, under the camera’s unflinching glare, into confronting and then dealing with intense, real life issues and then coming up with complex and ingenious methods for overcoming them.

I guess what I am trying to say is this: reality TV is sort of a guide for living your life. Go turn on about 10 full hours of the stuff. Just pour it into your brain. Study how the king and queen, Jon and Kate and their scampering brood of eight, navigate the troubled waters of potential infidelity and divorce. Watch how they harness their anger, resentment and fury, and then deftly navigate the unforgiving waters of a life lived on screen. Note the life lessons you see played out on screen.

For instance, if someone has 15 stripper girlfriends cat-fighting on a tour bus, like Brett Michaels does, note how he handles the pressure and apply his deft moves to your own love life. If some uppity, prim and proper visiting matriarch on “Wife Swap” finally comes around and gets her psychic groove on with the double-wide dwelling family of backwoods hicks who are into all night partying, ritual tattooing and Viking metal, apply her newfound ability to bend with the punches to your own life.

Stop here. You know I jest, right? Turn that junk off. Reality TV is a seven head brain-sucking leech. It’s a slow acting acid eating through our frontal lobe, a smelly wart hog gnawing on our backbone. Step away from the TV and turn on the Internets where it’s safe.

Occasionally we ask a guest blogger to contemplate the zeitgeist. Emo Joe is a dedicated emo devotee who spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about and wallowing in the dark side of pop culture, existential angst and social media. This is his take on Twitter:

I tweet, therefore I am. I now express each ruminative and esoteric thought in 140 characters. I exist in an expressive, yet minimalist world. I float in a metaphorical champagne flute bubbling with tweets.

I have embraced Twitter.

My dark, twisted thought processes, once clouded by the incessant chaos and utter despair that comes from flailing, sans life vest, in the swift, unyielding current of the pulsating datastream, is now unburdened, and at liberty to tweet or not to tweet.

No longer am I bound by the crushing social psychosis unleashed by millions of glittering and obtrusive MySpace profiles. No longer must I yield to those insipid Facebook pokes, quizzes and 25 random things. No longer will I be confronted by another invasive and unbecoming photo tag that always shows me at my worst.

With Twitter, I escaped from a slow, man-sized iron pot that simmers on a low flame, in a deep jungle clearing, lit up by a moon that mocks me. The pot is surrounded by a gaggle of barely tolerated online friends and very loose acquaintances, all whipped into a dancing frenzy of incessant oversharing. More and more people I do not know, or hardly know, began to “add” me to their growing list of friends. Who are you people? I don’t know you.

By slowly turning up the heat on me, one new “friend” at a time, as you would a passive frog in a cooking pot, they thought I wouldn’t notice the temperature change. But, I did notice, and the moment they became distracted updating their status or compiling another dumb list, I quietly freed myself from their loose tethers, climbed out of the pot and slipped away into the Twittersphere.

I am now free to roam in a new online social atmosphere where nothing at all is expected of me. I can happily follow and be followed by a fluttering flock of blue tweetie birds that sing the sweet song of tweets.

With Twitter I was able to catapult over the social ramparts and discover a Zen garden full of freshly raked pebbles of knowledge. I discovered the true yin to my online yang.

Many world-shaking things, like Twitter, come in small packages. The master Yoda spoke in lilting haiku and his wise mutterings emanating from the swamps of Dagobah would be perfectly at home in the pure stream of heightened consciousness that envelopes the expanding Twittersphere.

Obi Wan Kenobi would even say that the Twittersphere, like the Force, is “an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”

This means all of us; Ashton, Demi, MC Hammer, Lance, Shaq, you and I are all within one tweet of each other’s auras.

In Twitter there is simplicity and pure social harmony.

I am, therefore I Tweet.

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