As you read this, I’m probably on a treadmill watching MTV.  Okay, the likelihood that I’m on a treadmill at this moment is actually pretty slim.  But it is sadly true that I am almost certainly, unapologetically, watching MTV’s Canadian affiliate.  With relish.

Not that I mention the treadmill as a self-indulgent detail, to impress you with my dedication to a regimen of physical fitness.  I only mean to point out that I have been known to run, in place, on a machine designed for only that purpose, while watching TV shows based mostly on the concept that impossible people doing impossible, yet somehow terribly mundane things, is incredibly engrossing to pretty much everyone.  And that this is a thing I enjoy.  I elect to do it, over, even, other things with greater humanitarian value, like saving children from famine, or recycling my plastic water bottles.  Once more, with relish.

Nor am I alone.  Last year’s season premiere of popular MTV program The Hills won its Monday night time slot across all the vast lands of cable television.  The more adventurous A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila likewise destroyed the competition in its time spot for viewers aged 12 to 34.  The prominence of these shows is backed up not only by the numbers but also by the degree of dedication of the people who watch.  Regular viewers and even casual observers of both of these programs, among others, refer to the main characters by their first names.  I can’t remember the names of my friends’ children, but confusing Alex M with Alex H from Season 2 of Laguna Beach seems preposterous to me.  In case you’re wondering, Alex M was the bitch and Alex H was memorably forgettable as the doting best friend.

Part of the appeal of The Hills (and all of MTV shows to some degree), is its value as cultural currency.  Though the issue this time around is not so much one of coolness as it has been in the past (how feverishly did you keep up with 90210? Remember the caché of knowing all about Zach Morris’ latest exploits in Saved by the Bell?).  This time what’s at stake is far more important than coolness.  While in the past specific, individual media phenomena represented different levels of social strata, The Hills and MTV’s new menu of scripted reality fare represents the social substrate itself.  No longer does television bear the veneer of self-acknowledged artificiality.  Gone is the grin, and instead it lies straight-faced.

Without their falsity, shows like The Hills become substitutes for (which is wrong), and not appendages to (which is scary but ok), real life.  Forget the fact that as a thirteen-year old girl growing up in Aylmer, Ontario you have about as much chance of “working” as a Teen Vogue intern and living in a gorgeous, parent-subsidized condo in fashionable L.A. as you do of avoiding teen pregnancy or recreational drug use.  Forget the fact that Lauren Conrad’s single greatest challenge in life seems to be whether or not to reconcile with her former best friend, as if they were Kennedy and Khrushchev and nuclear Armageddon hung in the balance.  Forget that Tila Tequila has to deal with that oh so common problem, deciding whether she wants to “spend the rest of her life” (kindly join me in a rolling of the eyes) with a man or a woman.  Please, please, forget all of these things.  If you don’t, MTV can’t sell you absurdist Hollywood myth re-branded as the scintillating commonplace.

And people do forget.  So well that a generation of kids think their most important choices in life will be between internships in Paris and summer beach house vacations with lovable, cokehead playboy boyfriends.  In other words, MTV reality doesn’t go anywhere except back into itself, because what it teaches us about life is non-transferrable, literally cannot exist outside of the MTV vacuum.  Which is why it’s best watched running in place, when going nowhere at all seems so critically important.