When Beautys and Geeks collide... on the internet.

The March 2006 issue of Vanity Fair magazine (that's the one with naked girls on the cover for those of you keeping track) featured an article on MySpace in which the site's creator, Tom Anderson, referred to the website as "the reality TV of the Internet."

I could talk more about how fascinating MySpace and its fellow networking sites are, but I'll save that for another time. What's more fascinating for me at the moment is what happens not when the Internet starts to imitate reality TV, but rather what happens when reality TV and the Internet collide. That's what happened for me with this season of Ashton Kutcher's greatest masterpiece (except for the Punk'd episode where they took away all of Justin Timberlake's belongings, that was amazing) - Beauty and the Geek.

I love reality TV, mainly because I can speculate on what is real and what is produced/edited/scripted etc (that's why I love Laguna Beach and eagerly await its sequel, The Hills - wtf!). My obsession has become slightly creepy since my discovery that I can find 80% of reality TV stars' blogs/profiles/etc on the Internet. After the first episode of BATG2, the boyfriend and I went on thefacebook.com. Using the handy lists of the beauties and geeks' alma maters on the WB show website, we managed to track down quite a few Beautys and Geeks and friend all of them.

Geeks:
Brandon (very Blah. Eliminated early.)
Joe (Pervy)
Tyson (the Rubik's cube kid. Eager to learn, endearing, but not the best television.)
Chris (scapegoat of the show until he was voted off and Cher replaced him in that role. Hilarious but no one respects sarcasm on reality TV shows.)
Wes (The hot one, post-makeover. I didn't discover his profile until much later, mostly because he wasn't interesting enough for me to notice until he became Cher's boytoy.)

Beauties:
Tristin (sadly voted off early on because she was, after the first episode, paired with scapegoat Chris. Definitely one of the smartest Beauties of the bunch.)
Brittany (See #4 below for my opinion on the Brit.)
Thais (the other half of Ty and Thai. Pretty, pretty smart, mostly unremarkable. Has 5849054830 pictures of herself in draping jersey clothing all over her facebook and Myspace profiles.)
Cher (see #3 below for my opinion on the Bitch.)

From facebook profiles, to Myspace profiles, to blogs and xangas and Chris's T-shirt company online. I love the Internet. In this case, it led to several interesting and mildly stalkerish observations which I detail below:

1- Quite a few Geeks started a blog just because they wanted to get online traffic from the show. This is proof that they are actually huge nerds because they read some article about how blogging is the next big thing (or the last big thing, or the next ubiquitous thing) and decided that the best way to improve their stock socially was to put themselves out on the Internet.
2- On a related note, every single cast member I could track down listed "Beauty on the Geek" as one of their favorite TV shows, presumably to maximize publicity within their own school/group of friends.
3- I hate Cher. Absolutely cannot stand her - if she wins Thursday I'm getting very, very drunk. This anger originated on the TV show but was fortified by seeing her album on Facebook of her visit to "Hot-lanta" to visit "geek" boyfriend Wes. Who, rumors claim, was not a geek at all but a guy approached by the producers to do the show and told to "geek it up." The pics of his friends on Cher's photos wearing tons of popped-collar polos sort of backs that theory up. Anyway, Cher's captions feature such gagworthy facebook-PDA statements such as "Yum," "My boyfriend is too cute!" and "With my honey!" This makes her annoying. When you add that to her overcompetitiveness in the early episodes (combined with sulkiness when Wes got defeated in the elimination room), she becomes my UNfavorite for the win.
4- The fact that I want Cher to lose is pretty impressive given that Brittany, ditz extraordinare from UIllinois at Chicago, did not even friend me back on facebook. Tired of fans? Perhaps. Then why did she friend back my boyfriend but also reject my roommate - and me, a second time? Another cardinal sin in my book... friending guys and not girls. Always suspicious. However, Brittany's hardworking go-to attitude (the Trump would be proud) won me over in spite of her facebook snub. She's just so earnestly trying to learn! Aw, ditzes can be so cute!
5- Joe, slightly pervy guy from Northwestern & UChicago, holds weekly viewing parties in the Chicago area. By boss is from that area and she said one of the bars he had it at used to be like a hardcore underground hiphop club. Only Joe. One week Joe did not have a party and I suspected at first that it was because he was going to get eliminated, but that proved wrong since he's now in the top two pairs. Despite falling apart under pressure and believing in himself a little too much for a geek, he has managed to last... but I think in the end he's just not as deserving of the win as Josh is, which will be the only consolation if (let's face it, when) Cher wins.
6- Not surprisingly, Ankur does not have a facebook. He would definitely think it was too plebeian.

What I love about all of this internet stalking is the new light it's shed on all of the characters (!?!! that was instinct) and their real relationships. Many of them are still spending time together outside of the show (Karl, Danielle, Brittany and Joe all live in the Chicago area). That adds credibility to the heartwarming "Beauties and Geeks meet in the middle" angle that the show has been going for - either that or none of them were very different to begin with and all the drama was produced. However I think the blogs prove otherwise.

Another amusing thing to look at is how seriously the cast members do and do not take the show. That varies, naturally, from person to person. For example, Cher, who comes off as the uber-bitch on TV, is "married" to Tyson on the facebook, which I think shows a lighthearted "We're both Asian" bond which belies her competitive attitiude. Chris, on the other hand, clearly takes the show seriously because his blog details every episode and explains all of his complex feelings and what was and was not edited. I for one appreciate the Regent Scholar's intellectual take on it all because 1) it gives me more to read while I'm bored at work and 2) he takes it even more seriously than I do. All of the people have friend details like "Thais and Cher lived in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills!!!!" I can't decide if this is glorification of LA from people who for the most part are from the East or Midwest, or just the personality of the kind of person who tries out for reality TV shows. It's one or the other.

I think I've exhausted my energy for reality tv obsession for the evening. I'll leave it to you now. Consider it homework.

Beauty and the Geek 2 homepage on the WB.com
Chris's Blog
Chris's T-Shirt Website (someone got Domain-name happy)
Karl's Blog (Karl, btdubs, is the Napoleon Dynamite lookalike)
Karl's MySpace
Cher's Xanga
Tyson's Xanga
Tyson's website (with all his contact information! What kind of CalTech student would do that!?)
(On an unrelated note, why is it that the Asian members of the cast have Xangas and the white guys have blogs on blogspot? Just an observation.)
Josh's friend's blog (dedicated to the show for the moment, but after the show ends "to all things geeky and and how the world looks from a geek's perspective.") For proof that they are "associates" visit this page.