Reality TV is a fallacy – this much we know. We are all familiar with the fine print: “Some of these scenes have been created for entertainment purposes.” Much like any scripted show, we as viewers can suspend our disbelief; our imagination just developed enough to buy into this faux realism.

Yet, unlike Broadchurch or Coronation Street, this suspension does not entirely evaporate when the show ends and the telly is turned off. It’s a bit like magic. We know there’s a logical trick somewhere, and yet we continue to gasp when we are smugly asked “Is this your card?” In the world of television, broadcasting companies hold all of the cards.

From their middle-class centre ground, entrepreneurial broadcasters look upwards to find a fascination with the rich (cue Made In Chelsea) and extend their gaze downwards to see a burlesque of regional dialects, benefits and the nouveau riche (cue TOWIE).

Yet these farcical portrayals are not new to television, and neither is a middle-class monopoly of the media: it has merely become more overtly absurd in recent times due to the illusion of realism that surrounds such programmes.

I could tirade against constructed stereotyping, yet scripted dramas also continue to stereotype and underrepresent minorities on screen. I could rant about bigoted caricatures of the working classes, yet soap operas continue to generate these day after day.

In a strange mutation of reality, ‘real lives’ are given pilot episode confrontations, weekly cliffhangers and end of season resolutions. Gleeful broadcasting companies have found a way to spate out soap operas and dramas for a fraction of the price, and we lap it up.

Conveniently for these companies, reality TV is marketed on this cheapness. Broadcasters stand with their hands held up while spewing out game shows, makeover programmes, talent contests, talk shows, docusoaps, reality sitcoms and many more media-hounding sub-genres. Reality TV is everywhere.

In Deal or No Deal, we find get-rich-quick attitudes, placing the underprivileged in a position of vulnerability and gullibility; in The X Factor we humiliate the delusional and give false hope to the aspirational; in Jeremy Kyle we find bullying and harassment, and partake in class-based moralising; and in The Only Way is Essex we mock regional caricatures, and distort images of fame and success.

It is impossible to defend the majority of these programmes. Our basic morals will not allow it. Ritual humiliation and the exploitation of individuals cannot be defended, and nor should it be tolerated. Further, the rise of reality TV has coincided with a dramatically shifting societal perspective on fame.

Let’s take Big Brother, that mother of all fly-on-the-wall shows. Many of the past and present contestants that grace the pages of Hello! magazine are accredited with the title “famous for being famous”. But rather than figures of celebrity, ‘celebrated’, as the name implies, for their achievements, the stars of reality TV are instead reduced to subjects of humiliation and triviality: less concerned with accomplishment and more concerned with petty personal dramas.

The problem with attacking these programmes is that the criticisms of reality TV often feed directly into the stereotyping perpetuated by the shows. To say that Big Brother is damaging is to suggest that we are becoming crueller, stupider and more gullible as a society. To attack distorted images of fame is to suggest that the current young generation are too stupid to learn a discipline, too lazy to get a job, and too narcissistic to function.

By partaking in the attack on reality TV, we partake in the class-based moralising that defines many of the shows, believing that those who are watching the programmes are mirror images of the caricatures we find there.

Reality TV contains many evils, but this doesn’t mean that it should be used as a scapegoat for the greater pitfalls of the media, or even for our own superficial pitfalls as a society. If we look inwardly, we might see that unease with The Undateables is more likely a reflection on our own discomfort and awkwardness in regards to disability, rather than the show’s (although notably, the show has received unprecedented praise in amongst all the scepticism, though there is still much to be desired). If we claim that the genre is to blame for social stagnancy, stereotyping and laziness, we are insulting our own intelligence and suggesting that we cannot see beyond the façade and experience reality TV in its satirical and fictional glory.

Reality TV is the marmite of television. Even those who love it can’t ignore its claggy texture, murky colour and pungent smell. To admit to watching reality TV is to admit to all of these overtly unpleasant aspects of the genre: admitting to escaping for an hour of schadenfreude, laughing at the humiliated and gawking at the bizarre.

In its current state, reality TV is degrading, but it is the only genre legitimate to a young generation obsessed with social media and materialism and unconcerned with privacy. Like social media, reality TV has its own corruptions; both distorting the reality they claim to present.

Yet we have irreversibly accepted social media as a necessary and unavoidable presence within society. If we learn to embrace reality TV, it has the potential to build connective action and inhabit social movements in the same way that social media has grown to do.

Placed in the right hands, it has the capacity to document the underprivileged, give autonomy to the unheard, and give stories to those who are inspirational: if only it would embrace reality.