A girl I went to school with was on ‘My Super Sweet Sixteen’. She was always quiet but well-liked and the kids on that show were usually monsters so we were curious about how the episode would paint her. There was one scene where she was checking in on a vendor and they said something might not be finished in time for the party and she didn’t have a meltdown or anything but she said something dramatic like, “Oh no! That’s going to ruin my whole birthday party!” After the episode aired her friends who were with her said they did a couple of takes because her first reaction was like, “Oh, that sucks. Thanks for letting me know.”

Not me but I bumped into someone that was on the ‘Property Brothers’ show. According to them the two brothers were only ever on site for the filming, they threw out/hauled away all the person’s furniture and what it was replaced with was very pretty looking but hard and uncomfortable, bad quality (like had to be replaced within a year bad quality), impractical for the family, and the family could not get anything from before the makeover back that they wanted.

I was on a dog training tv show when I was 8-ish. The idea was that the dog trainer came in and helped our family integrate our new puppy into our household, to give us training tips and advice, etc. The whole thing was basically bogus. The trainer came to our house for maybe 30 minutes tops and gave us extremely basic advice. The producers also told us we had to get changed and pretend that he was visiting us 3 months later after he gave us the advice and how it had made our life better, yada yada yada. It’s so dumb because our puppy was clearly the same age in the before and 3 months after shots and my family aren’t actors so our reactions were really fake. One of the producers also made me say, “I love you, [dog’s name]!” while hugging him for about 6 takes.

I worked with a junk removal company for an episode of ‘Hoarders’ and it was actually 99% REAL. The only thing that they would set up a couple times was if they opened a box and found something interesting off camera, they would re-open it on camera and act like they just found it.

‘Canadian Idol’ – Producers tell you which songs to sing. First they make you sing in line, if you’re really bad or really good you’re put through to the producers. My friend made it through (honestly an incredible singer). She had been singing one song the whole time and made it to the judges. She sang the song that got her that far, which was ‘My Hero’ by Foo Fighters. Then, before she goes to the judges the producers say she’s going to sing ‘Creep’ by Radiohead as Foo Fighters aren’t on the list of approved songs. So she sings ‘Creep’, doesn’t impress the judges and doesn’t make it through. We then watch the show when it’s aired, and these motherfuckers edited her into the opening and said, “The good, the bad and the just plain creepy!” And showed her singing ‘Creep’. She was this gothic girl who didn’t fit in with the usual pop star image, and she was so humiliated she never sang again. Also, Ben Mulroney is one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met.

I was a competing realtor on ‘Million Dollar Listing’ for an episode. I am not nor have I ever been a realtor.

I was on ‘Wife Swap’ when I was 10 years old. My family had to switch with a farming family and we were supposed to be the “city family” even though my family and I lived in the suburbs. There were plenty of quotes taken out of context as you’d expect. They also incited plenty of drama. I was framed as addicted to video games so they took my Xbox and GameBoy color for the week. A few days in one of the crew members came in with my GameBoy and said, “Look I found this,” and handed it to me. It shouldn’t be surprising that they sent the woman staying in our house into my room to “catch me in the act”.

A wedding that I was a bridesmaid in was aired on ‘Say Yes to the Dress’. They filmed our initial reaction to the bride walking out several times. They, like, wanted us to scream and cry. I’ll be honest, the whole thing was incredibly fake and rubbed me the wrong way. Pretty on par for the type of person the bride is, though. I don’t talk to her anymore.

My dad was asked to be on an episode of TLC’s ‘My Strange Addiction’. He runs kind of a niche (small) business. And they were like, “Hey, you’re addicted to this right?” And he was like. “Um, no.” And they were like, “Well can you pretend to be addicted to this and you can be on the show?” And he was like, “Um, no.” It was a honeybee business. They were hoping he was addicted to bee stings.

I knew a girl who was on the ‘Tiny Homes’ show with her mom. She said they had already bought the tiny home, and the show set things up like they were looking at a bunch of others and picked that one.

One of my neighbors was on a house disaster reno show and it was a mixed bag. I think the crew hired by the show actually did very competent structural reno and repair type work but the “designer” had super niche tastes so the family ended up repainting everything and pitching all the decoration aspects to get the house ready for resale after having to act super happy for the cameras.

I was on the ‘Long Island Medium’ in 2013. Theresa came to my house to do a private reading and it was voted on as one of the best readings of the season. Problem issss… she’s full of shit. The production crew were awesome folks and not to mention I was borderline blacked out drunk at 3 in the afternoon for the reading but you wouldn’t be able to tell watching it. The episode was called ‘Diving Right In’ and she addressed my fathers passing in 2010. She pulled on my heartstrings and I cried my eyes out. I’m 18 months sober now.

A classmate of mine was on my country’s ‘Next Top Model’. Before getting into the show she was asked what kind of hair she would never want to get, so that the producers know about it and not make her have it during the makeover episode. My classmate had long blonde hair which she really loved, so she said she doesn’t want them to cut her hair off and that she also hated strange unnatural colors like blue, pink etc. Fast forward to the makeover episode. The hairstyling team comes in and finds her hair unfitting for a model, so she needs to get a makeover and guess what? Her makeover obviously consists of a pixie cut and green hair to make her look like a “punk fairy”. My classmate cried throughout the entire process, so I guess the producers got the drama they wanted out of this.

There was a family in our neighborhood who was on a show here in Germany. One day, when accompanied by the camera crew, one of the daughters suddenly threw a screaming fit in public, which was totally unusual for her. When the mom was asked later what the fuck had happened, she said for a tantrum you get 200 bucks extra.

My dad was a cameraman on one of the Bravo channels ‘Real Housewives of’… He said 99% is made up.

I was kind of on one, for one episode. I used to live with a couple of friends who owned their own remodelling business. They were contacted by HGTV to be on a show about flipping houses. Basically, the hosts of the show knew absolutely nothing. The hosts would have my friends show them what tools to use and how to use them for a shot, and then the cameras would roll and the hosts would act like they were doing all of the work. It was all fake, though the work was really done by my friends and the house was really sold. Last I heard, the family still lives there.

My parents were dinner guests in an episode of ‘Nanny 911’ and they said literally everything was staged. I don’t remember all of the details, but they said the directors had a code word that they would say to the kids when they were supposed to start acting all crazy. And then once the scene was done, the kids would be perfectly normal.