can someone discuss The Baby Story comment? i don't watch the show so i'm in the dark.
The show features women who are in their last tri of pregnancy, and through birth. The women often say factually wrong things that are largely considered "true" by the general public. Therefore it feeds the misinformation.
It's not that it's a "basis" it's that it contributes to what I think of as the 90210 mentality: this idea that what is actually pretty elite (I can't think of the right word) is something that your average person can and should have. Designer purses, expensive shoes, high end cars (inevitably leased), and yes, the "affordable" half million dollar luxury custom build.
Now, HH doesn't have some kind of moral responsibility to keep people's greed in check, but it's fair to say that they're part of the problem, which I think is what this article is saying. It's also fair to point out the hypocrisy of their CEO or whoever that woman was.
If I may tie this in with Fat Tuesday, HH is basically the food advertising of the housing industry. Sure, you can think that people that they need to take responsibility for their own actions and not buy a house full of luxuries they can't afford, just like you can think that people need to put down the potato chips and go for a run. But people don't act in a void, and our culture and its norms find a way into our brains.
Am I the only one who doesn't believe people when they cry about how bad reality tv made them look?
I'm willing to bed they weren't as cray cray as they appeared but I seriously doubt reality tv can create that level of cray cray where there is none at all.
Maybe they could fix this whole mess and wipe the slate clean with a good old fashioned "where are they now" episode, showing us the truth after those mortgage payments start taking a toll.
Yeah, they already did this a few times. I was watching one of the "where are they now" shows and remembered the couple from their original show.
They bought a large house (pool, granite, professional landscaping, etc) in AZ in 2007. The re-visit was in 2009. Obviously, house prices had dropped significantly. The house they had bought for $300k was now worth roughly $150k.
The wife was very pissed. Her ILs decided that since houses were so affordable, they could finally afford to move closer to their son. They were buying the same house as they did for less than half the price.
But really, HGTV is no barometer for home buying. That's one of the first things that anyone said on the old "Buying a Home" board on TN when the noobs would show up and ask what a first time buyer should know... 1. Keep alcohol handy 2. Forget everything you've ever seen on HGTV
HH filmed in our neighborhood a few years ago. We watched the episode and rolled our eyes heavily: we live in a suburb of Austin, and the two comparison houses weren't even in the same suburb - they were on the opposite side of Austin. No one in their right mind who was legitimately looking at out houses in our neighborhood would have looked at those other two houses. ^o)
My big gripe about the "reality" shows on HGTV is that they give the mistaken impression that renovation is quick and easy. It's not. It's always going to take longer than you think it will and cost more than you budgeted. And you're probably going to live like I do, in a house where some rooms don't have baseboards (or door frames or window sills) because you haven't gotten around to installing them because your husband decided to build a giant custom built-in storage unit before the last project was finished. Yes, the average person probably has the skills to sand and paint furniture, but the PITA factor is edited out of the home renovation shows.
The funny thing is that most things with houses are really really hard, take for freakin ever, and usually some sort of trainwreck occurs at some point. And its usually not even TV worthy drama - its stupid paperwork BS or some sort of legalities that they can talk about to the public. It'd be interesting if they actually tried to show the true entire process of house buying and make it into a TV worthy show.