RIP Jerry Springer

[Your Mom]

I might be breaking kayfabe here but I thought all the guests were actors. Like wasn't Justin Roberts on an episode?

[gunnar hendershow]

1 hour ago, Your Mom said:

I might be breaking kayfabe here but I thought all the guests were actors. Like wasn't Justin Roberts on an episode?

I think it landed on, at least once the show got popular, that some were real stories, most were exaggerated truths, and the rest were people coming up with whatever they could (with the full support of the show's producers) to get their fifteen minutes.

[Skummy]

On 29/04/2023 at 01:30, Your Mom said:

I might be breaking kayfabe here but I thought all the guests were actors. Like wasn't Justin Roberts on an episode?

Not all of them, but some definitely were - a bunch of wrestlers appeared on there.

They had a phone-in number, though, and people would call in with stories of their own, and if they were faking it, it was off their own back, not the producers of the show making them do it. The show, like too much reality and talk show TV, needed to get more outlandish and weird and shocking as it went on, and became more exploitative with it. And perhaps there was an element of casting actors in quiet weeks when they didn't have anything odd enough to keep up with that.

I liked Jerry Springer himself whenever I saw him on TV, despite not having any interest in watching his show. He always seemed affable, genuine, and self-effacing. He was a long way from the likes of Jeremy Kyle that came after him, who were actively antagonistic to their guests, and had an entire infrastructure built around exploiting the most vulnerable people who only reached out to him because they felt they had no other choice. The extent to which Springer can be deemed culpable for what came after him is negligible, I suppose, but his show was a symptom of the culture, it didn't create anything.