For a long time now there has been a strong complaint about the content and formats of some of what television offers.

The concept of telebusiness refers to those morbid contents, usually centred on exaggeration , that seek to entertain by exhibiting situations that are supposedly not fictitious and that are painful or humiliating. Programs that do not reflect positive values, but rather the opposite.

However, and although it may seem strange, the telebusiness likes, and a lot . Many television networks program this type of content in prime time slots because they want to capture as many viewers as possible with it.

In other words, we know that tele-trash is not something desirable, but yet our actions are not congruent with these thoughts. Why does this happen? Why do we like tele-trash? I will now pose possible answers.

Telebasura: offering prohibited content

If we had to highlight a defining characteristic of tele-trash, it would probably be that of using morbid content that we should not be seeing from certain moral parameters. The telebasque offers us the forbidden in the comfort of our own home , and we can enjoy it alone or surrounded by people we trust.

That means that, compared to other entertainment, it competes with an advantage, sacrificing good image and journalistic ethics in favor of the possibility of offering what no one else offers.

The promise that with each program we will see something that will surprise us makes us think about it even during the time we spend away from the screen, and the parallel narratives about what will happen that we invent in our imagination make us want to see the real development of the story, for which we must return to the program.

Spectators addicted to morbidity

The content of the telebusiness may be bad and it may be obvious that it is largely fictional, but that does not stop it from surprising us and attracting our attention. And it is our attention, always in search of new stimuli that can lead us to a state of high activation, that makes us return to these programs, as if it were a kind of drug dependency.

What we become addicted to with telebasic, however, is not a drug, but certain substances that our own body secretes every time a narrative line is solved as we wanted and every time we see something that amuses us, like a celebrity making a fool of himself.

As we associate this state of well-being produced by these substances with the fact of watching television, we are more interested in continuing to watch these programmes. This is an impulse that goes beyond reason: although we believe that the programme does not deserve our attention because its characteristics fit with those of telebasura (and neither telebasura nor people who habitually watch telebasura usually enjoy a good image), the fact is that the body asks us to turn on the television .

False sense of sociability

One of the characteristics of many telebusiness programs is that in their development there are recurrent people who express their opinions and beliefs in a totally direct and apparently unfiltered way. It is this supposedly honest attitude that makes the conflict and the spectacle so sought after appear .

However, another consequence of this kind of format is that it is very much like a gathering of friends. The jokes and the low moral filtering make the program easily comparable to what happens at an informal dinner where jokes are told and rumors are spread.

In this way, watching certain TV shows can trick the brain into behaving as it would in a real social context, even if it’s really just watching TV. This can satisfy the need to relate to real people without being exposed to the annoying situations that can arise when we leave home to relate to real people.

Improving self-esteem

Paradoxically, the telebusiness could make us feel better about ourselves . Why? Because it makes us believe that our imperfections are something very normal and that most people have more things to hide.

This idea is based on what is known as Cultivation Theory, according to which exposure to television (or other similar media) makes us believe that reality is similar to what can be seen on those channels. Telebasura normalizes lurid events and displays of ridicule , and comparing oneself with the people who appear there and who are either playing a role or only showing their most tragic, lurid or comic side, is comfortable. Something that makes us feel comfortable and that makes us repeat.