{"id":631,"date":"2013-11-26T07:33:07","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T12:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/?p=631"},"modified":"2013-11-26T07:33:07","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T12:33:07","slug":"watching-someone-grow-up-on-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/archives\/631\/watching-someone-grow-up-on-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching someone grow up on TV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watch reality TV.<\/p>\n<p>One of the shows I watch is Gold Rush; I&#8217;ve talked about it before. <\/p>\n<p>On Gold Rush one of the people is <a href=\"http:\/\/goldrush.wikia.com\/wiki\/Parker_Schnabel\">Parker Schnabel<\/a>. Parker&#8217;s been on the show in part since Season 1; he&#8217;s an enthusiastic kid who started out helping his grandfather mine (and taught the rookie Hoffman crew a thing or two in the first season), and has since taken over his grandfather&#8217;s mine, and then moved onto the Yukon to mine his own gold claim.<\/p>\n<p>I love watching Parker &#8212; not for the usual reason, which is that I enjoy feeling superior (yes, I will admit that watching people be idiots on TV gives me a small sense of superiority, even if I know most of it is scripted drama that isn&#8217;t real) &#8212; but because I&#8217;ve been able to watch him grow up in a lot of ways.<\/p>\n<p>Parker has basically lived his life around the TV show for the past 3 years, and in that time, he&#8217;s gone from being a helper to running a mine under his grandfather to running his own &#8212; and he&#8217;s grown up. He&#8217;s grown from being a bit of an overeager snot &#8212; to actually being someone who is taking on responsibility and able to be the boss. He&#8217;s grown from someone who is putting all of his responsibility on others, to someone who feels very clearly the responsibility is on him, and wants to make it work. <\/p>\n<p>Maybe I see some of myself in Parker; he&#8217;s the kid who moves 3 times faster and works 5 times harder than those around him, and still feels like he&#8217;s only breaking even; he is smart, cocky, and doesn&#8217;t tolerate fools well. He&#8217;s all in on a risky venture without proof that it will work, and without any idea what he&#8217;s getting into most of the time. <\/p>\n<p>And when shit goes to pot, or he needs help, he&#8217;s still got parents who care about him and help him out; even if his dad is strict, he&#8217;s still got Parker&#8217;s best interests at heart, and they clearly want the best for him.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I guess I like watching Parker is a little bit like how I think of myself. Even if it&#8217;s stupid, mostly scripted, overdramatized reality TV, I like Parker, and I like to watch him, because he&#8217;s how I think of myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watch reality TV. One of the shows I watch is Gold Rush; I&#8217;ve talked about it before. On Gold Rush one of the people is Parker Schnabel. Parker&#8217;s been on the show in part since Season 1; he&#8217;s an enthusiastic kid who started out helping his grandfather mine (and taught the rookie Hoffman crew [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crschmidt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}