Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

1. An obvious example: White kids using the word like phat unironically.

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2. Kevin from RW 1, Kameelah from RW 6, Coral from RW 10, etc.

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3. Norman, Beth, Pedro, Dan, Chris, et al. 4.

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4. Julie, Elka, that big-toothed Mormon, the girl with perfect lips from Louisiana, and Trishelle.

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5. Joe from Miami.

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6. Judd from San Francisco.

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7. Dominic from L.A.

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8. Kind of like that dork from Hawaii who fell in love with the alcoholic lesbian and then dated her sister.

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9. Theoretically Ruthie, the drunk chick from Hawaii—although (in truth) she was actually more reasonable than everyone else in that house.

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10. Cory in San Fran, all the other girls from Hawaii, Tonya from Chicago, and every other female who spends at least two episodes of any season staring at a large body of water.

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11. Julie from the first NYC cast, the blonde from New Orleans, Kevin in the second set of New Yorkers, and Frank from Vegas.

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12. I say “seemingly” because this argument appears totally superficial—until you find out the context: It happened during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles, a fact that MTV never mentioned. As a rule, The Real World does not deal with the issue of context very well, consciously skewing it much of the time. When David (the black comedian in Los Angeles was kicked out for “sexually harassing” future NBA groupie Tami in RW 2, the viewing audience is given the impression that he had been living in the house for weeks. In truth, it happened almost immediately after everyone moved in.

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13. Relatively speaking.

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14. This is partially because everyone who does use postmodern in casual conversation seems to define it differently, usually in accordance with whatever argument they’re trying to illustrate. I think the best definition is the simplest: “Any art that is conscious of the fact that it is, in fact, art.” So when I refer to something as postmodern, that’s usually what I mean. I realize some would suggest that an even better definition is “Any art that is conscious of the fact that it is, in fact, product,” but that strikes me as needlessly cynical.

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