New twist on reality TV emerges from Jersey shore social experiment

I’m not proud of what I’m about to say, but I trust that my readers will bear with me. I have become mildly obsessed with Barstool Beachhouse, which I suppose can best be described as a new twist on reality TV.

I want to be completely clear that I have not become emotionally invested in any of the characters in this drama. I have no idea who these six women and four men even are. I think they all work for Barstool Sports, and one or two are maybe interns?

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What I’m fascinated by in this remarkable social media experiment is that a new form of storytelling, while maybe not being invented, is seemingly being perfected here. 

The classic “trapped in an elevator” plot at work is that, for four weekends, ending on Labor Day, these 10 Barstool cats went down the Jersey shore, the same one I spent my 20s on, and they have to get along with each other.

Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports has hit on a new way of doing reality TV with “Barstool Beachhouse.” (Barstool Sports)

For me, it was like a time machine. Nothing is significantly different from 1995 except for our demonstrably superior music and incredible Sergio Tecchini sweatsuits.

This has long been a stale recipe for reality TV, which I have hated with a passion since ‘Survivor’ launched 25 years ago. I don’t want to violate anybody’s NDA’s but we all know that “reality,” on these shows is massaged into fantasy.

What’s remarkable about Beachhouse is that the producers, who really should be called the storytellers, are crafting this interactive tale in almost real time. Every weekend you can just check in, or as it did for me, it will just pop up.

And you can chime in on every X post. Unlike me, there are a lot of people very invested in this.

This is not the first attempt to use social media in this way, but this effort has turned an important corner. This isn’t just, “watch me livestream my life,” these producers are artists sculpting in real time.

Barstool founder and CEO Dave Portnoy is seen before the Florida Atlantic Owls and Loyola (Il) Ramblers game in the Barstool Invitational at Wintrust Arena on November 8, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. (Getty Images/Michael Hickey)

They knew that Nikki Smokes, who smokes cigarettes which longtime readers will know I dig, and Annika’s love story would play, so they pushed it. And even if Nikki should be a little less the life of the party, and she should chill, which is not what this column is about, it was compelling.

It’s also very human, which Barstool has excelled at in an age where its competitors increasingly rely on magical numbers or AI, or in the worst cases, DEI, to decide what “the people” want. 

Barstool founder Dave Portnoy, whose questionable pizza reviews are an online sensation, is just one example of this. No AI on earth would have said that was a good idea.

And that’s the point here. It’s not surprising that it is a sports-oriented concern producing this new twist on TV. Ninety-five percent of sports consumption is really a guy in a van yelling, “ready (shot) 9, Go 9, ready 12, go 12, now the big one, ready 2, go 2,” 

This is how the key Tommy and Ella moments are featured. Also, maybe the rest of the house could back off pushing them together, but I digress.

The vaunted, and arguably the inventor of media criticism, Marshall McLuhan, argued back in the 70s that the medium is the message. He was wrong. Any medium can be manipulated to serve any message. 

The human element of storytelling always comes back. That’s why one is disgusted or inspired by Katic eating 20 pieces of Sushi like he was some poor black kid in Eddie Murphy’s imagination.

It’s why we love Danny, who plays the narrator like the stage manager in “Our Town,” and Bri and Oona, who I eventually realized isn’t Ella.

Then there is Dante, who they call Unc. He’s 41, a biscuit away from Gen X, and here is leadership. But again, the point I’m making is about how storytellers adopt new technology.

In 1999, what blew us all away about the “Blair Witch Project,” one of the most successful indie films of all time, is that suddenly, because of camcorders, this story could be filmed by the protagonist. 

This is a leap forward. I can tell a story now, in a way that would not have made sense before, because who could possibly be filming what is happening to them in real time?

It cuts the other way, as well. How many hilarious “Seinfeld” bits make no sense in the age of the smartphone? You just find your car in the parking lot with the app now.

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Shakespeare taught us that we should hold the mirror up to nature, James Joyce pointed out that that mirror tends to be cracked. Call me crazy, but I think Barstool Beachouse continues this tradition.

Portnoy’s outfit is approaching NFL Films territory in establishing its own voice, not just in sports, but in how we tell stories. 

Sunday night will be the grand finale. I have no plans to watch. I don’t have to. I have viewed enough video and followed enough of the players on this stage that all will be brought to me by the X algorithm.

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I don’t know exactly what to call this thing I’ve been following the last few weeks, but I like it. 

And if I can just finally say, Dante, you’re my favorite. I grew up in Northeast Philly with that haircut. It’s meaningful to me, but you’re 41.

Which is not the point of this column.

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