There Goes Honey Boo Boo

I can’t even really tell you what Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is. As near as I can tell, it’s a reality show about some blond woman and her blond daughter, and I have absolutely no desire to know any more. My desire to know registers at 0 degrees on the Kelvin scale — absolute zero. I could not be more pleased at being completely in the dark as far as our national cultural conversation regarding this show. I don’t care who Honey Boo Boo is or where she’s coming from or where she’s going. I am completely apathetic about the nature of this girl’s nickname. I am incurious about every member of this family. I do not want to know how they live. I do not want to know what they think. I do not want to know about their family history. I do not want to know their dreams or fears. And I certainly hope to God I never actually have to watch any of their show. The following is a partial list of things I’d rather do than watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo: Scrub the toilet, wait in line at the DMV, get a cavity filled, sit in traffic for several hours, stub my toe, shovel snow, stay late at work on a Friday or clean the litter box. I have complete torpor about watching these people on a serious or ironic level. I refuse to watch them just to laugh at them. I cannot bring myself to appreciate them as any sort of cultural phenomenon. I do not understand in general that things are “like a car crash — horrible but you can’t look away” because I never stop to look at car crashes so I refuse to rubberneck at these people’s lives. I regret to say that I will not be participating in any kind of sociological analysis of Honey Boo Boo as a person or analysis of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo as a TV show. I cannot watch these people and wring my hands and make them into a synecdoche about American culture because I cannot even muster the truly negligible effort required to hit “guide” on my remote to find out when and where the show airs. Because I just don’t care. At all. Likewise, I cannot use Here Comes Honey Boo Boo as a lament of what television has become because even by hate-watching a show to make fun of people or complain about the depths of reality TV culture, you’re still participating in that culture and you might be better off picking up a book once in awhile.