D.C. is just too real for the Real World. There’s too much media, too much cynicism, and too many celebrities — legit and bullshit alike — in the District for its people to take these interlopers seriously. People move here to make their names — but not for doing nothing. Laziness isn’t a value the District exactly celebrates. (Except for maybe today. Today is a good day for being lazy. Lazy, or absolutely incapacitated by a hangover.)

That said, there isn’t anything wrong with doing nothing and hoping to be admired for it. I’d say that people in my generation have a soft spot for the cast of The Real World: San Francisco — in fact, I’d say that those characters deserve about the same level of regard as the Real World D.C. folks deserve contempt. Those original Real World cast members were better characters than the celebrity douchebags that have filled the ranks of Real World/Road Rules shark-jumping contests since, but that isn’t it. In its original iteration, The Real World featured people who were willingly committing themselves to the panopticon.

That just isn’t a novel selling point any more. After the waves of social media and digital technology and journal software that have crashed since the first days that people stopped being polite and started being real, everything has gotten real. People don’t even watch television on TVs any more. The District isn’t moving in with these folks in a house on Dupont Circle on Sundays at 11 p.m. or whatever — they’re moving in with us, in real time.

So it’s just not a surprise that the cast finds D.C. rude (sit on it, MTV). And, if this anonymous account is to be believed, it’s also not a shock that the producers are completely unable to deal:

The security officer claimed he worked for an agency he clearly did not. He also should not have reached towards his back pocket and threatened us. Additionally, he made a homophobic comment. When I told him he was not a park policeman, he told me just because I was walking with a girl this did not mean I was straight. As I am gay this statement was true, but it was clearly intended to demean me and make me feel inferior. I asked him why he was making a homophobic comment, but he responded by continuing to insist that we leave the area.

The Real World works when its characters are able to perform publicly in front a national audience while living privately among the locals. But the show that we’re is interested in watching is the taping — watching this obnoxious, indignant tumor settle uncomfortably into our system. WUSA9 gets it right in a story about MTV cameras being irritated by local news cameras: “The city is watching every move.”