I worked with a junk removal company for an episode of hoarders and it was actually 99% REAL. The only thing that they would set up a couple times was if they opened a box and found something interesting off camera they would re-open it on camera and act like they just found it.

There was a family in our neighborhood who was on a show. One day, when accompanied by the camera crew, one of the daughters suddenly threw a screaming fit in public, which was totally unusual for her. When the mom was asked later what the f**k had happened, she said for a tantrum, you get 200 bucks extra.

I knew a guy pretty well who was on Millionaire Matchmaker. Spoiler: He was not a millionaire. He drove a nice car and owned his own business but lived in an apartment with a roommate. They filmed him in his apartment parking garage pretending all the nice cars were his. He was always about the smoke and mirrors for self-promotion, and it worked. Never seen anyone so unashamed to lie and cheat

A class mate of mine was on my country's Next Top Model. Before getting into the show she was asked what kind of hair she would never want to get, so that the producers know about it and not make her have it during the makeover episode. My classmate had long blonde hair which she really loved, so she said she doesn't want them to cut her hair off and that she also hated strange unnatural colors like blue, pink etc. Fast forward to the makeover episode. The hairstyling team comes in and finds her hair unfitting for a model, so she needs to get a makeover and guess what? Her makeover obviously consists of a pixie cut and green hair to make her look like a "punk fairy". My class mate cried throughout the entire process, so I guess the producers got the drama they wanted out of this.

My parents were 'dinner guests' in an episode of Nanny 911, and they said literally everything was staged. I don’t remember all of the details, but they said the directors had a 'code word' they would say to the kids when they were supposed to start acting all crazy. And then once the scene was done, the kids would be perfectly normal.

I was on a dog training show when I was 8-ish. The whole thing was basically bogus. The 'trainer' came to our house for maybe 30 minutes tops and gave us extremely basic advice. The producers then told us we had to get changed and pretend that he was visiting us three months after he gave us the advice, and how it had made our life better, yada yada yada. It's so dumb because our puppy was clearly the same age in the 'before' and 'three months after' shots, and my family aren't actors, so our reactions were really fake.

I knew someone on Wife Swap. Her husband cheated with the 'swapped' wife, leading to a very real divorce. The show ruined her life for a long time.

I was on Wife Swap when I was 10 years old. My family had to switch with a farming family and we were supposed to be the ‘city family’ even though my family and I lived in the suburbs. There were plenty of quotes taken out of context as you’d expect. They also incited plenty of drama. I was framed as addicted to video games so they took my xbox and gameboy color for the week. A few days in one of the crew members came in with my gameboy and said “look I found this” and handed it to me. It shouldn’t be surprising that they sent the woman staying in our house into my room to ‘catch me in the act’. To be honest not much has really changed in my life except getting snapchats of my 10 year old face when my friends catch the reruns. I’m open to any questions if anyone is curious.

My family was on Dr. Phil maybe 15 or so years ago. They definitely dug up as much drama as possible and didn't bring any of it up until we were onstage. It was actually very traumatic for all of us. They picked us all up in separate SUVs the evening before filming and took us to a very nice, expensive hotel for the night. We weren't allowed to leave the hotel and were picked up by the SUVs in the morning — I'm assuming so we couldn't really speak to each other or chicken out. In the end, everything just felt so much worse. Fifteen years later and everything is a million times better, but definitely no thanks to the show.

I knew a girl who was on a tiny-home show with her mom. They had already bought the tiny home, and the show set things up as if they were looking at a bunch of others and picked that one.

I worked with 2 people who were on Teen Mom (grandmother and granddaughter, obv the granddaughter was the Teen Mom)... they told me that the directors would intentionally set up stuff that would cause drama and then start filming. For example, the directors had them go out to lunch and told the grandmother something she didn't know yet and filmed their argument for drama, knowing she would get upset that the granddaughter hadn't told her before (even though she was planning to). Really dumb, unnecessary drama for TV, but apparently the baby got tons of scholarships and support from the show which is why they did it in the first place, so they said it was worth it.

My aunt’s family was on Nanny 911. They have 10 kids, so it was a great family for the show to manipulate. When we all finally saw the show, it gave me a lot of insight into how heavily manipulated it actually is. They made a situation where my cousin went on a bike ride seem like she was missing and was purposely not coming back to the house, which wasn’t true. They made my uncle seem like an awful dad. He actually ended up getting emails and such with awful threats after the show aired because of how badly they portrayed him.

Yup, a close friend was on MTVs True Life about having crippling social anxiety disorder (the episode was about different fears people had). We were a big circle of friends since elementary, we always knew he was sorta socially awkward and battled with the way he looked (he was super insecure and self conscious about his looks) and he admittedly got teased the most by the more "alphas" of the group (the most insecure) but we loved and embraced him and made sure he knew that and that he was equals with us. Anyway, they filmed us all for a couple weeks in high school hanging out (this was back in 2001 btw), going out, etc. He was crushing on a girl we knew, in fact she was part of the larger social circle anyway, and so they convinced him to ask for her number - I guess this was gonna be the storyline they needed. He already had it since we were all one big friend group but they "needed something for the story". That was like "the big goal" for his arc. So he asks one night while we were at the movie theater. She gave it to him, all's good. They went on one date but didn't amount to anything, but they remained friends just as they were before. Fast forward to airing, and I don't know if you remember at the end of each episode they have just text on a black screen with like, the final update.... The text for his final update read "Despite finally building the courage to ask for her number... She gave him a fake number". He spiraled after that and it f**ked him up way more than he was before, he turned to drugs to cope (since he was basically humiliated on mtv with hundreds of millions of viewers). He unfortunately passed away from a drug overdose a few years later. Miss you goomba! Edit: "coincidentally" mtv has done everything they can to wipe that episode off the internet and pretend it never existed. We've never been able to find it and a few of us are very google-fu inclined and resourceful with internet-archival retrieval, but it's nowhere to be found... Every other ep is available though. They know they f**ked up...

My family and I were on House Hunters. In reality, the entire thing was staged — like, literally every detail. We had already owned the home for six months when our Realtor was contacted by HGTV. Neither of the other two homes was even for sale. Every scene was shot several times. The 'three-month' follow-up just showed us in different clothes in our actual home and was shot the same weekend. Bizarre experience. I haven’t been able to look at reality TV the same way since!

A good friend of mine was on one of the 'wife swapping' shows, and it was 100% fake. The producers decided that since his family was part Asian, they should do martial arts together and had them learn some basic Tai Chi stuff for a scene, even though none of them were martial artists at all.

I was a competing Realtor on Million Dollar Listing for an episode. I am not, nor have I ever been, a Realtor.

My dad was asked to be on an episode of TLC's My Strange Addiction. He runs kind of a niche (small) business. And they were like, 'Hey, you're addicted to this, right?' And he was like, 'Um, no.' It was a honeybee business. They were hoping he was addicted to bee stings.

A girl I went to school with was on My Super Sweet 16. She was always quiet but well liked, and the kids on that show were usually monsters, so we were curious how the episode would paint her. There was one scene where she was checking in on a vendor, and they said something might not be finished in time for the party. She didn't have a meltdown or anything, but she said something dramatic, like, 'Oh no! That's going to ruin my whole birthday party!' After the episode aired, her friends who were with her said they did a couple of takes because her first reaction was like, 'Oh, that sucks. Thanks for letting me know.'

Not me, but I bumped into someone who was on Property Brothers. According to them, the two brothers were only ever on site for the filming. They threw out/hauled away all their furniture, and what it was replaced with was very pretty but hard and uncomfortable, bad quality (like had to be replaced within a year), and impractical for the family. Plus, the family could not get anything back from before the makeover that they wanted.

MTV's Made went to my high school the year after I graduated and made two episodes. One was about a guy I knew really well. His whole storyline was about how he’d never even been on a date before, when he’d actually dated my sister for two years before filming, and she was pretty crushed by it. All the end goals that they made seem like a huge momentous deal were actually super casual school events that anyone could sign up for, and all the special industry guests the celebrity mentor brought in were just townies that happened to own some small business in the area that was semi-related to the goal.

My friend was on a nanny show. They apparently took his birds out of the house to film and had them in a trailer, and they froze to death. When they brought them back, they all realized they were not the same birds.

A wedding that I was a bridesmaid in was aired on Say Yes to the Dress. They filmed our initial reaction to the bride walking out several times. They wanted us to scream and cry. I'll be honest, the whole thing was incredibly fake and rubbed me the wrong way. Pretty on par for the type of person the bride is, though. I don't talk to her anymore.

My ex's brother was on MTV's Room Raiders. It's a show where a boy or girl gets to snoop around in three potential partners' rooms to see if they like them based on their possessions. Terrible concept. The young lady looking around the room had zero personality, and all the 'interesting' or 'embarrassing' things that were found were planted. I mean, come on...who the f**k has a tiny comb for their pubes as a teenager?

I was in an episode of MTV's True Life. The whole thing was fabricated, and they painted my (now ex-) girlfriend's family to seem like they didn't like me at all, when they absolutely loved me. When we weren't giving them enough drama, they told us we had to amp it up or they'd cut our segment.

I was friends with a guy whose brother was on the show 16 & pregnant. He & his at the time girlfriend were featured. They made him out to be a bad guy but he wasn't anything like the way he was made out on tv. I had hung out with them years before and during filming. He had his stupid moments but is an overall good guy. She had talked about being on the show before they did the deed (red flag 1) and when the kids were born she took them and run away on a few occasions. Once claiming he could see the babies and when he flew to see them, she never showed up to pick him up. He was left stranded in a different state. So when you watch those shows it may not always be as it seems. It can be entertaining but don't take what you see as fact. They start a lot of drama just for the audience at the cost of the individuals.

Canadian Idol—-Producers tell you which songs to sing. First they make you sing in line, if you’re really bad or really good you’re put through to the producers. My friend made it through (honestly an incredible singer.) she had been singing one song the whole time and made it to the judges. She sang her song that got her that far, which was My Hero by Foo Fighters. Then, before she goes the judges the producers say she’s going to sing “Creep” by Radiohead as Foo Fighters aren’t on the list of approved songs. So she sings Creep, doesn’t impress the judges and doesn’t make it through. We then watch the show when it’s aired, these motherf**kers edited her into the opening and said: “the good, the bad and the just plain creepy!!” And showed her singing Creep—-she was this gothic girl who didn’t fit in with the usual pop star image, she was so humiliated she never sang again. Also, Ben Mulroney is one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met.

One of my neighbors was on a house disaster renovation show, and it was a mixed bag. I think the crew hired by the show actually did very competent structural renovations and repairs, but the 'designer' had super-niche tastes, so the family ended up repainting everything and throwing out all the decor to get the house ready for resale after having to act super happy for the cameras.

An acquaintance of mine was filming for Don't tell the Bride. The show pulled out when they refused to cooperate. The husband to be had all these ideas his wife would love but the production crew said it had to be a 50 Shades of Grey theme wedding. It was popular at the time and she worked in the sexual wellbeing industry. He said no so they found another couple to cooperate with their insane ideas.

My friend's parents were on World's Strictest Parents. They came to my house on the 4th of July, and when they showed our house on TV, it was a huge mansion rather than our actual house. The camera crew also told the visiting 'bad kids' to steal alcohol from our house.

My friend was on an episode of Supernanny. He told me that everything was already planned out and staged. At the end, he got to meet his NBA idol Dwyane Wade and came into school the next day with Wade-branded clothes and shoes. I remember them showing him beating Wade in a one-on-one basketball game. If that isn’t scripted, then I don’t know what is.

I was on the dating show “Elimidate”. It was setup to the point that the producers did their best to create drama by pushing questions like: “XYZ was really acting like an ass that last round. Tell us about what an ass XYZ is.” I felt the final show edits were pretty accurate to the real life events though.

So, not technically a big well known reality show.. but there used to be a “home makeover” show that had 5 different designers that would get their own episode on a rotational basis, and my mom was one of them. For one of her episodes, she actually did a makeover of our own house as she was selling it. She made my brother and I stay with her for the week of filming (parents are divorced), which I thought was weird, but whatever. She roped my teen brother into making some art for the show, so he got his little bit of fame, and I just hid in my room the whole week. I remember I thought I had caught my mom alone, and we had a conversation where I expressed how uncomfortable I felt with people in our home, and why did I have to stay that week at her house, as there was no “arrangement” ever on which house my brother and I stayed at. Anyways, some camera guy snuck up on us and filmed the whole thing (without me knowing), and then asked me if I could repeat myself, but be more “mad” at my mom. I felt so violated. Also the fact there were four mid-20 year olds hanging out right outside my bedroom the whole week (I was 16/17), and that was just so f**king creepy now that I think about it years later.

My uncle and his family were on an episode of Wife Swap. We were invited over for a family holiday dinner. It was a very weird experience; we signed our souls away in paperwork before being cued to enter their house (I was in about one second of the episode, walking in their doorway). Uncle hated the experience because they coerced him toward certain behavior and made my sweet little cousin out to be a demanding, spoiled brat, which she was very much not.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition came to our neighborhood once. The family lived a few streets away. This woman was always NASTY. Miserable to be around, petty about people parking in front of her house, yelling at us anytime a Wiffle ball or Frisbee ended up in her yard, shouting at neighbors about being too loud while having a party. She was a Karen ahead of her time! When she got picked for the show, the neighborhood was floored. The show made her out to be a saint among heathens, which we all expected, but knowing the real her, it was just so damn frustrating for all of us.