What is real about Cake Boss? My Strange Addiction? 19 Kids and Counting? Only one guy makes cakes like that, only one deeply disturbed individual likes to eat toilet cleaner and only one deranged family has made a name for itself as the 7-Eleven hot dog machine of babies, just rolling out a new greasy one as soon as it's ready (though in fairness, I think they have two shows about those families now, because yay). But that's not relatable or real in any appreciable way. How many people have come out of your vagina? Have four basketball teams' worth of people come out of your vagina? Then you probably don't really feel the realness of that show. And that's why you rail against TLC. That's why when I see TLC programming I instinctively cringe and make a face like someone is holding out a cupcake with a pube on it. Nothing that happens on that channel takes place in a world we occupy.

Honey Boo Boo lives in the same world as you, as long as you've been to a Walmart, a NASCAR event, a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert or a trailer park. That's not meant to be insulting particularly. I mean it so is, but come on.

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TLC wants you to be disgusted by Honey Boo Boo and her family the way you are by everyone on TLC, because the people who run TLC are assholes. They saw a hillbilly family and thought "Oh man, what a freak show, let's put them on TV!" like they do with all the innocent people turned freak shows they exploit, and then just tried to present it like an impartial documentary that holds a scene long enough to include a character farting or burping, but probably just by accident and not to make you think less of these hicks.

But the terrifying reality TLC was too prideful to realize was that they had dug themselves into the shameful hole that all villainous high school dickwads from movies end up in, where their evil taunting finally backfires and makes them look like masterful twats. If you make fun of the enfeebled, it is you who looks like a fool. When you make a whole show based around making fun of a little Mountain Dew-addled girl who just wanted to be a princess, you're the asshole, not the little girl. Little girls are never assholes when compared to the television network that gave us My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding.

So the joyous reality of Honey Boo Boo is that she's an innocent little Walmart customer who makes her belly talk and apparently gets blitzed on energy drinks all the time. That's the most adorable child abuse ever. Instead of it being a disgrace you watch like you'd watch a car wreck (you'll still watch it that way, don't feel bad), it's actually so disgraceful that you want to root for them, because TLC is even more disgraceful for putting them on TV knowing full well it's disgraceful. Does that word even have any meaning for you anymore? I lost it. Like an erection after a visit from grandma.

So basically what I'm saying is they managed to actually harness the reality that reality TV has long proclaimed to show us by virtue of it showing these people being made fun of by TLC, the big jackass bully with its sense of superiority. And damn near all of us can relate to that, to some asshat who looks down on us for whatever reason. It's just probably not what they had in mind.

Traditionally, nothing on TLC is even remotely entertaining. I swear to God, if you watch 19 Kids and Counting, you need to stop reading my article right this minute and leave. Go read a Gladstone article. Don't come back. Filth. There's no redeeming value to that show at all.

TLC wants to shock you with trainwreck-style programming, not anything else. But there's a charm to Honey Boo Boo that they weren't expecting when they were cataloging negligent parents and stumbled across her during an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. If you're not sure what I mean, perhaps from having pride and never having watched the show, let me say two magical words to you: Redneck Games.

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Honey Boo Boo and her family attended the Redneck Games in an episode. It's a real thing that's been going on since the real Olympics in Atlanta. It's mostly toothless men and women in Confederate flag bikinis slopping around in mud and playing toilet-seat horseshoes. I didn't make any of that up. I would never have even known that existed if not for this show. That's amazing. And they have a pig! In the house!

You might think a pig in the house is a little uncouth, and normally I'd agree, but I actually had a friend growing up who had a pig in his house, and frankly, that's the kind of thing that stays with you your entire life. Pigs scream just like humans who've been huffing helium and are now being murdered, and they do it all the time. Plus they'll eat anything, which is pretty much endless entertainment. And as counterintuitive as it may seem, no matter how many times you walk into the same house and see the same pig, you're always a little surprised. It's a pig. Right there by the couch. Fuckin' weird, man.

TLC even managed to create intrigue in the show based entirely around a foot. Follow me on this, it's awful. The mom, you see, never takes her socks off. The answer as to why will be obvious when you hear it -- her foot was run over by a forklift and is now a monster foot that she's ashamed of. She's ashamed of it. The mind boggles that shame can even enter their home. And that's entertaining, too, because who the hell saw that coming?

At the end of the day, though, these people are funny. It pains me to say it, because on some level I feel there should be some standards to comedy, but you guys read the Poop Sandwich Billy story I wrote, right? I laugh at dumb shit, and I can't not laugh at this show. There was an episode when the dad said he needed to shower because he smelled like an oyster. I wish I could have been inspired to write a joke about a rural, tobacco-chewing gentleman lamenting how he smelled like seafood, man.

This entire entry is going to be a paradox wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a family that eats roadkill. The big redeeming factor of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo is its almost inexplicable sincerity. They ate roadkill on the show, for God's sake. Honest to goodness dead animal on the street. They made it into sausage. In the garage. The whole family.

A whole family, in a garage, grinding a deer that was hit by a car into sausage. The little girl played with its head. I dare you to find anything that's more genuine than that anywhere in the world. TLC bit off more than it could chew with this family. They're Bane to TLC's John Daggett. They are driven by some heretofore unknowable purpose that we have to assume involves more roadkill, and maybe something to do with the mom's foot that was run over by a forklift at work.

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Is what we're seeing on TV honest? Almost assuredly no. I'm inclined to believe that TLC crews are feeding the family beans and extra-fizzy pop all the time to up the burp and fart ante in any given episode, and they probably ran over that deer themselves just to see if they could get the backwoods Kardashians to eat the poor thing. But they go for it. They go for everything. The entire family is like that guy you went to school with who would eat or drink anything just because you dared him to, like the word held some kind of crazy, preternatural power over his own sense of self-preservation and dignity. They just don't give a shit. If there are any shits to be given in that entire county, they're being hidden in someone's mattress where you and I are never going to see them, and neither is the damn guv'ment.

While the majority of TLC programming is decidedly manufactured, you have to acknowledge that no one was ever on the ball enough at TLC to devise a family featuring kids named Chickadee, Chubbs and Pumpkin, one of whom is a pregnant 15-year-old. And if they had manufactured it, they'd Dr. Phil that shit for at least an episode, delving into how and why a 10th grader is knocked up and where the dad is. But this family doesn't care. Instead, they go grocery shopping with a pantsload of coupons and buy 60 packs of toilet paper for only $20.

The baby has three thumbs. How perfect is that? The only possible way that could have worked out less ironically would have been if the baby turned out to be Kuato.

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Just imagine how awesome this kid is going to be at Xbox.

There are pictures you can find on the gossipy corners of the Internet right now showing the baby, with two thumbs on one hand, while one of the other daughters douses the kid's soother in an energy drink and pops it into her mouth. They're feeding energy drinks to a newborn three-thumbed baby. I don't even know where to begin. Yes, I do. They're feeding energy drinks to a newborn three-thumbed baby.

If you go deeper into the rabbit hole, you'll discover that the media has been enjoying itself digging up dirty secrets about the family, because a family that shows this side of itself to the public must be hiding something awesome. And according to official sources (The National Enquirer), Momma Boo Boo went to jail for passing bad checks, Poppa Boo Boo has burglary and firearms offenses, all four kids have different fathers, some of whom are sex offenders, and they have a pig. In the house!

Normally this is the kind of thing TLC lives for. I imagine TLC executives huddled together around some iridescent stones deep in their system of damp, muggy caves, feasting on the remains of a lost hiker and grappling with their prehensile penises, occasionally stopping to pay homage to the clan leader who was raised to his lofty station after pitching this show and then bashing in the brain of the former clan leader, all celebrating its current popularity. But it's a monster out of hand now, beyond the control of TLC. It is at once horrible but sympathetic. It's a Sarah McLachlan abused dog commercial with a "Yakety Sax" soundtrack. You should watch it. You'll never see anything more stunning on TV ever.

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Check out more from Fortey in The TLC Experiment: Just How Dumb is The Learning Channel? and 6 Reasons Homemade Porn is a Worse Idea Than You Think.