How I got involved.

As some of you may know, TeenCastic was featured last year on another Nick News episode which you can watch here. About a year after the episode Nick News had started preparing for their new special, Teens Unplugged. They put up an ad on their site and had reached out to some local schools in the New York area to find middle schoolers in the area that we’re addicted to technology, but that’s not how I got on the show. I neither applied nor was contacted directly. About three months before the show aired, in April, Shivi (an editor here) received an email from the producer asking if he knew anybody that’d be good on the show. As my colleague and someone I have worked with for over a year Shivi knew I’d be a good man for the job. Shivi gave the producer my contact info, and after a brief email chain describing my tech habits and a short phone interview they we’re pretty certain I would be on the show. There was one problem though, each kid who had to live without technology for a week had had to have someone “turn them in”. Shivi had already been on the show for the webstars episode, so they wanted to find someone who hand’t been on the show to turn me in. I suggest a great friend of mine, Eric. Eric became the one that had “turned me in” So weeks go on and on one Friday a camera crew shows up to my house.

Why did I do it?

The decision, was formed out of a mixture of my sporadic nature, the possibility the opportunity could promote TeenCastic and the interest in audio visuals. I have never been a huge fan of Nickelodeon, besides iCarly which I consider my guilty pleasure and I’d never really heard of Nick News before TeenCastic. Hence my decision to go on the show was definitely not about achieving fame in the eight to twelve year old age group that might be watching. I was also curious to what the world thought of Nick News, so when I discovered there was a Facebook group with 100,000+ fans bashing the show I knew I had to be on it.

The experience?

Well, since I think the majority of my observations on how living without technology were contained in the show I’ll talk more about the experience of reality TV. There where three people making the whole thing run, the producer, the video guy and the audio dude. The process was simple, get up at 6 AM in my pajamas with a bright light on my face a boom microphone over my head and a producer staring down at me. When they say, “pretend we’re not here,” it’s a certainly more challenging than pretending to be a prince in a game of dress up. Regardless, after getting up at 6 I took my leisurely 10 minute shower. Boy is it awkward having to get out of the shower, still getting over the morning haze, and having a camera pointed at you, wearing only a towel. After a brief breakfast I got in the car with just the camera man and we headed to the bus stop. After getting out of the car two times from different angles I hopped aboard the bus and I was free from the camera for the rest of the day.

After a day of computer less school I headed home and was faced with the task of waiting for an hour whilst my sister, my mom and my friend Eric where interviewed.

I will continue this post after I watch the episode on TV…