The internet is full of Helium Balloon Boy articles this morning. Speculation that Richard Heene, storm chaser and Wife Swap cast member, had set his boy up, up and away on a balloon ride hoax all in the name of publicity. Comments and posts started floating around soon after the boy was found safe and sound in the Heene attic. When I first read the hoax idea I wasn’t shocked at all. This doesn’t mean I believe it was a hoax. I haven’t a clue what it was but it did make me wonder why I wasn’t shocked at the notion.

Why should we be surprised by a family creating an elaborate hoax to get more publicity? This is 2009 and in the last decade the reality of reality TV has gone from good, bad and now the inevitable, an ugly helium balloon.

Reality TV seemed like a swell idea. Remember MTV’s Real World? It felt like a sociology class experiment put together in a new and artful way. Then along came the survival shows, the biggest losers, the American idols, the girls next door, wife swapping, and rockers, rappers and wannabes handing out passes to their future lovers.

We’ve watched celebs in their houses and families larger than the Brady Bunch adding on another car seat to their school bus at home. We’ve felt guilty watching the breakdown and public separation of the Gosselin family yet still we watch the scripted antics of non actors acting out unreality we call Reality TV. All this unreality in the name of reality must alter our perceptions of what happens in the name of publicity. These days 15 minutes of fame can go on for a decade.

Our television dial has already been tuned to a different channel. Another dimension in time, a bit like The Twilight Zone, things that seemed bizarre before are now common place on the boob tube. I’m reminded of Bela Lugosi’s classic scene directed by Ed Wood in the film Glen or Glenda.

“Pull the string! Pull the string! A mistake is made. A story must be told.” In this case it’s more like “Don’t pull the (expletive) string! I mean tether!”