I’m watching Alone again, alone.

I’ve only ever watched Alone, alone. Often I have headphones on, so I create a very intimate connection to people who are, at the time they are filming themselves, very alone in an extremely remote location, for an unforeseen amount of time.

The attractiveness of this ‘reality’ show is that there is no crew nor help. Participants carry the cameras and mics into the field themselves and are expected to generate content while surviving the extreme environment. They are NOT professional on-camera talent. Most, because they are survivalists, have little interest in their obligation to produce some content. The ones who are more concerned with filming themselves are often eliminated early.

It’s the 11th season of this programme and I have watched all ten previous seasons – some episodes more than once.

This show soothes me and allows me to express real emotions of my own about my personal solitude. I am extremely alone.

It also teaches me survival skills and leaves me with practical knowledge about nature in extreme environments. I often make notes from this show.

These people are nothing like me. They are extreme outdoors people, who have learned a tremendous amount by doing. They learn from experience in the field.

I am a reader and writer with lots of knowledge from books. My experience in the field is limited to camping a little bit, fishing a lot, and all with modern amenities.

I do not want to know any of these people. They are subjects of my experimental observation. Because they are “survivalists” and “naturalists” and people who live off the land, they are mostly not educated by institutions or ‘book learning,’ as they say.

There is a directness to what can be learned from Alone.

I will often leave this show running while I do other things. The pressure to survive and thrive that drives the participants pushes me today to put together that plant stand I bought and to vacuum the house.

The starving contestants often express deep, even profound, gratitude for living creatures they must kill and eat to survive. Their gratitude reminds me of how fortunate I am to be able to pull a bison sirloin or a perfect piece of fish out of my fridge for dinner tonight.

Much about the program is about safe, secure integration with nature, economy of motion, establishing a habitat and a regular amount of caloric intake of enough variety to survive.

Some of it is about identifying and understanding species in the actual natural world, but the contestants are usually far too concerned with self-preservation to conduct science for science’s sake. Knowledge is gained with express purpose toward survival.

Occasionally amidst all this a contestant does brilliant, creative things or expresses themselves truly profoundly. It is one of the things that hooks me as a viewer. But I have no interest in these people once they are no longer Alone

One question is of course, ‘How would I fare?” I don’t know the answer but I know I would fare better than anyone who hasn’t watched all 11 seasons of Alone.

The part I enjoy least is the emotional unloading the participants often fall into. It is good television and powerful to people who are weak-minded. But the collapses they go through because they miss people, is, to me, fourth-wall shattering in a bad way that overemphasized moments of weak-mindedness. I often skip through those bits.

It’s occasionally interesting to watch one of these people who has read nothing about philosophy or death or self-analysis accidentally stumble upon a deep truth I already know, innately at this point. Sometimes I rudely laugh at their ignorance. Book knowledge is so wholly misunderstood by these people. They remind me of all the people who have bullied me and teased me, suddenly hung up by their ignorance. I am not proud of that schadenfreude, it’s a moment of weak-mindedness and ought not be emphasized.

The religious types disgust me, may as well be blind in one eye. The quiet, practical agnostic or atheistic ones attract me. Any contestant who really appreciates the environment enough to give us a good frame and shoot the grand beauty of nature is always appreciated.

No one is more alone than me. I don’t win.