Why we love audience participation.

I'm not psychologist, but I'm going to take a crack at it. We love audience participation for the same reason we like OK-go's videos. They are genuine. They are some goofy guys who came up with an idea and without producers or social polls or anything, they went in there backyard and had their sister teach them some moves and they danced. There is something so real about that, something that doesn't make me thing they are anywhere but in my reality. I cannot speak for everyone, but being a generation that grew up with technology, I also feel like a generation that grew up with a bombardment of advertisement on scale the world hasn't seen before. It feels like a biblical flood of someone trying to sell you something, and we've know ever since we got our first action figure that doesn't actually fly like the commercial made it look that most of this stuff is an exaggeration of the truth.

We are tired of exaggeration. There is so much around us that isn't what something cracked it up to be that maybe we want something simple. Maybe we want honest words, and genuine feelings. So when you apply this thought to audience participation, it gives us something real. People who just say and do things, and have quirks. Something no writer or actor could create, real an honest life.

A show that I really love is called an Idiot Abroad. It is a show about a man named Karl Pilkington. He is a uniquely pessimistic and honest man. He is sent to places all around the world to do these amazing things, and visit unique people, and all the show is is Karl being Karl in these fantastic places around the world.
 
What is great about this show isn't just the uniqueness of Karl's remarks, but just how honest they feel. He once said that "Armstrong visited the moon, but hasn't ever gone back. It must not have been that good" or his comment on Petra and how from a cave you get the great view of the Petra, but form Petra they just see his ugly cave. So you're better off in the cave.