Maybe you might want to check out these comments I found on Reddit before you take the reality “plunge”…

“My parents were ‘dinner guests’ in an episode of “Nanny 911” and they said literally everything was staged. I don’t remember all of the details, but they said the directors had a ‘code word’ they would say to the kids when they were supposed to start acting all crazy. And then once the scene was done, the kids would be perfectly normal.” —LunaLove1027

“I was on ‘Wife Swap’ when I was 13 or so, and they made up more then half of it. They make it so there’s a nice family and a bad family. They made us the bad family of 10 living in a house bus. Anything they can’t make look bad, they don’t put on the show. They act nice and all but make you look like a fool on TV. I remember my mom coming back home crying and stressed out.” —FloobleSnort

“I was on a dog training show when I was 8-ish. The whole thing was basically bogus. The ‘trainer’ came to our house for maybe 30 minutes tops and gave us extremely basic advice. The producers then told us we had to get changed and pretend that he was visiting us three months later after he gave us the advice and how it had made our life better, yada yada yada. It’s so dumb because our puppy was clearly the same age in the ‘before’ and ‘three months after’ shots and my family aren’t actors, so our reactions were really fake.” —thoudsandpapercranes

“I knew someone on ‘Wife Swap’. Her husband cheated with the ‘swapped’ wife, leading to a very real divorce. The show ruined her life for a long time.” —yourmomdotbiz

“My family was on Dr. Phil maybe 15 or so years ago. They definitely dug up as much drama as possible and didn’t bring any of it up until we were on stage. It was actually very traumatic for all of us…. —yessicadamez

“I was in an episode of MTV’s ‘True Life’. The whole thing was fabricated, and they painted my (now ex) girlfriend’s family to seem like they didn’t like me at all when they absolutely loved me. When we weren’t giving them enough drama, they told us we had to amp it up or they’d cut our segment.” —saturninelives

“My friend was on a nanny show. They apparently took his birds out of the house to film and had them in a trailer and they froze to death. When they brought them back, they all realized they were not the same birds.” —eamon4yourface

“A good friend of mine was on one of the ‘wife swapping’ shows and it was 100% fake. The producers decided that since his family was part Asian, they should do martial arts together and had them learn some basic Tai chi stuff for a scene, even though none of them were martial artists at all.” —bigassmushroom

“My friend was on an episode of ‘Supernanny’. He told me that everything was already planned out and staged. At the end he got to meet his NBA idol Dwyane Wade and came into school the next day with Wade-branded clothes and shoes. I remember them showing him beating Wade in a one-on-one basketball game. If that isn’t scripted, then I don’t know what is.” —grizramen

“I was a competing realtor on Million Dollar Listing for an episode. I am not nor have I ever been a realtor.” —kainharo

“One of my neighbors was on a house disaster renovation show and it was a mixed bag. I think the crew hired by the show actually did very competent structural renovations and repairs, but the ‘designer’ had super niche tastes, so the family ended up repainting everything and throwing out all the decor to get the house ready for resale after having to act super happy for the cameras.” —IAMEPSIL0N

“Not me, but I bumped into someone who was on ‘Property Brothers’. According to them, the two brothers were only ever on site for the filming, they threw out/hauled away all their furniture and what it was replaced with was very pretty looking but hard and uncomfortable, bad quality (like had to be replaced within a year), impractical for the family, and the family could not get anything from before the makeover back that they wanted.” —JynxedDraca