Fake Reality Shows That People Believed Were Real

What Not to Wear had a pretty impressive run, with Clinton Kelly and Stacy London offering fashion advice across ten seasons. But the pair weren’t always the stylish saviors they professed to be. For one thing, the stars were heavily assisted by another fashion consultant off-camera, as one Reddit thread claimed. At least the contestants got a free wardrobe out of the experience...right?

Well, not exactly. Some say those who subjected themselves to a sartorial inspection ended up having all their clothes donated to charity. And sometimes the $5,000 they were given by the show wasn’t enough to build an entirely new wardrobe. To make matters worse, participants reportedly had to shell out for any tailoring and haircuts, too!

House Hunters has a simple premise: a couple visits three different properties before deciding on which one they would like to call home. But to make things even simpler, the pair have usually chosen their new abode long before the camera crew comes to town. Its home network, HGTV, sees nothing wrong with this life hack, though.

In a 2012 statement released to Entertainment Weekly, a representative admitted, “We’re making a television show, so we manage certain production and time constraints while honoring the home-buying process. To maximize production time, we seek out families who are pretty far along in the process. Often everything moves much more quickly than we can anticipate, so we go back and revisit some of the homes that the family has already seen and we capture their authentic reactions.”