Where everybody knows your favorite Housewife's name: How reality TV is helping fans find friends

On a recent Thursday evening, Boston-based fans of the Bravo reality series Southern Hospitality braved the icy weather to gather for a viewing party thrown by pop culture podcast hosts The Bottoms. Attendees sipped themed cocktails and peppered guests Maddi Reese and Joe Bradley, two of the show's stars, with questions during commercial breaks. Many people went home with "Bravolebrity" selfies. Some left with new friends.

That's part of the appeal, according to Emilia Diamant, a 39-year-old nonprofit leader and longtime Bravo fan who fostered her love of reality TV on Facebook groups and now attends live Bravo-themed events. "It's a way to make friends and a way to talk to people," she tells Yahoo Life. "When you're in your 30s-plus, it's hard to figure out points of connection. This has been a cool way to make connections with people with similar interests."

Is your favorite show the secret to finding friendship and warding off loneliness? Below, reality TV fans share how they've turned their guilty pleasures into real-life bonding.

Bonding at BravoCon

Watch parties and online fan forums have been around since the early days of Survivor, Big Brother and The Bachelor. But as reality TV has become more of a behemoth, so have the communities enthralled with the genre's most popular shows.

Bars, restaurants and event organizers are rising to meet the challenge. In Austin, Texas, Victory Lap hosts Bachelor watch parties on Monday nights featuring Bachelor bingo and bow tie-wearing servers "pouring champagne like it's a rose ceremony." The Hartford, Conn., food hall Parkville Market draws RuPaul's Drag Race fans for Friday night screenings. And if you happen to find yourself in London this summer, you might find a "faithful" new friend at The Traitors: Live Experience, an immersive event in which devotees of the Peacock competition show can plot, murder and banish (or pretend to, anyway).

In the U.S., it's BravoCon, a weekend gathering of stars from the network's vast portfolio of shows (Real Housewives, Summer House, Vanderpump Rules, etc.), that's emerged as the ultimate opportunity for fans to connect. Around 27,000 fans attended the 2023 convention in Las Vegas; after a hiatus last year, BravoCon will return to Sin City this November.

There's also no shortage of Bravo-themed events happening in the meantime. AJ Hernandez and a group of friends are regulars at the ones held in Boston. The group communicates in a text chain titled "Real Housewives of Boston" and shares Bravo-themed memes on Instagram in a group called "CLIP!" inspired by a notorious Real Housewives of New York City scene in which former star Dorinda Medley repeated the word in an attempt to shut up co-star Sonja Morgan during an argument. (The phrase now adorns mugs and collectible stickers, which can be purchased online.) But Hernandez says the relationships go deeper than RHONY.

"We don't just talk about Bravo anymore," the 32-year-old communications consultant tells Yahoo Life. "But I think if it wasn't for our shared love of reality TV, the bond wouldn't have been as strong to begin with."

New in town

For people relocating to a new area, reality TV communities can serve as a welcome wagon of sorts. When Kylie Clark moved to New York City for graduate school in August 2023, she leaned on her love of the long-running CBS series Survivor to find new pals.

"I've been watching since I was like 5 years old," Clark, now a 27-year-old nonprofit manager, says of the show. And so she headed to local watch parties, including one at the Ainsworth Midtown. Before she even walked through the door, she hit it off with three people she met in line.

"We ended up meeting at my friend's house every Wednesday to watch Survivor together for my whole time in New York," Clark, who recently moved to California, tells Yahoo Life. "We kind of formed this little community."

At a recent potluck dinner, Clark met a couple who had also just moved to California. When she found out they shared her love of Survivor. she invited them to join her weekly viewing of the series alongside her boyfriend and his mom. Now, the group watches together each week.

From online to IRL

In addition to meeting at live viewing events, many superfans of reality TV shows have fostered solid friendships that started online. Back in 2016, Kirsten MacInnis, a 32-year-old policy analyst in British Columbia, joined a Facebook group dedicated to a podcast focused on the CBS series Big Brother. She frequently texts and gathers on Zoom with the friends she met in the group. Eventually, the interactions grew to be in-person ones.

"I would say some of my closest friends in the world are people that I met in the 2016 and 2017 period when I was first getting involved," says MacInnis, who recently traveled to Toronto to attend Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" with a friend she met in the group in 2017.

Mel Sullivan, a social media manager from Quincy, Mass., also found solid friendships in reality TV-themed groups online. She frequently recruits fellow Survivor megafans off the internet to partake in live (and tamed-down) versions of the series, in which people gather in someone's home and plan an entire weekend of social strategy games. Competitors tackle challenges ranging from puzzles and drinking games to gross eating games. ("One year there were bugs," Sullivan shares.)

Understanding the appeal

In an era of binge-watching, reality TV's ability to foster such strong connections between fans could be attributed to its serial release. For the most part, episodes are dropped weekly, and if you don't watch them live, you risk coming across spoilers or missing out on buzzworthy moments. Sullivan calls her Survivor screenings a "weekly watercooler moment," which "allows you to have that conversation longer and find new people; you want to join the conversation."

The accessibility of reality TV is also a welcome distraction at a time when people are looking to embrace escapism. Unlike prestige dramas, the petty in-fighting and personality conflicts between cast members seem much more relatable.

"It's not so far outside of your realm of possibility," says Diamant, who will travel to BravoCon to celebrate her 40th birthday later this year. "It's not like Succession, where they're behaving so badly you're like, 'I would never do that.' You can often see yourself reflected in a character or two."

That personal connection with someone onscreen can be particularly welcome at a time when people are struggling to engage with others.

"A lot of people are embarrassed about watching reality TV, or they think of it as fluff or something that's just not that serious," says MacInnis. "When you find someone else who likes that same show as you, or who kind of enjoys it on the same level, it's like, 'Oh my God, like, you're my people.'"