Catching the zeitgeist just as aggressively as the days when it first introduced the world to concepts like “roommates” and “people acting like assholes for attention on TV,” MTV has announced that its long-running reality series The Real World is making the move to Facebook video, that most reliable and profitable of viewing platforms. The series—which ostensibly ended in 2017 with a Seattle-set season that ambushed its housemates with a group of people they’d had bad personal relationships with in the past—will return for three seasons on Facebook Watch, each set in a different country.
Debuting in Spring 2019, the new seasons will be set in Mexico, Thailand, and the United States, the first time since The Real World: Cancun that the show (which has also had seasons in London and Paris) has left America’s borders. And it’ll all be available to view on Facebook Watch, ensuring that only the most reliable of metrics are being used to provide data on how many people are actually watching the damn thing.
But we kid Facebook, whose video practices are currently under fire over accusations that they massively misrepresented the viewership for video ads hosted on its platform, luring in any number of cash-seeking publications (including MTV News) who proceeded to fire their writing staffs in the interest of “pivoting to video.” We’re sure MTV won’t get fooled again with the viability of Facebook’s video platform, though; after all, that just wouldn’t be keeping it real.