This is exactly right.

Testify.

Have you ever been followed by someone? I have. The headlights that seemed too close behind me and stayed that way for hours through backcountry roads.

The man who crossed Pacific Coast Highway

to follow me into a gas station after my long run.

When my phone was dead and my legs were weak, the coyote who tailed me all the way home as I clutched my small dog in silence.

Yes, silence. I didn't know then what I know now which is this. You have to get loud look big to make a coyote go away.

Everyone who lives in Los Angeles has to learn about the coyotes because they are everywhere, literally and figuratively.

Things, people who pursue you, who see you as a meal.

This is a town where people are always chasing something or someone.

Success, fame, sexy people.

It's a place where dreams come true.

It's also where they're cooked up in feel-good movies and photoshopped faces in reality television.

Reality Television. This is maybe an oxymoron. For the last quarter of a century

shows like The Bachelor have been using real people to craft artificial fairy tales.

Dolling out canned but oddly satisfying servings of the heterosexual ideal.

The people are hot and the production is slick. of the heterosexual ideal.

The people are hot and the production is slick.

We lap it up without thinking too hard about whether it's good for us

and what it took to make it.

The Bachelor is a show about pursuit.

Dozens of women all pursuing the same man,

...