I was in the audience for a reality show once. It was for some pilot that never aired, a drink-mixing competition between bartenders that was similar to “Chopped,” but with a component where the bar patrons had a say in the winner. Obviously, I was there for the free drinks. But the free drinks weren’t worth seeing behind the curtain of reality TV: the long milieu between filming scenes, the false excitement we were asked to drum up, the “bartender” who knew nothing about scotch because he was just an actor looking for a break. All in all, I learned first-hand what I already knew: there isn’t much that’s real about reality TV.

That experience came to mind when I saw this image that a Redditor captured from a recent episode of Fox’s “MasterChef.” Those poor, desperate people who wanted to get on TV for a split second, cheering wildly at the urging of a production assistant. And yet that wasn’t enough, so Fox digitally doubled them to make it look like an actual crowd of people gave a sh*t about “MasterChef.” Why bother with extras at all? Just hire a tech geek to digitally create a crowd from scratch. And keep calling it “reality” while you’re at it.

Fun fact: I altered the original image in Photoshop to get rid of the Hulu video player button. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS! NOTHING IS REAL! THEY’RE COMING FOR US ALL!