Omg. The Aspie got the girl!

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Oh. My. God.

Against all odds, Jeremiah Korfe, the adorable, brutally-introspective, hopelessly-analytical, and painfully Aspie contestant on "Sweet Home Alabama" got picked by the girl (Paige Duke, Sprint's former NASCAR spokesmodel).

Don't believe he's Aspie? I present exhibit "A"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKOyvWcg9vs&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

(new link, fast-forward to 21:00) http://www.cmt.com/videos/sweet-home-al ... sode.jhtml

So, for Aspie guys who think it's hopeless, Jeremiah is living proof that you can do it.

(Disclaimer: afaik, he's not in any public way, shape, or form officially Aspie, and probably has no idea what the word "Aspie" even means, but hell... watch his videos on Youtube, and draw your own conclusions). He deserves an enthusiastic round of applause for totally hitting the jackpot.

Oh, also, the show was on CMT, but in his other life (away from the farm in Minnesota), he's actually a SoCal punk rock musician. In real life, truth *is* stranger than fiction

Incidentally, I'm really liking his song (below).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXMAOgYqJww&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/youtube]

Last edited by dr01dguy on 24 Mar 2012, 6:55 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Good for him! I hope it lasts.

...provided you are 29 years old, tall, slim, fit, meso- or ectomorphic, with a cute face like Jeremiah Korfe, and socially functional enough to participate in a TV show.

This forum has proof you can do it, there's no need to speculate about contestants on some crappy reality show. I'm proof you can do it too if you're gonna go down this road, PRAISE ME

Perhaps I'm too much of a cynic, but aren't many or most alleged reality TV shows scripted? I can't believe that the producers would leave anything to chance. They know exactly what the target audience wants to see, and in this case it's the shy (but cute) underdog who gets the girl.

Yup, all reality shows are scripted. American ones especially are more like soaps than reality because not only do they use deceptive editing and tell people what to say but they get the contestants to act out whole scenes just for entertainment value.

The prison show "Lockup" on MSNBC is the only good reality show in my opinion. It also isn't scripted; however, the prison guards often pretend to be polite to the inmates even though they're usually super rude when the camera crew isn't there.

I guess some people don't think of Lockup as a reality show since its target audience isn't young women.

Umm... the point is that he was up against plenty of hot, outgoing, neurotypical twentysomethings, and he *still* won. The key concept here is that social awkwardness & introversion (both of which he plainly exhibits) are definitely handicaps he had to compensate for (note I didn't say "overcome" -- his later interactions with Paige were as scripted, rehearsed, and agonized-over as any other Aspie's), but he did, and succeeded well.

Did he have behind-the-scenes coaching & inside help leaked to him by the producers? Who knows. Most will probably be cynical & say 'yes', but there's another logical point to consider: when's the last time you've *ever* seen a non-stoned Aspie take relationship advice seriously, believe it (both intellectually AND emotionally), and act upon it? Unless the guys were passing an off-camera bong around the house, he'd have been just as likely to treat "advice" from the producers with healthy suspicion & paranoia, and think they were setting him up to make a fool out of himself on camera (just like Landon did).

No, I think it's just more an example of a highly-intelligent Aspie (probably with ADD, too) who felt highly-motivated (by family & religious beliefs) to learn how relationships "work", coupled with a decade or so of the kind of confidence you get when hot girls just seem to end up in bed with you somehow by some means you don't quite understand... but like quite a bit.

IMHO, the best long-term thing that could possibly happen to them would be to maintain careers & activities that keep them physically apart for a few days at a time on a regular basis. That way, their time together will be like a few happy decades of romantic, fun dates instead of dreary arguing about the color of the towels in the bathroom. Paige is outgoing, and she's going to be happiest in a career that involves travel, excitement, and puts her in contact with lots of guys. She needs a husband who's sufficiently confident to know their love is secure, and maybe a tiny bit distracted by life in general and slightly oblivious to her minute-to-minute activities. Activities that are logically innocent, but would drive a possessive extrovert (like Landon) completely insane.

Likewise, Paige seems to understand that Jeremiah is never going to just spontaneously tell her that he loves her absent prompting or some external event (like the birth of his child someday), but nevertheless his love for her is real, genuine, and untainted by ulterior motives she knows deep down inside that he's almost certainly *oblivious* to. She can feel secure knowing that he might spend 97% of his day obsessing over the tractor, a track on his next CD, or which of 2 or 3 possible toasters, clock radios, or garage floor mats he should buy tonight... but when he DOES think about sex or women, he'll be thinking about HER.

They aren't scripted per se, but they definitely engage in wholesale, abusive editing that shows things out of context & out of order to manufacture plots & conflict from innocent activities. That's not to say the producers don't *try* to get them to say things, but most of the time, the cast members are savvy enough to sense when they're being set up & refuse to cooperate. Sometimes, when the producers go overboard & become intolerably manipulative, the cast members stage the equivalent of a sit-down strike (like when the Real World's "Hawaii" cast got mad & started walking around the house nude whenever they didn't feel like getting taped, because they knew it would cost Bunim-Murray too much money to pixellize *everything* in post-production).

In the case of Sweet Home Alabama, it's obvious that the producers did some MAJOR timeshifting & context-rearranging with the final episode. I mean, they somehow managed to make it look like Paige's final date with Jeremiah was underwhelming, and Bubba was an ace in the hole, yet when she finally sent Bubba home, it was *obvious* he saw it coming from a mile away & probably had *days* to prepare for it. Or, more likely, they made the last few guys tape both "win" and "lose" videos, and he made the video not really believing it was the real one.

Well I am not 29 [although I don't look a day over 29] but I am reasonably attractive but am still faced with huge obstacles to overcome [social awkwardness and introversion ] so this story gives me hope.

It's just TV, dude.

I know it's just tv but are you telling me you haven't encountered any real life success stories?Your response ''it's just tv dude'' is certainly a realistic one but not one I would suspect from someone whose prior commentary I thought was highly intelligent .

Lol. The plot thickens, and Aspie ingenuity wins again.

Apparently, the producers wanted Bubba to win in the worst way, and did just about everything they could to get Paige to send Jeremiah home early because, as a housemate, he wasn't very interestering to them (the extroverted guys fought, partied, and stirred up drama. Jeremiah sat in the corner and read unless someone went out of his way to drag him into the catfight). The producers wanted a fairy-tale "southern belle gets her cowboy" love story to sell CMTV, and had to settle for an ending that was a last-minute shocker.

Oh, the ingenuity. That's the best part.

The guys officially weren't allowed to talk to Paige off-camera, and the producers went out of their way to set up Bubba as her knight in shining armor (sending them on expensive fairy-tale dates, while marginalizing everyone else, especially Jeremiah).

Jeremiah saw right through their manipulation, the same way Aspies tend to instantly recognize that the stories of psychopaths don't quite add up. He analyzed the situation, and realized that the producers had power only to the extent that they were able to control the guys' interactions with Paige. There was exactly one prize: Paige, and as a free woman, they couldn't take her away from him EVEN IF they caught him breaking their arbitrary rules. So he said 'f**k it', wrote love letters to her in the bathroom, and slipped them into her boots & pockets during the group activities.

Pure Aspie brilliance.

In a single stroke, he managed to overcome his awkward in-person on-camera interactions and give her letters that were contemplated, agonized-over, written out, edited, re-edited, and polished multiple times before she ever saw them. We struggle in person, but do well in writing. He most certainly did, and his strategy worked. He stammered and struggled to tell her how he felt in person, but it was OK, because she already KNEW how he felt, and knew he just couldn't say it easily or smoothly on demand in front of the cameras. She asked him questions on camera, already knew the answer, and liked the answer she knew he was struggling to give.

For more about how simple editing changes are used to make reality shows look how the producers want them to, watch this, very enlightening and entertaining:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dl2SP8Hk28[/youtube]

An aspie getting a model as girlfriend in real life? no, i didn't encounter this yet.

and i'd like to see more real life successes than a some 'aspie' star getting a trophy woman in a stupid cheesy reality tv program.

My girlfriend is extremely attractive and I'm an Aspie so doubters can suck on that