At the end of college a TV crew came to my college to interview students for a nerd centric Big Brother-esq reality TV show. I applied and after much additional interviewing and paperwork, I ended up in the final 17 interviewing for the 11 spots on the show.

The paperwork they made me sign said that they could completely manipulate anything I did: splice together video, voice, use voice actors to change what I said. It was a bit concerning.

Anyway, they paid for my travel and hotel and I ended up in the final interview session before I would be locked away from the outside world (no internet or phone calls, etc) for up to five weeks for some piddly compensation. I did a photoshoot, did some video introductions, and generally had a great time... until my final interview session.

I was in a huge room with the director and almost 30 other staff. I was sat down in front of a camera and asked questions by the director. They started out innocently enough, asking about my hobbies-- I talked about video games, cosplay, engineering, and martial arts.

The director locked on to my martial arts past and suddenly the questions became very directed in a disturbing way: "Do you feel sexy taking down a man with your martial arts?", "Do you want to overpower a man?", etc.

I could clearly see how they were trying to cast me and absolutely did not play along. I went from bright and happy to terse. Instead of navigating away from the topic the director pursued it further. He then asked his final question: "What's your secret?" and I declared it was that I had a boyfriend.

Surprise, surprise, I wasn't selected as a final contestant.

Bullet dodged.