Former Bravo president and current NBC executive Lauren Zalaznick is undoubtedly very smart and responsible for much of what I love on television. She also made a ridiculous argument that suggest she has very different relationships to her shows than viewers do.

“I reject easy slams like ‘train wreck’ and ‘guilty pleasure. It’s just not a good enough description of why people actually watch what we do,” she said while delivering the opening keynote of the RealScreen Summit Monday.

Instead, she discussed “why viewers connect so much to their favorite reality TV shows,” and highlighted four reasons why they do, according to RealScreen’s summary of her talk, which reports that

“Zalaznick highlighted four elements that the biggest reality shows tended to feature:

‘Me plus,’ which suggests an onscreen character that is a slightly enhanced version of the viewer (‘me but a bit better,’ as she put it); ‘Emotional connection,’ which involved characters developing in such a way so that the viewer bonds as the characters develop; ‘Rooting,’ or cheering for underdogs; and ‘unusual circumstances,’ or fish-out-of-water scenarios.”