My favourite question about soap operas (plus: hornets!)

I don't get it.

For years, I have tried to understand the appeal of daytime soaps but I just can't wrap my head around it.

When I was a kid, I would come home from school or from delivering papers (by the way, you'll have to remind you to tell you about my stint as the oldest Paperboy in Australia sometime...) to find my older brother on the couch, completely wrapped up in General Hospital. This may not seem particularly odd, but my brother was the tough, hockey-playing, get kicked out of school for the day type. I always found it odd that he would willingly immerse himself in a world of overwrought, contrived emotion, day after day. I imagine this is the reason I've always been fascinated by what soaps have to offer. So thanks for that, big brother o' mine...

The writing is generally atrocious. The acting is forced and weepy. The storylines are... well, you know... soapy. Why do people get hooked on this kind of stuff? With the exception of Passions, which had its tongue firmly planted in cheek and was a lot of fun because of it, these shows are just unwatchable. It seems to me that voluntary suspension of disbelief can only go so far, and the people responsible for this stuff cross that line regularly.

Is there something I'm missing?

Because I just don't get it...

I was planning on going into quite a bit of detail here, but I just looked at the time and I have to run to class. We're translating a scientific text on hornets. I didn't like hornets much before. Now that I've read about them in great detail, I'm scared. Terrified, even.

Did you know that a hornet can sting you up to ten times before it dies (unlike bees who have a weird death-wish that causes them to leave half their body in your flesh with their stinger) or that a dying hornet sends out a pheremone-like distress call to its buddies so that they can come and attack you?

Now you do. Sleep tight.