SNL got more than a little hot and heavy this week, as host Dan Levy and the cast got in touch with their sensual side for a sizzling look at the latest sex fad that’s sweeping the nation: Letting capitalism alienate you so completely from your own physical existence that you get turned on by the real estate listings on Zillow.com.
Taking a basic human need like shelter and jacking up the cost until it’s out of reach for anyone who isn’t rich is probably not the quickest or easiest way to warp a nation’s psychological makeup into something monstrous, but it’s spectacularly effective!
Now that we’ve all had a little laugh at people whose sexuality is so twisted that they fetishize real estate they can’t afford, let me save Slate’s readership some time and effort: That $427,000 seven-bedroom, eight-bath “big, gross mansion” in North Carolina featured in the sketch? It’s a fake! The photograph is the Getty Images stock photo “Beautiful Swimming Pool at an Estate Home,” there’s no such town as “Pitsville, North Carolina,” the zip code is in South Carolina (and there aren’t any big, gross mansions for sale there, either), and the going price for a house with seven bedrooms in North Carolina seems to be more than $1 million. So don’t get suckered in by these late night TV ads with their empty promises of easy homes and loose mansions: real houses are nothing like what you see on the internet. Don’t worry, though: The realities of realty won’t completely wreck your fantasies. You won’t be able to afford the real houses either.
