"So why do you watch them? Because of the intelligent, cultured discussions?"
I haven't seen most of the examples listed, but as to the ones I have seen, yeah. Greed
was actually a pretty unique and decent game show, and I never once thought of it as trashy. Survivor
as I mentioned above used to have a big demographic of fans who legitimately liked the show, and on certain message boards, there were some very bright people who analyzed the contestant's various strategies as well as editing patterns to speculate on who would win early. But besides all that, I don't like being told that "this show/book/whatever is objectively worthless except to laugh at dismissively". Unless the show is clearly a PAL show(to be fair, some of the listed examples ARE explicitly PAL shows) then I think it belongs in YMMV. The fact that the article is very small shows that it's probably a brain fart.
Who are we to say what's "humiliating"? What I may find embarrassing is different from what you find embarrassing. And what is embarrassing to you would not be embarrassing so to a third person, and so on and so forth. Where do we draw the line?