I told you so.

On June 17, 1994, a Ford Bronco driven by a retired N.F.L. player named Al Cowlings took to the freeway pursued by a posse of black-and-whites, a car chase conducted at a doop-de-doop pace and lasting over two hours, yet never less than utterly riveting. It was the precise moment that real got realer, or rather, that real got reality, because it was the precise moment that the pilot episode of the first—and best—reality-TV show of all time aired: the O.J. Simpson case. I wrote about this phenomenon in the June 2014 (the chase’s 20th-anniversary month) issue of Vanity Fair.

I’m going to write about it some more, though, since the man widely believed to have gotten away with double murder is once again ready for his close-up. Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story) is executive producing the dramatization of the Simpson trial based on the excellent book The Run of His Life, by Jeffrey Toobin, in the first season of the new FX serial, American Crime Story, premiering this week. Ironic even for irony: that the ultimate reality show is being turned into a scripted show—i.e., what reality shows have, if not quite replaced in the past two decades, threatened to replace. More ironic still: that the case was populated by people who couldn’t make it in Hollywood—Simpson was C-list at best, and Kato Kaelin and Paula Barbieri, both of whom had soft-core porns on their credits, weren’t even on the list—and now those has-beens, wannabes, and never-wases are being played by actors who have won Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, Tony Awards, SAG Awards; been nominated for Emmys and BAFTAs and Independent Spirits.

O.K., so it’s tacky to quote yourself, not to mention bad manners, but it’s also, in this instance, efficient. Here goes: “What made the case such an addictive fix—beyond even the sensational nature of the crime, the glitziness of the players, the almost irresistible pull of the question What really happened?—was the voyeuristic kink it provided. It gave us the dirty little thrill of putting our eye to the keyhole, looking in on a world that we’d normally never have access to.” Seeing something we’re, at least theoretically, not supposed to be seeing is the source of reality TV’s drive and fascination. It gives even the boring bits the frisson of the forbidden. This, too: reality TV can offer, as the O.J. trial did, as the recent Making of a Murderer did, sex and violence, real sex and violence, but real sex and violence on a screen, and thus at a distance; which means you don’t have to take the moral pain that usually goes along with real sex and violence. Win-win.

So the Juice’s (metaphorical) juice started it all. He’s the primogenitor of reality TV. Which brings me to the “I told you so” that I opened with since the statement I made back in 2014—“if the Simpson case was the daddy of reality TV, it was every bit as much the baby daddy”—is even more true in 2016.

Gird your loins because I’m about to invoke myself for a third and, I promise, final time. “There have been only three true reality stars: Kim Kardashian, with Kourtney and Khloé providing backup, the bubble-butted version of the Supremes; Lauren Conrad and her cutie-pie buds on The Hills; and Paris Hilton, who struck out on her own after her public break with The Simple Life co-star Nicole Richie. I say true stars because their fame isn’t contingent upon winning a competition or displaying a skill or talent. . . . On the contrary, they do nothing, and that’s their genius, their special gift. They’re celebrated . . . purely for being quote themselves unquote.”

This was my attempt to establish a reality-TV Mount Olympus, with O.J.—of course, obviously, duh—as Zeus. To show the connections, visible and invisible, existing between the various “gods,” I drew up a diagram, with pictures and captions and arrows and lines and dotted lines, which was included with the piece. (You can view [it here] (http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/02/oj-simpson-reality-tv-diagram).)

Mount Olympus looks a little different in 2016 than it did in 2014. There have been several changes and additions, and I’ve updated my worldview accordingly. In fact, I’m prepared to devote a portion of the remainder of my life to tracking the evolution of this new population. (Kourtney and Kim already have five children between them.)

This is going to sound like a non-sequitur, but it isn’t: Taylor Swift runs young Hollywood. The position of Taylor’s BFF, is, as you would expect, a much-coveted one. Well, Taylor goes through gal pals at about the same rate she goes through boy toys. She’s been paired with everybody from Lena Dunham to Selena Gomez to Nicki Minaj. Two mainstays, though, are Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid.

Let’s begin with Kendall Jenner, a change to the diagram. Now, it’s Robert Kardashian’s (literal) juice that started if not quite it all then an awful lot of it. Genetically, of course, Kendall is a Jenner. Spiritually, though, she’s pure Kardashian. She’s been a cast member of Keeping Up with the Kardashians since the show’s inception, when she was a mere 11 years old. Not only has she made the transition from child reality star to grown-up reality star, she’s made the transition from reality star to star star. In the past 18 months, she’s appeared on the cover of GQ and Harper’s Bazaar, become the face of Estée Lauder, and has been linked to a series of hot and happening and, it goes without saying—or it should—famous young heartthrobs, including Drake, Justin Bieber, Cara Delevingne (hearthrobette), and, at present, One Direction’s Harry Styles, the ex-squeeze of Taylor Swift. Kim might have been the Rosa Parks of the reality-TV set, the one who broke down barriers by getting a real star to marry her; Kendall, though, is doing her part to further the cause, demonstrating that reality stars are real stars, the equal of pop and movie, that celebrity is celebrity, and can’t we all just get along? Back in 2014, I lumped Kendall together with little sister Kylie. She’s more than proven, however, that she deserves her own entry.

Gigi Hadid is an addition to the diagram. The newcomer is the daughter of Yolanda Foster, Real Housewife and Lyme-disease sufferer or Munchausen-syndrome sufferer (castmate Lisa Rinna floated the possibility that Foster was faking), married to, though recently separated from, Grammy-winning music producer David Foster, Judge Ito’s celebrity crush and the ex-husband of Linda Thompson, once Linda Jenner. Hadid was the girlfriend of Joe Jonas, and had, according to several gossip sites, set up Kendall with Nick Jonas. In late 2015, Hadid dumped Joe Jonas for Zayn Malik, member of One Direction until he defected from the band in March.

That the biggest change and addition (also subtraction) to the diagram is Caitlyn Jenner, formerly known as Bruce Jenner, the onetime Olympic gold-medal-winning decathlete and Wheaties spokesman, is a no-brainer. It was in April, a month after his divorce from Kris was finalized, on 20/20 that Bruce announced he was transitioning from male to female. It was in July on the cover of Vanity Fair that Jenner revealed her new identity, the caption to the Annie Leibovitz photograph reading “Call me Caitlyn.” (Jenner, conspicuously, did not go with Kaitlyn. A declaration of independence from K-Krazy Kris?) As Bruce, Jenner had always been an engagingly modest and low-key presence on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but he tended to get lost in the background. In an attention-whore house, he was the lone celibate, basically. Caitlyn, though, Caitlyn got noticed. In fact, she out Kardashianed the Kardashians. There was, of course, the Leibovitz V.F. cover—more than a cover, a cover-girl cover. And when she joined Twitter, she accrued over a million followers in four hours and 3 minutes, setting a new Guinness World Record, and leaving in the dust President Obama, who needed a slow-poke four hours and 52 minutes to hit the same mark. She received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, previous recipients including Muhammad Ali and Nelson Mandela, at the Espys. South Park devoted its Season 19 premiere episode, “Stunning and Brave,” to her. And Barbara Walters named her the most fascinating person of 2015. She also finally went solo, scoring her very own E! reality show, I Am Cait.

So, you see, it’s O.J.’s (real) world now. We’re just living in it.