Apparently Dave Winer has joined the ranks of anti-TV types (see the July 4 entry). Too bad. Still, he does have a point – it’s OK to be bored some of the time.
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Somehow I can tolerate those who disapprove of any of my perishable vices — meat, alcohol, sugar, and such — but I find the anti-TV crowd to be so smug and sanctimonious that I just want to SCREAM. Let ’em all drop dead.
I don’t know. I understand what Mike means about being bothered by the smugness and sanctimony, but is the “anti-TV” crowd really worse than the anti-smokers or anti-anything-else?
We don’t have a TV at our house, and haven’t for 10 years. We all (me, wife, children) watch a lot when we visit relatives etc, so we’re not totally out of the loop, but we’re not sanctimonious about it. It’s just a personal choice not to have one, because face it, TV is stupid. Especially in the United States. I was back in the US last week visiting family and the TV was on 20 hours a day and the stupidity was amazing.
And the funny thing is, we never get bored and miss it either, stupid, evil force for totalitarian corporatism that it is.
But I would never dream of being sanctimonious about it.
I’m sure you aren’t. I’m also sure that there’s plenty of intelligent (or at least non-stupid) stuff that you could have watched on your last trip but didn’t — in justifying your own choice, you tar countless programs with the same brush.
And I’m again bristling, because there’s frankly no way to dismiss an activity like TV-watching without making an implicit judgement on the people who partake of it. Not your intention, I know, but that’s the way it’s always going to appear. I’m also annoyed by people who don’t like theatre, but they don’t have that spurious “stupidity” card to play.
(And of course I don’t really care in either case, only in the rare instances when someone’s views are brought to my attention. Not an issue I dwell on.)
No, my parents have cable with over 500 channels, and I checked every one: all stupid.
On the rare occasions when I have argued with people about TV or not TV, they have often mentioned the useful information one gets from TV, but I have never gotten useful information from television unavailable elsewhere. I have only ever seen two interesting things on TV: a closeup of a duck in flight high over a landscape somewhere (I would like to know how they got that footage), and way back when I was a kid, a bunch of people dancing around naked on public television late at night.
Wait, I just remembered Pee Wee Herman’s old show. I take it all back.