Yes, this will ward off the demons. I am 35 and was raised in a home without a single TV so I know this. I am relatively demon-free to this day.
A year without TV
51–60 of 68 posts
Re: A year without TV
#52I gave up on TV and now just watch cat videos on YouTube. Much better.
Re: A year without TV
#53I think he missed the point to having a tv in this.
Why would you settle to watch your episodes of 24 on a laptop when you have a 42" tv? Your settling for less.
I will agree though I do not like cable tv at all I have not watched it in a couple of months (ever since I signed up for netflix). I however do love my 42" tv. I play games and watch movies ect.
Just because you have a tv does not mean you have to watch cable.
Re: A year without TV
#54It always intrigues me to read someone's account of how they have given up TV. More often than not, they are just watching some TV show (in this case 24) via some other distribution channel. They are still watching TV just not on TV. Also more often than not, they will degrade some other show as evidence of the disaster that TV is all the time missing the point that what TV programs you watch are a matter of taste an…
Those of us who really don't watch TV don't generally feel inclined to write our accounts down.
Take me for example. After my son was born 5 years ago we got busy and decided that we were going to not be connected. My wife connected the TV for a few days to watch Obama win. Then disconnected it since.
My wife rents movies from Netflix. We get movies from the library for my son. (He probably watches about 6-8 hours a week.) We bought a handful of DVDs. But on the average day the (disconnected) TV doesn't even get turned on for that. And the last made for TV show I'm aware of in the house was when my wife decided to watch Weeds.
But to me it is a non-story. I simply don't feel the need to turn the TV on and I don't seek the content out in any other media. I simply have a full life and TV isn't part of it. To such an extent that the non-presence of TV isn't a story for me, it is simply a fact of life.
Re: A year without TV
#55I think he missed the point to having a tv in this. Why would you settle to watch your episodes of 24 on a laptop when you have a 42" tv? Your settling for less. I will agree though I do not like cable tv at all I have not watched it in a couple of months (ever since I signed up for netflix). I however do love my 42" tv. I play games and watch movies ect. Just because you have a tv does not mean you have to watch cab…
If he had a TV he'd have to pay the license fee.
Re: A year without TV
#56I can never read articles such as these and shake the author's holier than thou attitude toward tv and tv watchers.
To say you don't watch TV now is not the same as saying it twenty years ago. I mean, how different really is it to watch an episode of so you think you can dance and read half the crap that makes it to the front of reddit nowadays? how different is it to watch people trying to dance than it is to watch a cat do something "funny" or some stupid fffuuu cartoon?
In the past, when people said they didn't watch TV it meant they were living a certain lifestyle. With the advent of the internet, that just doesn't apply anymore.
Perhaps it is a personal failure, but these articles always reek of, look at me, yet another thing I use to make myself feel better than other people.
And no, this isn't me lashing out because I watch hours and hours of TV.
Re: A year without TV
#57I've gone my entire life without TV, at least on a regular basis; I've visited friends with TVs, had roommates with TVs, etc, but never have I or my immediately family owned one, and even my roommates with TVs didn't watch much.
I resented it a bit when I was a kid, since my friends would talk about shows they watched that I couldn't. By the time I hit my teens I had realized what a waste of time it is, though, and I haven't wanted one since.
I occasionally watch a show or clips online, usually when my girlfriend wants to; there are a few shows that she likes. I do watch movies. I will also occasionally watch the Daily Show or something similar online.
Of course, as time wasting and mind-dulling as a lot of TV is, I find that I waste as much or more on the internet, so I'm not sure it's a net positive. The problem is, I can almost always find content that interests me on the internet, that is even plausibly useful, so it's hard to get myself away from it. The social aspect of posting to the internet and getting comments, feedback, upvotes, and the like also helps to suck me in.
On the whole, I think a lot of the reason I don't like much of TV is the ads and the mass-market homogenization. Some niche content appeals to me, so I tend to get a lot more out of internet videos that would never be popular enough to be on TV (people swapping juggling videos online, small foreign productions that will likely never make it to the US like the IT Crowd, stuff like that). As TV and the internet converges, with more channels added, premium channels that are free of ads, and so on, it might be that more of the "TV" content will appeal to me, but for now, I just don't have much interest in a lot of the content that is out there.
Re: A year without TV
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I did watch Micro Men. That was great. Downloaded it on the iPlayer Desktop and watched it on a long flight to the US. I've watched Newsnight twice in the last year. I've never watched Question Time. Is it good? Mostly, I feel I don't need to learn to use a TV guide because the people around me are constantly saying 'Did you see X?'. They are doing the filtering for me.
Fair enough. Maybe I was harsh. I just hate the implication that TV is for dumb idiots. I would say if we took the content on the web, and compared it with the content on TV, the web would not come out of the comparison well at all. And yes, if you're interested in politics,news,world issues,etc Question Time is good. There's 100s of other TV shows that are of fantastic quality and well worth watching. QI springs to…
Oh, you lucky so-and-sos who get to watch Only Connect on BBC Four. There is no legal (or even expedient) way for me to watch it here in the USA. Then again, we don't pay for a TV license...
Re: A year without TV
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. It's probably more accurate to say "I've given up just watching anything , and now choose to watch only the TV programs that interest/entertain me". Which is what a large amount of people already do, who own a TV. So the fact you own/don't own a TV is irrelevant. You've changed your behavior from 'watch whatever is on', to 'watch things I want to watch'.
It's also that many anti-TVers are simply anti-TV-ad-ers, though they don't explicitly state so. Most alternate sources of TV content have fewer ads (at least, of the kind that interject into the content) than TV. Beyond that, about the only thing you can complain about is the timing of what's available / what will fit on your DVR, where you can stream from Hulu or expand your computer's HD space as needed.
I'll fess up. I have come to loath the ads.
In particular, now that I have a 18-month-old son, I find myself slowly putting plans into motion to ensure that he won't have to "put up with them", or, if you want real honesty, I don't have to put up with him getting barraged by ads.
(Just having a Netflix subscription is a good start now. They've got a range of stuff on Watch Instantly. I've got a couple of years before it really gets acute, too, and the situation may improve by then even more.)
Oh, training a kid to resist the commercials is part of a standard education now, but going up against industries with 60+ years experience in manipulating toddlers and young kids is something I'm going to try to avoid. Hopefully I can hold them back until it's more of a fair fight.
Re: A year without TV
#60Talking about not having TV is a way to feel superior.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/26/28-not-having-a-t...