"I don't even own a TV"

I mean honestly that speaks to my problems overall with it. Anti-TV folk aren't a pet cause of mine, I just dislike anybody who proudly wears the shit they hate as a badge of honor. People who merely don't own televisions or tell me about it, who gives a shit...

there's one particular acquaintance of mine who makes it a habit daily to brag about what celebrities he hasn't heard of, what rap artists he's never heard music by, and how much he hates a certain movie (which changes by month). find that hella tedious

people have never asked me unsolicited, what I think of a particular television show, and never have, not even when I worked in an office with watercoolers and awkward small-talk. it's a myth... isn't it? or did I miss out?

Last year I started going to lunch with my coworkers because I wanted to be less of an antisocial jerk. About 75% of the conversation was about television. I still try to go with them once a week to keep up appearances, but I look for a quick excuse to head back to my desk when they start asking if anyone saw last night's Grey's Anatomy or whatever.

(I own a TV, but I mostly only watch whatever my kids are watching, which I guess is a version of "I don't even own a TV" but I'd love to watch Girls or Game of Thrones if I had HBO or whatever.)

That's what blu-rays and DVDs are for

there's a friend of mine, a former co-worker that chats w/ me mostly about music and television shows when I logon to our chat system.

but I prefer to binge watch television so tehre's few shows we're ever both watching in real time.

I'm trying to figure out why this type of thing is so annoying. I think part of it is it fee is like the don't even watch a tv'er is sort of stuck in adolescence, still defining themselves by what they don't like instead of what they do like & feeling superior to the unenlightened when in actuality they might be just as shallow.

― Raptain Chillips (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, March 31, 2014 8:10 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because being ignorant is never good?

I just dislike anybody who proudly wears the shit they hate as a badge of honor.

^^^^ this.

http://www.wornfree.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/650x626/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/k/u/kurt_cobain_corporate_magazine_suck_white.jpg

calling things passé is out btw

Branwell pitting two sides against each other and disappearing abruptly is some next-level puppetmaster shit.

Hello and welcome to ilx u must be new here

/I just dislike anybody who proudly wears the shit they hate as a badge of honor./

^^^^ this.
--(The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

What about their hate of Fracking?

_/I just dislike anybody who proudly wears the shit they hate as a badge of honor./

^^^^ this.
--(The Other) J.D. (J.D.)_

What about fact you wear your disdain for these people as a badge of honor yourself?

Maybe Branwell is working on a very long post

It's "Good Day to you, Sirs"

cog otm itt, "i don't even own a tv" is not usually something people say unbidden. it's usually a way of saying "i don't watch tv so this direction of conversation excludes me". obviously condescending snobs exist but this statement doesn't automatically make one a condescending snob.

i never really grew up in a tv-oriented house so never really got into the habit. fully acknowledge tv can be great but when i get into things i REALLY get into them so i find i don't have the time to commit to tv series - i can't just watch an episode here, an episode there, casual watching. i find that - with a few other things - you do come across people who seem almost offended that you don't conform to the habits and pastimes of 99% of people within "your" social demographic. "what do you mean, you don't practise the signifiers of the pop culture-consuming middle classes."

obviously i watch tennis on tv, if "crappy internet live stream" counts as a tv.

anyway i'm not a snob about tv as a medium but i am 100% a snob about this attitude:

Also the activity of Watching Television as in getting some snacks and just spending a few hours a night on the couch watching whatever the fuck came on.

― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Monday, March 31, 2014 8:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i never realised until twitter how many people do this! they watch whatever, they seem to dislike it and they don't even seem to care about it. they just watch it because it's there. EVERY FUCKING NIGHT. i am baffled by and unashamedly contemptuous of this lifestyle. you should be into - really into, enthusiastic and excited about - your hobbies and your cultural consumption otherwise what is the actual point???

(video games are another matter. an appalling hobby in every respect.)

Sorry, I'm still laughing at the ignorance and projection displayed in "Branwell must be a next-level puppet master because... (Branwell goes to bed during time zones that are night time in the UK)!!!"

I half-agree, Lex, but I don't disdain watching TV as wallpaper, I just don't get it. I don't get video games either but how other people spend their time doesn't bother me. I know there are people who find it weird that I spend so much time on Twitter and ILX. I remember reading someone describe Robbie Williams' Angels as "a song that idiots want played at their funerals" and thought it was so gross and contemptuous that I vowed not to sneer at people for their cultural choices anymore. Or at least try not to. Culture has a utilitarian role as comfort and distraction and if someone finds it comforting to watch whatever's on TV when they get home from work as opposed to streaming True Detective or reading a novel then what's it to me?

yeah i acknowledge my snobbery about video games is nagl but allow me that one just because. i don't rescind anything about tv-as-wallpaper snobbery though. the sheer passivity of it combined with the visible dislike of what that passivity gets you, i don't know why it doesn't strike them as a terrible way to pass a life. don't get me wrong i am fully in favour of procrastination and useless time-wasting but at least that should be in service of something that actively enthuses you?

I have a soft spot for full-on TV-as-wallpaper – like actually actively doing something else while it mutters in the background - & that's a function of my youth & always being around TV. It's a comfortable way for me to read quickly - happy memories of eg summer holiday, work through a reading list, Neighbours on in the background.

But I don't have a TV now. I slide too easily into just watching it. I think my logic is something like:

Reading + TV: ok
Just reading: ok
Just TV: uncomfortable with myself, but find it difficult to stop because I love you TV.

I didn't really 'get' TV-as-wallpaper until i started working full-time. Getting home completely knackered after a stressful day at work isn't always particularly conducive to more active pursuits. I don't watch tonnes of TV but i don't begrudge anyone the habit of flopping on the sofa and consuming escapist entertainment.

i don't even read this thread

there is so much great tv out there. some shows are totally involving, beautifully directed, scripted and acted. it's daft to cut oneself off from all that greatness.

at a party the other week someone in conversation mentioned a telly prog that was I imagine made before anyone at the party was born and one wee guy blurted out we don't actually own a tv!! looking feverishly at his girlfriend and sort of nodding involuntarily

I put salt on my TV

the following day I was walking along the canal and he appeared on the path walking towards me smiling with a skateboard strapped to his back and slowed to say hello but I kept my pace and informed him that I don't skateboard as I passed

It never fails to amaze me, the things that people will get incredibly judgmental about, and then justify their behaviour by claiming "OH BUT THOSE PEOPLE I'M JUDGING ARE SO SNOBBY AND JUDGEMENTAL". This isn't about anything except projection.

― BLEEEEEEE Monday (Branwell Bell), Monday, 31 March 2014 19:24 (Yesterday) Permalink

http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Features/2011/04/Mortal%20Kombat%20Week/Evolution%20of%20Scorpion%20and%20Sub-Zero/MK/doubleice--article_image.jpg

I find myself wondering if "I only watch via the Internet" is the new snobbish version of IDEOATV. I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of proselytizing about how going Internet-only will set you free, but I was the same way when I first got satellite+Tivo. All technology has done is make the existing television even more non-linear.

The IDEOATV people have a smugness about them that feels almost class-based. Insert every argument about high-brow vs. low-brow culture here.

Those 60s media guys: McLuhan, Postman, etc. they were really onto something. Television is different.

.

I feel like if you're watching TV programming on the internet you're still watching tv

lalalalala not listening

the fundamental difference is that on the internet you've gone to find that thing you're watching rather than just clicked around to see what's on

the internet is still pull rather than push

or in my case, skim and restate

the fundamental difference is that on the internet you've gone to find that thing you're watching rather than just clicked around to see what's on

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, April 1, 2014 9:07 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except if you've had cable in like the last 10 years there's all sorts of on-demand options for pretty much all shows...not to mention everyone who uses a PS3 or Xbox 360 and Netflix/Hulu+ or a Roku with their TV

Is it wrong to automatically assume that people who don't own/watch tvs have more fulfulling lives than tv watchers? Or is that a stereotype? Do these people just spend the same amount of time reading trashy novels, or are they out working in soup kitchens and tending to community gardens?

I didn't pay for cable until October 2012, which was like not having TV at all (thanks to a converter box I could watch broadcast channels in my bedroom). I still only watch the news and use the cable for YouTube and Netflix.

how about people who don't watch live television but run out of quality shows on netflix and just binge through whatever garbage is there

hi

Voted death to "dont even own" obv btw

xp yeah "The Medium is the Message" isn't some hippy-dippy mind-blower like it sounds, it just means that the nature of the medium and the context in which it is used is going to shape the content. If a station needs to have commercial breaks every x minutes, then the show has to be written in a way that it can be broken up easily. If the economics require you to have an enormous general audience, you may need to write the show in a way such that no episode requires thorough memory of the prior episode. There are a variety of reasons why a show like The Wire (sorry to keep hammering that one) couldn't have been written for NBC in the mid-90s, even aside from the censorable content -- it requires a lot of intense attention, some scenes almost require you to pick up on a different dialect of English, each episode builds on the last, etc. It wouldn't work economically for NBC, and it barely worked for HBO in the era of DVD sets and on-demand viewing. My point isn't "The Wire is unequivocally better than 90s television," it's just that I don't buy "television is television, same shit different screen."

I've gone through entire runs of several TV shows on netflix which I exclusively watched while folding laundry. I never pick shows that I really want to watch for these situations, because I'm not paying 100% attention to the show, which means that I know a lot about Dexter and Weeds and a bunch of other somewhat decent but ultimately terrible tv shows. Sometimes I feel like this stuff is taking up valuable brain space.

xpost
1) no duh

2) i'm not talking about HBO stuff or House of Cards vs. like a 90s sitcom...I'm talking about some ppl who seem to think like watching Parks & Rec on Netflix is somehow not "TV"

"I don't take Sky/have a Sky box" is the C21 version of "I don't watch ITV".

(I don't take Sky or watch ITV)

everything is TV! a book is just TV on paper! ILX is just a really bad Frasier script published on page at a time on the internet!

Right but even a show like Parks & Rec can wind up partly shaped by the fact that a big part of its audience is going to watch on netflix instead of on broadcast. I don't know the numbers for that specific show, but if you no longer have to rely solely on the "broad" part of "broadcast" then you can do things differently.

And TBH the writing in Parks & Rec still seems a little sharper than, IDK, Full House.

I don't own a TV. Well I mean, I do own a TV, there's one in my house but I never watch it. Not unless it's something I like, like the news for instance, or University Challenge. And okay, I do like Breaking Bad, but that's it. I may as well not have a TV because who needs one? Mind control. And the adverts, god knows how many ad breaks there must be between segments on Game of Thrones. I may as well just watch the ads even though they're blatantly the best bits. Better than The Voice, which is crap, but I still watch it sometimes. Well most times it's on actually. I don't like How I Met Your Mother or the Big Bang Theory but I have to watch them cos my girlfriend likes them. Oh, and I'll watch Corrie while I'm having my tea but not Eastenders. Well sometimes Eastenders. I like a film too. And then what I like to do, if there's nothing on I'll stream something from Netflix. But on the whole I avoid the telly. Rots your brains. Nature documentaries are good though, I watch those. We've got the nature channel now and I'm addicted, but that's alright cos it's educational isn't it? I'll watch anything factual - war documentaries, nature documentaries, quizzes, Lov'd Up In Ibiza.. But no I don't watch TV. No use for one. Gives you square eyes, I may as well get rid of it.

And TBH the writing in Parks & Rec still seems a little sharper than, IDK, Full House.

― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Tuesday, April 1, 2014 9:47 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's no more complex than Seinfeld, and Seinfeld had tons of strange little recurring characters and storylines

my main point is not about the art of TV and how on demand is changing it blah blah blah

IT'S ABOUT MOTHERFUCKERS YOU ARE WATCHING TV SHIT IF YOU ARE WATCHING TV SHIT STEP OFF YR HIGH HORSE

ILX is the best kind of reality tb

no one is on a high horse, this is the point of the thread

mississippi shakedown you're right, the lines between "sit up" and "sit back" have become v blurred

I'm talking about some ppl who seem to think like watching Parks & Rec on Netflix is somehow not "TV"

i have to say, netflix feels a little hermetic to me, i mean it is awesome obviously, but i can't shake the slightly "dead" vibe, like maybe i'm in a post-apocalyptic survival capsule somewhere, a wire piped in with an archive of humanity's televised entertainment on it, enough to last 5 lifetimes. i will often find myself flipping over to live TV and watching something worse on every objective level, but vibing on it more because it's live. i wonder if today's kids will grow up feeling that distinction between something live and recorded?

anyway i can understand people who are basically like, if it's not a live broadcast it's not really TV. it's videotape by another name. you are not participating ins omething as a communal experience with thousands of other people all seeing the same things you are at the same time.

I don't buy that distinction at all. If you watch programmes made for TV you're watching TV. I watch most TV time-shifted these days and never feel that it doesn't count because I'm missing the in-the-moment communal experience.

what if you watch on a one-hour time delay and skip all the commercials?

are people on the west coast forever watching "not tv" because shows air later

yeah DVR already changed viewing habits long ago w/cable!