24 Feb 2009  ::  I Dislike TV
I'm not a big TV viewer, unless it is a sport, and even then, it is highly biased towards basketball. That doesn't mean I haven't watched TV shows, but I typically don't watch them for a long period of time and I typically just get the DVDs and power through them.

I guess I don't have a problem with people and their TV show crushes, as it can't be much different from my book crushes, or my bike (motorized and human-powered) crushes.

But TV makes you stupid. Really stupid. We'll have a group of people over at my apartment and we'll all stare at the screen, not talking, not really thinking and end up wasting a whole evening. Turn off the TV and there is a palatable lag as brain slowly shift into gear and make a speculative effort to try conversation.

It carries past the general time wasting to a point where people begin to pull in quotes from shows into their daily conversation. I think this bothers me because rather than having your own sense of humor, you have to rely on the TV to make your joke for you, or to make the situation funny.

I think there should be a movie where TV turns a whole populace into zombies except a couple middle aged librarians. Brains.

I believe you need to update the title of this blog I Dislike TV (Except for Futurama).

Comment added on 24 Feb 2009 by Mash

Whenever I'm over, I'm always getting tossed around the living room by you when the TV is on. Is this just a defense mechanism on your part?

Comment added on 24 Feb 2009 by Emily

On the one hand, I agree that TV makes you stupid. But on the other hand, I take issue with the quoting television thing- people (at least, not all people...I hope, anyway) quote television not to copy the sense of humor of someone else, but for the same reason we use metaphors- they invoke a shared image that conveys a relatively fixed feeling or impression for us. It's just the same as quoting a book to make a point. Now, when people do nothing but talk about how a certain television scene is funny, it's different. But reusing quotes from a show is no worse than quoting a book.

Comment added on 25 Feb 2009 by Liir

Which is why I advocate non-TV activities like the possible cool and lazertag.

Comment added on 25 Feb 2009 by -erick

I pretty much agree. This is why when we I DO watch TV in a group, I encourage MST3K-like interactivity.

Comment added on 4 Mar 2009 by reed