Become a RedPill: Kill Your Television
I get funny looks when I admit to people I don’t own a TV. I get the impression they think I’m some kind of flaky activist. In fact, people have even told me as much.
They seem to think it’s unnatural not to spend more than four hours a day on an activity that burns just five calories more an hour than sleeping.
Likewise, I don’t get people who own televisions. TVs are big dumb conversational bullies that don’t care about you, what you want, or what you think. Television doesn’t care what time you want to watch a show, it’s going to show things according to it’s schedule and you will conform if you want to know what everyone’s talking about around the water-cooler tomorrow. Television is great for promoting inane small talk about its fantasy world, a completely unproductive exercise. It’s like Mark Twain said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” People do the same with TV.
Television is virtual reality. Sports fans in bars scream at projection-screen TV’s all over the world, despite the fact that the football players can’t hear them. Faux News describes the world outside as nothing but car chases and violence, but the reality is that America is safer than it’s ever been. African Americans are not just thugs and whores as Black Entertainment Television (BET) wants us to believe.
To quote Ron Kaufman, “Why do you think they call it programming?”
So join the RedPills, and kill your television. You could go outside, you could join an MMORP, you could jump into a chat room, start your own blog, contribute to Wikipedia, join a social network, start a flash mob, make an LOLCat, or just MAKE. Whatever you do, engage, don’t be a passive receptacle for advertising sponsors.
Who’s going to win the next American Idol? I am, because I’m not going to watch it.
As far as I can tell, you think TV shows are okay if you watch them online / tivo them? Because then it is on your own time.
Comment by Nick Hamden — April 30, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Ryan,
I have suffered through the same “are you from this planet?” looks when I have told people I don’t own a TV.
Yes, I no longer have a dedicated box for watching cable and network programming. I shift my habits to suit me, take a show with me, watch it on a phone, whatever.
I think you are getting at something different though. What you are really encouraging is to drop the passive nature associated with TV and to interact with something. In my opinion, you’re a step ahead of the parade.
Do you think in the future, the passive TV paradigm will still exist? You think you won’t be able to connect to a friends TV (for lack of new term) and critique a show with them? Play a game? Create a program? Take them outside while watching the news? I think this technological evolution is happening, and people won’t be able to avoid it.
I agree with you. We should get used to this new way of thought as soon as possible. Get off our collective butts and go do something. Together.
-BMF
Comment by BMF — April 30, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
If one owns a device that can display video, and has a hookup other than VGA (i.e HDMI, RCA/component, composite, s-video, Coax), then one owns a TV. Regardless of what you use it for.
My 52-inch HDTV has never been hooked up to ANYTHING other than my computer. I watch all my shows on my own schedule, and haven’t seen a commercial in 2008. I would not claim that I don’t watch TV.
Just for clarification.
Comment by ClintJCL — April 30, 2008 @ 1:36 pm
TV has a great deal of its flaws, I am all for getting outside and obviously don’t have objections to blogging. However, I think you may be underestimating the ability of TV to engage and make us feel connected to one another. Vonnegut highlighted a couple of times the sense of community TV was able to provide when there were very few channel choices. One excerpt from Timequake (because I need to get back to work and that was the first one I could find):
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
In the early days of television, when there were only half a dozen channels at most, significant, well-written dramas on the cathode-ray tube could still make us feel like members of an attentive congregation, alone at home as we might be. There was a high probability back then, with so few shows to choose from, that friends and neighbors were watching the same show we were watching, still finding TV a whizband miracle.
We might even call up a friend that very night, and ask a question to which we already knew the answer: “Did you see that? Wow!”
No more.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I do believe even with the plethora of channels and choices offered by the satellite providers multiplied by the capabilities of Tivo, small pockets of communities can still be found with similiar interests. Through TV and through those communites, we engage.
For example, tomorrow night I’ll be going over to a friend’s house to watch “Lost” with her and her husband. Beforehand, we’ll eat dinner and during the show we will speculate, use logic to eliminate theories, point out details the others missed and use every extent of our imaginations to try to predict the next plot twist.
Yes, we are watching television. Yes, we are gathering at a time that ABC executives selected. But… we will be interacting with each other and we will most certainly be engaged.
P.S. And yes, perhaps a lot of television-related discussion could be classified as “small talk”, but don’t forget that other mediums can support small talk as well. I think if most of us took a quick inventory of our Walls on Facebook, we can see the genre in action. Now if you excuse me, I need to quickly post something on your Wall so when you check, it appears that I’m right. :)
Comment by TGAW — April 30, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
That’s great for a synchronous world, but TV is increasing asynchronous — I’ve watched movies at home before they were available at home, and I’ve watched movies so old that you can’t buy them anywhere. And I never watch anything when it’s on, ever.
Yet, I can still write a blog post, and, within a few years, catch a few comments from random people about it.
So the community can still be there even with disparate viewings — it’s just moved to an asynchronous paradigm.
Comment by ClintJCL — April 30, 2008 @ 4:23 pm
Also: This article seems to define TV as “TV programming”, whereas to me, TV is “a box that displays whatever video you want on it”.
Comment by ClintJCL — April 30, 2008 @ 5:48 pm
@Clint – Good point about the asynchronous bonding. Often I watch Lost while on the road and in a different timezone. Even when I am well behind my friend, it’s just as fulfilling when I call her up (ahem…after her bedtime) to ask a question I already know the answer to, “Did you see that? Wow!”
Not a TV show, but Idiocracy seems to promote widespread asynchronous bonding. I am amazed how many people I know have watched it on their own accord. Just last weekend I was hiking and it came up. No matter when or where the movie gets mentioned, it seems to get rave reviews and definitely sparks conversation. :)
Comment by Vicky — May 1, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
Clint,
I don’t know that we can call a computer monitor a television. That would confuse help desk personnel and cause your co-workers to give you funny looks. That’s like calling a chumby or a toaster with a 286 processor inside a computer. Technically these are valid descriptions, but I think these electronics are divided along some (admittedly gray) lines of interactivity.
Watching video on a computer is an entirely different experience. You can rate the video, comment on it, promote it with links, embed it, post a video response. This turns video into a conversation.
You have said that you don’t watch TV as it’s being broadcast because you don’t want the networks dictating your schedule. You post movie reviews and ratings online for everything you see. You’re not watching Television, you’re hacking it by taking a non-interactive medium and manipulating it so that it become interactive.
What you do is exactly what terrifies the networks. Why did it take NBC so long to put their shows online with hulu? Because it took them that long to figure out how to strip all the interactivity out of the experience. They had to disable the conversation and ensure they could force you to watch the commercials without being able to respond to them. They had to make watching video online as stupid as watching TV. That’s authoritarian. I reject it, and I know you do too.
BMF,
The interactivity’s the key. There should be interactivity in every media. Every DVD should have layers of additional information and extra features. Everything should have links to more information and provide a way to offer user feedback. It’s the difference between being a society of producers or consumers.
TGAW,
Shared experiences are important, but what kind of shared experience are we talking about? One hour of passive, non-interactive media consumption preceded and followed up with conversation.
That has it’s place; however, the danger of non-variable, passive media consumption is that everyone gets fed the exact same thing and the conversational scope is artificially constrained.
Would America have invaded Iraq if there had been a conversation about it in the lead up to the war, rather than an entire populace passively fed the same “facts” from the same Televised sources? I’ve watched the same people who argued for invasion years ago turn 180-degrees and argue that we should not have invaded today without the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance.
I think that’s because news networks do their thinking for them, and the conversations they have based on their common experience are actually merely regurgitating what they were told to think about the issue. I don’t know if we can call it a conversation if everyone’s bringing the same facts to the table.
Comment by ideonexus — May 3, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
I am definitely watching television. Every night. Several hours.
Comment by ClintJCL — May 5, 2008 @ 2:32 pm
BTW, your argument for how television is responsible for people not realizing the flaw with the war on terror, while pragmatically valid, ideally borders on the hysteria religion has involving gambling, pornography, drugs and such: The idea that anything that may cause a negative influence via vice is something that people should avoid and stop doing/using.
The idea that because some people get mislead by Fox News that TV is bad and people should happily chuck their sets out the window is about as silly (to me) as the idea that people should chuck their playing cards out the window, because if they play poker, they might get lured into a world of compulsive gambling. Or the idea that people should not drink caffeine (Mormonism) due to the fact that drugs are bad, mmm-kay.
Fact of the matter is, TV is a tool for knowledge transferal. Some of that knowledge is fiction, some isn’t. Some of the non-fiction is baloney, and some of the non-fiction is true. Just like any other format. It’s akin to saying we shouldn’t print newspapers, because people who read newspapers tend to have come to the wrong conclusion about the Iraq War as well (considering that newspapers are more read by older people, who are even “Bushier” than young people in their voting habits).
I doth protest :)
Comment by ClintJCL — May 5, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
I understand your protest, but it’s mostly a straw man you’re attacking that has nothing to do with anything I’m arguing.
I’m suggesting people avoid television because it’s healthier. I’m not advocating banning it or suggesting we legislate against it or anything like that. To argue that the Internet is better than Television is not the same thing as arguing that we should outlaw television. You’re not arguing with me, you’re arguing with a caricature of my position that’s unsupportable by what I’ve actually said.
I’ve argued that watching television is frivolous and a waste of time. I stand by that opinion, even though I do watch television from time to time myself. The superiority of the Internet is obvious to me and I believe people should move to its participatory medium rather than stay in their comfort zone.
If they don’t want to, it’s their right and their loss.
Comment by ideonexus — May 5, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Well alright.. Guilty as charged then…
But my cartoon characters are still seeming with murderous rage! :)
Comment by ClintJCL — May 6, 2008 @ 1:07 am
teeming, even
Comment by ClintJCL — May 6, 2008 @ 1:12 am
: )
Comment by ideonexus — May 6, 2008 @ 9:01 pm
http://xkcd.com/202/
^__ compelling evidence that the Internet is not healthier/superior to television!
Comment by Dave — May 10, 2008 @ 7:33 am
One of my favorite xkcd comics. It takes a moment to figure out why some of the comments are stupid. : )
Comment by ideonexus — May 13, 2008 @ 9:44 pm