"I don't even own a TV"

i have a tv but i don't watch it really, though my wife and i watch a small amount of movies, maybe 1-3 per month. cable packages are expensive. i have a toddler son who takes up pretty much all my time except for my job, i don't really have a lot of time to get engrossed in tv shows. like i said we do watch movies though, after my son goes to bed.

i don't brag about not watching tv but i get annoyed when sometimes all people and the internet talk about is fucking breaking bad or girls or whatever. i did watch the wire though. it took a huge chunk out of a summer a few years ago. i felt like i was probably pretty annoying b/c all i wanted to talk about with people was the wire.

Neanderthal, did you ever think that maybe you're the horrible person?

Both can be annoying but I find the second category more irritating because the non-tv-owning-snob is still kind of an underdog in the grand scheme of things whereas the person mocking them is kind of unwittingly being a bully on behalf of the status quo.

As I said in the other thread though, I feel like the "I don't even own a TV" guy has increasingly become a strawman. Maybe up through the late 90s it fit a certain recognizable profile, but I haven't heard anyone even take a side on TV ownership in many years except in context of having cable vs getting content through the internet.

I did have one friend who even up until like three years ago was all "I DON'T BELIEVE YOU THAT THE WIRE WAS GOOD, IT'S STILL TELEVISION. IT'S THE MEDIUM." Then he watched it.

This isn't about anything except projection.

I'm telling you I've met people like that and heard them say snobbish things about TV-watchers but OK, maybe I hallucinated them. You'd know my own life better than me.

Anyway, thanks to the new golden age of TV these people are far outnumbered by The Wire/Breaking Bad bores so I don't lose any sleep over it.

tbh i do feel like the wire was overrated

*groan*

Where does the "brag" in this sentence come from?

I could see it, if the fact of one's non-ownership of a tv were delivered in an obnoxiously haughty and self-important tone. Because saying this invariably marks you out as different from everyone else you're talking to, then it's more likely to be said apologetically or defensively, but I'm sure there are a few assholes who make this an indelible point of pride.

at least season 5 has shitted on my memory of the show, so it just kind of hangs out in my mind as overrated

Neanderthal, did you ever think that maybe you're the horrible person?

― Herbie Handcock (Murgatroid), Monday, March 31, 2014 3:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ouch

Anyway, thanks to the new golden age of TV these people are far outnumbered by The Wire/Breaking Bad bores so I don't lose any sleep over it.

― What is wrong with songs? Absolutely nothing. Songs are great. (DL), Monday, March 31, 2014 3:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

breathless blogging/facebook-posting about premium shows is the new disease. It's like everyone took DFW's line about "rapt credulity" a little too far.

i also never had cable growing up so i've always kind of identified more with the people who don't own tvs

everytime i stay in a hotel i'm like "FUCK YEAAAAAA CABLE!!!!!!!" but then i turn off the tv after one cycle of flipping through

i met someone recently who bragged about not being into movies

i didn't bother to ask him about tv

how do you know he was bragging

Should I start a poll about when strawman came to be defined as "I haven't met/experienced this person/thing so it doesn't actually exist" y/n

I asked a strawman and he said yes he'd love to see a poll like that. But then he would.

It feels like the kind of cultural snob who would have confidently sneered at TV in the 80s or 90s knows that there's a ton of quality drama now so either they've succumbed or they've stopped making a big deal out of not watching. The whole "57 channels and nothing on" line would sound ridiculous now.

I'm telling you I've met people like that and heard them say snobbish things about TV-watchers but OK, maybe I hallucinated them. You'd know my own life better than me.

These people absolutely existed, and anyone who spent more than 2-3 days in Northampton, MA during the late 90s/early 00s met at least 50 of them (and saw innumerable "Kill Your Television" bumper stickers).

don't feel like anybody is even saying itt that they experience this on a frequent basis, just clarifying their position since it was fairly obvious where the OP was going w/ this. I run into way more people who boast "I ain't even on FB, mang, I actually TALK to people!"

how do you know he was bragging

― polyphonic, Monday, March 31, 2014 8:36 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

How else could you spin this? Why else would you bring it up?

I wonder if anyone still writes songs about how awful TV is. I guess they've moved on to writing about how the internet makes us mean and lonely.

"yeah, I really don't ever go to movies. I don't like movies."

xp it's obviously something that used to be a thing, people are just questioning whether it still is

I am probably being one of these people when I tell people that I don't own a Kindle and have no intention of buying one. But the person judging me in those situations is definitely in the wrong because I have unshakeable moral fortitude on my side.

"I met this person, once, they exist, ergo the trope is totes valid!!!" is stil v v weak and straw-manning.

That's different though. You still read books, right?

"I don't like movies, there are a million different kinds by all sorts of directors, silent, talkies, black and white, artsy, docs, cartoons, anime, nature shit but no, fuck it, they are not for me."

One of my best friends doesn't read novels because he doesn't want to waste time reading about people who don't exist and things that haven't happened. The odd thing is that he's an English Lit graduate.

^^^amazing

maybe it's because he's an english lit graduate

"I met this person, once, they exist, ergo the trope is totes valid!!!" is stil v v weak and straw-manning.

This is a cool quote that you made up that no one said, good job

The trope is valid because these people exist in virtually every sphere you would care to mention, most people on ILM would immediately project a load of things on someone who started making a big deal about how they dislike pop music made by girls, or rap music. It obviously doesn't mean that everyone who doesn't own a TV, or dislikes pop music, is one of these people, and I don't think anyone is claiming that they are.

I think there should be room in the world for people to take ideological positions against forms of entertainment. In this particular case, I think the medium has just changed so much that the bases for the opposition have become irrelevant, i.e. the proliferation of high-quality, commercial-free shows available to watch at any time in a variety of formats. When people were "against television" they were usually against a particular kind of activity which was what television-watching used to be defined by (or at least it was how a lot of people perceived it) -- you know, plopping down on the couch, channel surfing, vegging, the boob tube, etc. There were actual structural reasons why television on average was kind of stupefying at certain times in history. Those reasons aren't really there anymore.

<3 "the boob tube". Also "the idiot box".

If this thread keeps going and more ILXors say they've met IRL people like this, how many do we need before strawman status is lifted?

I consulted the strawman, he said five more.

In Britain this used to translate as "we don't watch ITV".

"I think there should be room in the world for people to take ideological positions against forms of entertainment."

There's also room to be able to make fun of jerkwads

hurting otm xxxxp

Clive James's old Observer TV columns show how much has changed. He basically invented modern criticism because when he started in the 70s the idea of taking TV seriously as an artform was new. That snobbery lasted a long time in some households.

Sorry, that should be invented modern TV criticism.

There's also room to be able to make fun of jerkwads

― waterbabies (waterface), Monday, March 31, 2014 3:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think you can complain that the world has too little room for this

Bruce Springsteen is a snob: y/n

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAlDbP4tdqc

Is Rollins the type of person who'd brag about TV non-ownership?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6otjCKg594

Get off yr high horse, Frank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkKXdCyGLjY

Television is no friend of mine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCumH8LRo1A

Frank Zappa is a creep

my thought on this is that our society is, for whatever reason, unable to cope with someone not engaging in a behavior that 99% of people engage in-- even when that person is not hurting anyone else. See: people who don't own TVs, people who are vegetarian/vegan, people who choose not to drive, people who are transgender, etc. We just HAVE to ridicule those people as wanting to be different and annoying.

Thank you for equating my annoyance with some guy at a party with people who are transphobic.

xpost said by the person who throws the polio afflicted in the clink!

I've never had broadcast television/DVR/cable/satellite. By the time I lived on my own in the mid 2000s, torrents and stuff like rapidshare had arrived, so I simply downloaded Lost etc. on my brand new DSL connection. I even had some nifty Mac app where I could select the shows I wanted, and it would automatically scan for when a torrent was uploaded for the latest episode and start downloading.

As such, I haven't watched TV with ads by choice in decades (i.e., not counting being in a bar with the TV on, hotel room, etc.) As Andy the Grasshopper said, it's quite jarring to see it again. It's probably my imagination but it seems like the breaks between commercials are so much shorter. I do see ads on the Roku TV app sometimes, because sometimes I'm too lazy to get up and fetch my laptop to watch a five minute video (I try to airplay/chromecast if possible to avoid even that.).

I don't watch TV, I intentionally sit in front of my 85" 8K Gigant-o-tron with my eyes closed.

Burning question of the moment: do the blind listen to tv?

Yes and in fact I learned a lot about 'audio description' for shows/movies from this podcast: https://www.20k.org/episodes/athousandwords