"I don't even own a TV"

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!

Rollins has done shitloads of television

Poliopolice are you seriously equating not owning a television to being transgender...not to mention the whole "lifestyle choice" aspect of that analogy

Every word in that post is wearing a fedora

Been around the world and found
That only stupid people are breeding
The cretins cloning and feeding
And I don't even own a TV

hahaa i went to youtube to look for the video for that song earlier

harvey danger is definitely the most annoying

Every word in that post is wearing a fedora

― Raptain Chillips (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, March 31, 2014 4:16 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

This is a weighted poll in that the statement is generally brought up in the context of a reference to a television program, and ostensibly someone who isn't trying to make a point would say "Oh, I haven't seen that" instead of implying that there is no way they'd watch a television show.

If people are talking about the recipe for some awesome salad and it's relatively essential you use a food processor to make it, I don't say "Oh, I don't even HAVE a food processor!"

Or someone is speaking about a musical they saw and you think the right response is, "I don't go to musical theaters"

"Oh, I don't even HAVE a food processor!"

I have said this. haha

those are terrible analogies

sorry.

It turns it from a statement about a work (television show) to a statement about the speaker's life (I don't have a tv). I guess if you're used to making everything about yourself, the latter sounds pretty normal.

Skipping past poliopolice's unfortunate transgender comparison, I've been on the opposite side of this as a (not very strict) vegetarian. Often when I was younger, less so now, a meat-eater would get really cross and defensive with me even though I never lectured anyone and only mentioned being vegetarian if I was invited somewhere to eat. Their assumption was that they were always being judged and yet I got far more grief than I gave. Annoying for me but I knew that there were ultra-judgemental vegetarian/vegans out there making it hard for the rest of us.

These days I eat fish but not meat so I get to annoy everybody with my disgusting hypocrisy.

Maybe transgender is a stretch in magnitude for the comparison to 'not owning a TV', but I think the attitude basically sprouts from the same place. Regardless, I would not hesitate to compare this to people's attitudes to vegetarianism.

xp yeah but musical theater is something almost no one does regularly, and there would be nothing weird at all about saying "oh, I don't have a food processor."

flip u

"Hey, did you see the Knicks game last night?"
"Nah, I don't really watch basketball."

Oh my god, what a jerkwad. Is everything about you, asshole?

The thing is that for every person who is snobby about not watching TV, there are like 100 people who just can't stomach the idea that a person would choose not to watch television, and a significant minority of those people are almost offended by the idea. Too much time on ILX tends to skew one's view of these things, but that's how it is out there.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Axp32y8CAAEyQ0d.jpg

"Hey, did you see the Knicks game last night?"
"Oh, did anyone in your precious ballsport get any home runs?! lol"

"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."

― waterbabies (waterface), Monday, March 31, 2014 1:42 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

all of those movies suck waterface

If there was a traditional snobby attitude linked to cultural appreciation of basketball, then sure, that's a good metaphor.

hardly ever watch telly. there are loads of things I would like to watch but teenage daughters mean I don't get a look-in. being a grown-up is rubbish innit.

I've heard people say about football "Why would I watch 22 overpaid morons kick a ball around for 90 minutes?" That's the dick's way of saying "Oh I don't really follow football."

Basically there's a dick way of saying anything.

lol at anyone who was alive in the 90s pretending that the "i dont even OWN a tv" crowd is some imaginary strawman invented to promote our great tv overlords, that shit was all over the place back then.

^^^^^

which is why I said upthread it is increasingly becoming a strawman

"I dont really watch tv (so stop fucking talking about it, this conversation sucks)"

"I don't watch sports, i play sports"

here's a good basketball example:

"a bunch of pituitary cases trying to stuff a ball thru a hoop" - Dr. Morbius

along with the idea that television was going to ruin film, that movies released straight to vhs were all garbage, that television content was going to rot your mind, and that original television programming lacked some kind of artistic integrity that film has or had

That all sounds about right to me.

I've heard people say about football "Why would I watch 22 overpaid morons kick a ball around for 90 minutes?" That's the dick's way of saying "Oh I don't really follow football."

"No microwaves in this house! Mwahahah!"

oh lol microwaves

which is why I said upthread it is increasingly becoming a strawman

Are the people who complain about "I don't even own a TV" also becoming a strawman or are there as many of them as ever?

I thought we were olds here on ilx and used that archtype as a cultural shorthand

I also assumed the people who really hate that it's shorthand
1. do not own televisions
2. think people using a trope are directly attacking them

along with the idea that television was going to ruin film, that movies released straight to vhs were all garbage, that television content was going to rot your mind, and that original television programming lacked some kind of artistic integrity that film has or had

― have a nice blood/orange bitters cocktail (mh), Monday, March 31, 2014 4:39 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Most straight-to-vhs movies were pretty bad, watching a film with commercial breaks is a miserable experience, and original television programming was also often artistically harmed by the medium in the days before premium cable. The arguments against television back then were medium-oriented. It wasn't "nothing about this can be good because it's popular," it was "it's hard to write a good drama that gets interrupted every several minutes with a cereal ad." I don't think there's anything particularly snobby about that, everyone hated commercials.

if you were looking for a strawman in the thread about people whose vocabulary is entirely made up of pop culture references I have a better candidate

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.

― Poliopolice, Monday, March 31, 2014 4:12 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is otm. plenty of people i grew up with simply see any of these things as "people being trying to be different for the sake of being different, which is annoying". not saying ILX is like this re: transgender folks but loads of people are

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. Getting rid of television for me was very much about that, much as I don't keep certain foods in the house that I'm bound to overeat.

i dont even have a tv, myself, so definitely the 2nd

I don't even eat food

I can think of people who have about eight zillion slasher flicks on vhs. Who cares if they're "bad," they're just not for you and they're not wrecking your culture.

As for the commercial-supported media thing, people painted premium cable channels with the same brush, as far as I remember. My family /didn't even have cable/ though so I might be misremembering.

(There was also an anti-elitist thing about not having cable television, back in the day. I remember kids with cable not understanding how you had television without a subscription.)

Watching shit is cool, i think we can all agree on that.

people gave me this kind of shit for not drinking soda when i was little

"you don't even drink coke?"