Let me toss in another point I don’t think has been raised:
I hate it when a silent TV is on in the room. The flickering images draw my eyes, and I find it very hard to look away.
I dislike restaurants that have big-screen TVs on. I’m a kid of the Star Trek generation, and I was strongly conditioned to watch. It’s very difficult not to look at a TV screen. In such restaurants, I always ask to be seated with my back to the TV.
(And…my dinner companions tend to become hypnotized by the damn thing, just the same way I would have!)
Visiting my mom last summer, she has the TV on loud all day. Tuned to crap. No DVR so commercials and what not. She even tunes into infomercials once one program has finished and there’s a half hour before her next desired program comes on. Holy #*$%!
I’ve been sick a bit this week so I decided to watch a little TV during the day, using a DVR. The most I could stand was one hour long program and a 1/2 long program. Total about an hour without commercials.
Having a TV on just to have some sound, etc. is just flat out wrong. Peace and quiet is a good thing.
It makes me jittery and uncomfortable to have a TV on all the time, but I do have a related affliction, which is that I am on an electronic device (laptop, smartphone) almost all of my waking hours. I have to force myself to turn my devices off an hour before bedtime, so I can wind down. I can understand how having a TV on and getting that constant input/background information could be addicting.
I also don’t think that having a TV on all the time is something that only those who are “not that bright” would choose to do, as someone said upthread. I know a very smart guy who works on Wall St., in a fast-paced job which I’m guessing is highly visually and aurally stimulating all day long, who comes home and turns the TV on for background noise. It’s probably jarring to him NOT to have that stimulus.
I find having a TV in the background a bit annoying when I’m trying to have a conversation, but otherwise it doesn’t particularly bother me; my wife likes having the radio on when she’s cooking or when we’re eating on the patio, and I like having the radio on when I’ve driving.
But it baffled me in China on a couple of occasions where my wife and I went with some of her friends and/or relatives to a fancy(ish) restaurant. The restaurant would seat us in a private room, wait for everyone to be seated, and then the waiter would turn on a TV! Both times we had to ask them to turn it off again. How is that conducive to conversation or fine dining?
Can’t remember who said that. Marshall McLuhan maybe? Anyway, chalk me up to the ‘can’t stand a TV always being on’ crowd. I’m very, very sensitive to it as it really makes it impossible for me to even think.
I think it’s a known “ADHD” thing, and I suffer from that pretty seriously. I don’t like having any music, internet, or TV on at all unless I am actively tuned into a program that is playing. It’s so bad for me that I feel the need to actually ask people to turn their TV off if I am around. Naturally this doesn’t always go over too well (and I really dislike asking people to do that) so it ends up that there are some people I can visit and some people I simply can’t.
It’s not that I like quiet, it’s that I hate meaningless communication. I like conversation, but hate chit chat. I kind of like sleeping with the window open, so I can hear the city: neighbors on the street, sirens, a ball game going on at the school downt the street. Right now, I can hear the call to prayer from a dozen different mosques and I like it.
But if a person can’t just sit comfortably within themselves when there is nothing to say, that person has a problem. When I’m there, I’ll be reading a book and the dad will ask, “what you doing Madmonk?”
“Reading a book.”
“Is it good?”
“Yeah it’s about the politics that lead to prohibition, suffragists made a political alliance with conservative Christians and anti immigration…”
His attention instantly wanders, he wanted me to stop reading the book, it makes him uncomfortable in a way I’d bet he can’t articulate, but he doesn’t want to talk about anything, he just wants me to stop reading the book.
And it’s not every vacation, but pretty much every Christmas vacation that we go there. When I don’t go along my wife reports they are the same. Some people just aren’t comfortable with being alone with their thoughts, there’s a white knuckle fear behind the need to always have vapid noise that I find sad and unsettling.
I agree: a prejudice on my part, unkind and, broadly, inaccurate; but, I feel, not totally baseless. It surprises me a bit when intelligent people choose to have the thing on, un-attended-to, all the time – though I can “see with my head”, as in your instance, how that can be so.
Well, I don’t think I’m too stoopid but I’m a child of the '50s. TV was new and wonderful and a luxurious necessity. Everybody did it. When I grew up having a TV on just felt right.
When I’m inside if it’s not on and I’m not otherwise occupied, the silence is too deep and my mind is too loud. I either start my compulsive rumination or I start writing (in my head)…which is probably why I write. So the white noise neutralizes that when I’m not ready to deal. It’s a breather of sorts, a buffer between me and me.
I might keep it on to listen to BBC news, but after a while, when the news starts repeating itself, I’ll turn it off. Or listen to MTV. Otherwise, it’s off. Most Thais seem to keep their sets on during every waking moment, and I’ve had them ask why I turned mine off when they came to visit.
This thread is really helping me. These visits to her parents are probably the biggest unresolved issue in our marriage; not bad after 14 years. I just realizes that it’s not that I like quiet, it’s that I like reality.
If I’m home in DC, I like to hear the city, if I’m in the country, I want to hear the birds. I want to have conversations and be comfortable in the quiet. TV robs me of reality without my consent.
I completely understand this because I’m the same way. I need that additional stimulus whether I’m watching it or not. I CANNOT stand total silence in my own house.
Somebody upthread described by husband to a T in that he becomes almost militant if I leave the TV on and, say, do something else in another room. For him it’s the noise. His office is upstairs and the voices drift no matter how low the volume.
I was traveling with a coworker in Europe this summer. After check-in, he would enter the hotel room, drop his bag and go immediately for the TV remote. Setting aside his loud, frequent complaints that none of it was in English (rolleyes don’t even get close), it really seemed strange. He is simply one of these ‘TV Must Be On’ people we’re reading about in this thread.
We had a four stops and shared a room for half them.
I was happy to open a window and listen to the sounds exotic, foreign cities while surfing the web on my laptop. He preferred bitching about air conditioning and wondering why there wasn’t any NHL hockey on. I think it is fair to say I had the better time.
The ONLY time I turned it on was in Berlin since the TV also served as the alarm clock.
He’s not a bad guy and wasn’t attempting to annoy me or anything, we just have different styles of entertainment. I went looking for it, he wanted it to come to him and would settle for something he couldn’t understand.
Nope, doesn’t bother me. Like Trinopus, I find it vaguely hypnotizing.
But here’s where I think I’m lucky–I don’t have the TV on all the time when I’m home because I tune it out. There’s just no point on having a TV on when I have no idea what’s happening. I can easily tune it out in bars, waiting for my car repair, whatever.
But at my grandparent’s, ironically, TV was a great way to escape family drama. Going to watch football alone with granddad, or going to watch TV downstairs in the basement with the other kids. Plus, my grandmother hated TV, so it was an act of defiance.
Like others, I have no problem telling people their TV is really fucking loud if it’s distracting me. I’ll also turn down the radio in someone’s car.
Not picking on you, but you’ve hit a giant nail directly on the head.
I’m the opposite character. I never have TV on for noise. I’ll turn it on to watch a specific show. Then turn it off. As a result of not practicing tuning it out all day every day at home, I’m unable to do so out in public either.
So if there’s one blaring in a waiting room, it completely dominates my thoughts. I have to work pretty hard to blot it out long enough to interact with the receptionist. I can’t read or converse with my companion while some talking head(s) shout in the room.
In a bar or restaurant I’ll find the damn thing has sucked my visual attention away from my tablemates even if I have zero interest in whatever’s being shown. The subconscious draw is too strong.
So across the public at large, we end up with two populations:
One group who always has TV on, feels weird when it’s off/not present, yet is immune to it’s presence because they practice ignoring it all day. They’re like a drug addict who’s built up a high tolerance to the normal dose of their drug. They get no benefit, but would suffer greatly if the drug was withdrawn.
And another group who is hypersensitive to the drug that seems omnipresent. And the more it’s turned up to help overcome the first group’s immunity, the more it ODs and debilitates the second group.
And the solution to their common discomfort, if there is one, is equally paradoxical. The addict needs to wean themselves off it until they’re once again sensitive to it in moderate doses, while the over-sensitive need to force themselves to consume more until they’re desensitized enough to tolerate the common environmental dose.
All in all this is a silly state of affairs we’ve backed ourselves into.
For me personally, I can only hope the ever-advancing march of streaming smartphones and ear buds will replace the blaring TVs in public places. Then each druggie can be zombified by his/her drug of choice while I can move about in peace.
It bothers me a lot. I prefer it to be quiet. I don’t have a tv but I don’t have a speaker for my computer either. I have a headset but I rarely wear it. I don’t much listen to music either unless I’m driving.
I can live from one year to the next without a TV, and have. My lady presently has one and every once in a while will say “Look at this!” I as politely as possible tell her that I have no interest in looking at that shyt.
I suggest you get one of these, the keychain kind. Don’t tell your spouse. Just keep it in your pocket and turn off the tv at random times. They will think there is something wrong with their tv. If you are discrete, they will never know it was you.