Yeah, good point. Okay, people who act snobby/brag about their lack of a tv are jerks. 
If it comes up in conversation “did you see that last episode of Game of Thrones/Mad Men/Whateverthehellmyfavoriteshowis” then I just shrug and say I don’t watch a lot of TV.
Which is true, since we don’t have cable, and live in the boonies, so we get three channels: snowy day, static cling, and staticky local news, none of which are in the least interesting to me, although our cats will occasionally play with the talking heads.
On the other hand, we have two tvs, and each is connected to at least three game systems, and we each have both a desktop computer *and *a laptop computer, not to mention the smartphones, so the house is sufficiently screened.
We watch some TV shows via the internet, we buy a lot of DVD box-sets of series we want to see, we watch movies all the time, and we play a lot of video games.
None of that makes us better than mainstream TV-watching culture, just a bit weirder and less commercially-assaulted.
On the flip side, both my husband and I are now TERRIBLE about tvs in hotel rooms or in bars. We both just stare at them like moths - its embarrassing. We’ve forgotten how to tune them out!
Oh, you don’t? But you must watch Mad Men, everyone does! Well, my crazy cousin never stops telling everyone that he “Does-ant waaaatch teeee-veee” but we know he does. You haven’t seen any of this season, when Don and Peggy are on the outs? I mean, after he gave her her career and then she left, showing no respect at all - that’s what happened last night. Wow, if you missed it you should see if your cable has it on instant replay, or we could see if our neighbor recorded it. It’d be a shame if you missed it and didn’t get what was going on next episode. Say, how about Tim Olyphant’s great line in that last episode of Justified, eh?
I didn’t have a tv for a long time, but then I succumbed and watch way too much now.
99% of what is on tv is crap, but extremely addictive crap. eg how many times can they kill someone and still make you want to watch- answer, unlimited!
I don’t dislike tv because it is “bad” or gives me eyestrain, I dislike it because after almost every show I watch ( I AM an addict ) I think that I just wasted x minutes of my life.
At least with 100 channels I never have to watch adds though, so that’s a plus.
I’ve never had anyone actively hassle me for not watching a show. I own/watch TV but the only shows I make time for are Mad Men and Archer. So if someone is talking about Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones or whatever I just say “I haven’t seen it but I hear it’s good; I’ll have to watch the back episodes and catch up one of these weekends” and that’s good enough for them.
“He remarked that it had been tradition in his family for quite some time to forego having children.”
I don’t own a TV, if there’s anything I want to watch I do it on my computer… I use Netflix a lot.
It’s not usually a matter of being “actively hassled” as being pestered and pressed, with the best of intentions, and having to swim upstream against the expectation that you do watch tv. That’s what this thread is about, IMHO - that it’s expected that everyone does watch the box and is delighted to engage in social discussion about it. There’s no good way to opt out of that scenario - at best the conversation crashes to a halt, most times they “pester” you until it’s really established you didn’t watch last night’s show, and all too often you get classified as an anti-tv snob.
Your reply is a good deflection but IME agreeing even passively with those clueless in this way just feeds the fire - “Oh, then you’ll really want to catch up on this, and this, and this…” with the basic idea that you Don’t. Watch. TV. never sinking in.
I’d consider “pestered and pressed” to be actively hassled but then we know different people since I don’t have the pestered & pressed issue either. Not saying you don’t, it’s just never been an issue for me.
Thinking about it, there was a long span (five years or so?) where I never watched TV because I didn’t want to pay for cable and my rabbit ears were garbage. I owned a TV and a VCR/DVD player but was out of the loop on anything current. Never got called on it but then it’s like people demanding to know which church I attend – never happens to me but I’m sure it happens to some people.
I still have a TV, but mostly for gaming. No cable, no antenna for local stations. I have to politely apologize when someone asks if I’ve watched “x” recently, but I try to phrase it as though I’m being a little out of touch rather than avante garde or uppity, which is truthful. I still like watching TV, just in very limited quantities. I pick up one or two seasons of something interesting on DVD/BD every year.
Beyond that, my productivity is through the roof.
I’m guessing you’re being facetious, but honestly, reading a lot doesn’t make a person superior. I mean, there’s a LOT of crap out there (the afore mentioned Twilight), and someone might have other hobbies. My grandmother didn’t read, but she did crochet and made some of the most beautiful afghans you’ve ever seen. She liked to garden and she made the best cookies. My dad isn’t much of a reader, he mostly reads magazines and the newspaper, or the occassional cookbook. But he loves to cook.
TV is just a medium, nothing more, nothing less.
I entirely agree with your position. I didn’t own a TV for many years. I’ve never heard anyone being smug about not owning a TV, but I’ve had a lot of people exhibit some level of nastiness over the fact that I don’t watch TV. This ranges from co-workers in the lunch room who simply seem unable to talk about anything other than television shows and can’t accept that I don’t watch those shows, to more serious issues.
When I first got engaged, I’d made clear to my fiancee from the start that I never watched TV. Nonetheless she decided that if she tried hard enough, she could force me to like The Big Bang Theory and other dumb shows. At first I though that if I gave every show a negative review, she’d eventually accept the fact that I didn’t watch TV. Instead she became more and more determined to change my attitude. When I finally put my foot down and said that I wouldn’t watch any more, she burst into tears and seemed to almost have a panic attack.
We’ve gotten over that and she’s now very respectful of my decisions regarding entertainment, but the entire business sticks in my mind as a demonstration of how totally wrapped up some people are in television.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but people who actively blog about something, anything, often tend to gloat or act superior about it. That’s because nobody blogs about stuff they find irrelevant, so whatever they’re blogging about, they ascribe some meaning or significance to it. People who don’t find the same meaning/significance in whatever it is, find their emphasis on it overblown and self-important, whether someone’s on about not owning a tv, or only using real vanilla in their baking, or not listening to that Top 40 crap that’s on the radio, or not letting their kids watch whatever licensed-character tv show is popular with the small ones now. They’re all equally insufferable if you don’t think the subject at hand is equally important.
Besides, it’s not like people who do watch tv aren’t ever judgmental about what other people watch.
Interestingly, people who say, “I don’t know how to break this to you” are usually being superior, too.
I have a tv, but I only use netflix, youtube and torrents. Been a few months that I never saw a commercial.
I have a tv, but I only use netflix, youtube and torrents. Been a few months that I never saw a commercial.
I have a tv, but I never watch it. My wife and I have utterly different tastes in TV shows, but she controls the remote most of the time. The rest of the time it’s controlled by our preschooler, and he watches kid shows. So I never get to see anything I like.
How would I have time to read or hang out here on the board if I sat around watching TV all the time?
I didn’t have a TV for 20 years. I was young and living in SF - for anybody living in such a place to do the small town "get up. shower. Coffee. Go to work. Come home. eat dinner. plop in front of TV and watch whatever is on. go to bed. routine is simply obscene - you are paying a lot of money to be here. Move to Pudunk and save a bundle while “living” that life.
Last time I watched broadcast, ot was for MacNeil Leher (sp) and early Simpsons. Then I set .news.google to homepage and Simpsons went to hell. I used the set as a playback for my DVD’s, but no longer find them interesting (very few movies are worth seeing twice; almost none more than twice).
But yes, even in SF, much of the office chatter is last night’s episode of some damned laugh track or hillbillies doing all the weird things hillbillies do.
No, I don’t watch sports - very few of them are interesting enough to learn the rules; otherwise - why should I care about watching rich guys as they make money for even richer guys?
How many programs currently running would the TV fans like to recommend?
Please don’t bother with “reality” - I don’t care to see how other people brush their teeth, or get beat up by cops. Sit-coms and soap operas are also categorically rejected. No children, so probably not going to be interested in kiddie shows. No sports; see above.
What’s left? Is it really worth the $60-100/mo you are paying for it?
Being smug about not owning a TV is a definite problem for some people. I know someone exactly like this.
Their favourite situation for mentioning this is whenever they overhear someone talking about the latest episode of whatever - “Well I’m too busy to watch TV” they say. Strangely though, these same super busy people seem to have hours upon hours to bore people with stories of how busy they are. They will quite happily spend all afternoon interrupting my work while they tell me what an action packed life they lead.
Most TV is of course crap, but not watching it hardly rates as a special skill.