First of all, I’m not trying to judge you tv fans out there. I’m just trying to understand what makes you tick.
Why is it that some people have to turn on the tv the minute they get home or enter a room, even if they aren’t going to watch it? Or aren’t even going to stay in the same room? My husband does this, I’ll be sitting in the living room happy as a clam, and he’ll come in and turn on the tv then walk right back out. Or he’ll turn on the tv and then make a phone call. Why?
Speaking of phone calls, what is up with people calling me during a commercial break, then expecting me to hang on until the next commercial break. Why on earth would I want to watch tv with somebody over the phone?
Let’s say I’m watching a show and a commercial comes on. Why do certain people (most of them men) have to flip through the channels? Okay, so you might find something better, so what? I’m already in the middle of show A, and I’m not going to just stop to watch the last half of show B.
This is not a question, but I’d really like to say that people (are you listening hubby?) who have both the stereo and the tv on in the same room at the same time should be shot.
Why does it have to be so dang loud?
I’ve got a lot more questions for you devoted tv fans, but I think this is enough for now. Bonus points for anyone who can explain why my neighbors have 4 tvs in a 2 bedroom apartment, two of which are side by side in the living/dining room.
I live alone, (in a one bedroom apt with just one TV), I like to turn it on for company. I have it on all evening and as soon as I get up in the morning, but I barely watch it in the morning. I guess its a comfort thing for me.
Can’t help ya with the phone calls during commercials. No one calls me that often
Tater, are we siamese twins joined at the brain or what?
All of the above I am with you 110% percent.
My pet peeve:
Having a party and even though there is stimulating conversation going on, the TV, which no one is watching, is on.
I make a supreme effort to turn the TV off when people are over. To me this is better than a Hallmark card: When you care enough to listen to the best. ( OK, your friends might not be the best, but they are all you have until more superficial ones come along that you can openly mock.)
As for your neighbors the answer is easy: They are mindless drones and they should be eliminated. Oh wait, their cholesteral levels will do that too them shortly.
I listen to the news while I get online in the morning. I actually watch the thing in the afternoon/evening.
I used to have a roommate who liked the volume all the way up. Then he’d fall asleep. Or he’d turn on the TV, then make a phone call. Or go outside to hang with the neighbours.
The whole calling while watching tv thing really drives me batty. I usually say that I’ll let them go since their watching a show, but they always seem to say “that’s okay, you’re not bothering me.” I’d like to bop them upside the head with a clue-by-four, I would.
But, alas, I keep my feelings bottled up inside, which is why I’m so popular and loved.
Monica, I can understand why somebody who lives alone would like the tv on. Heck, if I lived alone, I would sing along to cheesy 80’s songs all day long and make silly faces at myself in the mirror.
Like MissMonica, I live alone, so having the TV breaks the silence. It’s on the moment I get home to the time I go to bed. It comes on when I get up.
My 19 inch TV went to TV heaven last year so I only have one TV and live in a 3 bedroom house. I can afford to get another one, just haven’t bothered to replace it. It is nice to have one in your bedroom though for those days when you’re sick or simply want to hibernate from the world in the comfort of the bed.
I will call people during commercials but not ask them to hang on till the next one. That is wierd, never heard of that one before.
My TV is hooked up to my stereo, this is funny though, if I am in the mood for music I mute the TV and jam out to tunes. A habit I got into during the days of my pot smoking.
I think it has roots in being a latch key kid. I would get home and there was nothing better to do than watch TV. We were one of the first people in our city to get cable so the choices were better in those days. Today, I don’t even have cable – like I need 70 channels of crap to watch. About the only channels I wish I had it for is ESPN, FOX Sports and The Discovery Channel and the news channels would be nice too, I am a news junky.
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4. This is not a question, but I’d really like to say that people (are you listening hubby?) who have both the stereo and the tv on in the same room at the same time should be shot.
I agree. But I am one of those guys who turns on the TV as soon as I get home. It’s kind of like listening to the radio. I’ve got a TV in my room and one in the livivg room. Both are on during baseball games, although not always the same game. My roommate gets annoyed with the TV being on and I’m not in the room. But he leaves the stereo on when he goes out for the evening. Point is we all do weird stuff that seems ok to us.
Another thing i’d like to add which gets turned on at our house apart from the tv and the stereo…are our computers and the lights…no matter what time of the day and no matter what other thing we are doing.
As for your qns, tatertot…
I’d like to at least keep one source of sound ongoing in my house/room…gets very boring and quiet when no one else is here to make the noise. As to whether i’m in the same room as the telly makes no difference. Being able to hear the sound does.
But I have a question for you, like you said: “I’d be sitting in the living room happy as a clam” until your husband turns on the tv. I don’t understand that, partially cos our living room is only there for us to watch tv. What else could you be doing there? But i guess our living room is different from yours =) =)
Why don’t you just tell them to call you afterwards, or just hang up on them. Eventually, they’ll call you back at the next ad break (plus, you don’t need to pay for those phone calls). In the end, maybe they’ll just learn to finish their conversation before the ads finishes.
My brother does that very very often. He doesn’t intend to change channels, but as he probably is the “greedy” type, he’d go see what else he is missing out on…until he finds out that his show is back on (namely the Simpsons though). It just happens to be this repetitious cycle.
Well, I guess it proves the point, that the purpose of leaving the tv or stereo on is for some noise, and not the actual intention of paying any close attention to it…and thus for some…
…5. …the louder the better.
As for your neighbours…i guess it depends how many people live there…as they might have gotten so accustomed to their tv sets that they insist on watching their own set whilst wearing headphones…so two tvs can be on side by side at the same time (with more than one person watching it). I guess it sure beats having to deal with those tvs which allow you to watch screens inside screens…one of the screens ends up too small - and then u’ll fight over who has the bigget screen.
Or, on another guess…maybe it’s part of their home decor…=)
Tatertot I totally agree with you. Before I moved in with hubby I didn’t own a TV. He had a 35" monster, plus a vcr, laserdisc and 3 sets of giant speakers.
He doesn’t turn it on and leave but he used to flip channels constantly. We have digital cable now, so we can see exactly whats on w/o changing.
I also don’t understand his attraction to mindless drivel. The stuff he enjoys watching aweful, like that idiotic Man Show. This is a really intelligent guy too. I just don’t get it.
I do number one, and don’t know why.
the rest of them are annoying, and the violators should be publicly flogged with baked goods. Especially the last two.
My in-laws do #1 all the time. They’ll have guests over, all be talking in the living room, when my mother-in-law will come in, turn on the TV to “entertain” us, and walk out. I used to try to turn it off, but people would complain.
In fact, I once got a really severe “you have two heads” look at the in-law’s house, many years ago. We were sitting in the living room (TV not on, for once), and I mentioned that they was a show I wanted to watch. They, of course, had no trouble with my turning the TV on, but they thought I was insane when I sat through my show and turned the TV off when the credits rolled. They’d obviously never seen someone turn on the TV to watch one thing and then turn it off again…
I’m the same way, Ace. To me, the teevee is like the phone, or the toilet. It’s there in the house, go and use it when you have to, and don’t think about it when you’re not using it. Oh, and clean it once in a while.
I don’t understand the “there’s something good on in a half hour, so I’ll sit here and watch THIS for a half hour until the good thing is on” attitude. And I really don’t understand the “it keeps me company” attitude…that’s what the RADIO is for.
I don’t necessarily turn it on immediately when I get home, but it does go on at some point in the evening. However, I wopuld characterize myself as watching only three hours of TV a week. Like the others who have mentioned this, I live alone and its my way of keeping human contact. However, I find the noise is distracting, so i’ll have it on mute most of the time. That way I can look up see that people.
Of course, this is not conscious on my part. It’s only after self-analysis that I realize this is what I’m doing.
I have never done that. There is no way you can squeeze a conversation into three minutes. Though, if they have the nerve to call during X-Files I will try to get them off the phone as possible, but if they won’t, then Yes, I’d tell them to hold while I watch.
We live in a fast society and have perfected the art of going from 0 to boredom in about 5 seconds. I find most commercials mind-numbing and need to distract myself. However, in some cases it is the “grass is greener” mentality. You find yourself wondering if something better on and feel the urge to check.
When I was younger, I’d get criticized for keeping it loud. Frankly, I just didn’t notice. However, sometimes it’s just the perception that it’s loud. You can have the tv show at acceptable volume levels, but get blasted by commercials. Programmers intentionally have made commercials louder than the regular programming (I suspect this is so you can hear them during bathroom breaks).
I suspect this is due to individual tastes. My family eventually bought a second TV because the kiddies would watch insipid cartoons and the adults wanted to watch the news. Though, how you can watch two different shows side by side is beyond me.
Re. televisions as background noise, and how unusual it is for someone to sit down, watch one show straight through without flipping channels, and shut it off.
(Correct me if I’m wrong, but) very few people think it’s unusual for someone to have a radio on just for background noise, or for someone to change radio stations every few minutes when a song ends. Most people are at least used to this nowadays, even if they don’t do it themselves. But people who grew up when a house would have a single radio set and the programming consisted of half-hour and hour long shows over three networks and a handful of local stations still tend to think of radio as something you sit down as a group and listen to for an hour or more with attentiveness. Such people often get irritated when someone else changes the car radio every five minutes.
It wasn’t that long ago that television could be described the same way – a single set per household, a handful of stations, something you watched in groups and with attentiveness. For someone who grew up then, channel surfing and television as background noise seems irritating. But for someone who’s grown up with television sets being cheap and ubiquitous (a set in every bedroom), and with programming consisting of dozens of choices, flipping television channels frequently, different people watching different shows, and not paying rapt attention to what’s on seems as normal to them as when we do the same to radio.
However - to directly address ‘watching TV with someone over the phone’ (which isn’t the same as having them call you during commercial breaks) - I don’t do that, but I watch TV with people I talk with online - it’s quite enjoyable. Watching TV with someone else can be fun, and if you can’t actually be there in the room with them…
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You like watching commercials? And you have a problem with the surfers?
Dad does this, to catch 2 ballgames at once.
It’s only loud because you’re not the one watching it.
I read, use the computer, pay the bills. Our son plays in there since it would just be illogical to play with his toys in his room. We live in gov’t quarters, which is one step up from a refrigerator box, so we pretty much do everthing except cook, sleep, and have sex in our living/dining room.
Da Ace, I’m the same way. And I gasp check the tv listings before I turn on the tv to decide what to watch.
About the friends calling up, it’s not that they formally put me on hold, it’s more that their attention drifts off. Sometimes, they’ll tell me about the show they are watching. This is especially fun when they are watching a soap that I don’t follow.
I bumped into my four tv having neighbor today, and she told me that they have it that way so that her husband and daughter can both play video games at the same time. I still don’t get it, but whatever makes them happy.
And another question, am I the only one in the world who enjoys sitting in an absolutely quiet room?
Ah tatertot, I hear ya. My wifey-to-be and I don’t even own a TV at the moment. People look at me funny when I say I dont have one, but I don’t miss it at all. I tried watching some shows the other day and felt my brain being sucked out of my skull.
I read lots. I do play computer games, that’s my vice. And the only show I’d like to watch is “Who’s line is it anyway?”, which is hilarious. But I digress.
Its funny, cause I’m going against demographics: I’m a 22 year old male, and I don’t own a TV. Imagine.
Course, I don’t really like to watch sports either, unless im there at the ballpark, so thats part of it. And there aren’t very many shows out there that can keep me entertained, or at least not enough to make it worth it.
Some people are extremely rude. I have a friend who calls me and then gives me less than his undivided attention while he watches the game on TV. I can’t stand it.
I also hate it when I am invited to dinner somewhere and they have the TV on. I just assume they are not interested in my converstaion.
Also when I am with someone in their car and they want to hold a conversation over the noise of the car PLUS the blasting music.
I find this type of thing very rude but it is so common that if I did not put up with it I’d have to go find some deserted island…
