If you haven’t managed to outwit the system so well that you have experienced the subtle yet intense pleasure of immersing yourself in the ouvre of Honey Boo Boo whilst simultaneously protecting your delicately fine-tuned psyche from the crass commonality that is advertising, then you clearly do not have the sophistication required to contribute intelligently to this, the debate of its age.
You can form the thick layer with Nutella.
Or so I’ve heard.
Just do what Stoid does and dig lotto tickets out of the garbage can.
They also corrupt your precious bodily fluids. My god, won’t someone think of the fluids?!
Out of curiosity, if I watch tv on the actual tv when it’s broadcast, but I’m also spinning or knitting or eating dinner or painting my nails or whatever, does the time saved multitasking counteract the time wasted ignoring the commercials? Or does watching tv with ads and not even giving the program my full attention make me extra stupid? I mean, I have zero intention of changing my ways, but I like to know where I stand.
If RedBox had a wider selection, I’d just shitcan Netflix. Their DVD selection is abysmal and I could rarely find anything on it that I really wanted to watch. I dropped down to streaming only and I may even discontinue that if their selection doesn’t improve.
Netflix was a good idea that quickly went bad.
The reverse, actually. You realize that other people’s smugness has **nothing whatsoever **to do with ***you *** in any way at all; other people’s smugness is entirely about them. It’s their production and you are just their audience, why even buy the ticket and give it your attention at all, particularly if you find it grating?
Having come to this understanding, your reaction to their smugness will very likely drain away to at most a faint echo of what it was. Perhaps even the echo will be gone and you will find that other people’s smugness rolls off you without the slightest effect, like water off a slicker.
Assuming for the moment that this is a factually correct statement (it isn’t), you appear to think that I have a side in this and that it is AB’s, which baffles me completely. I don’t have the slightest concern in how anyone defines “watching television” (And I think Ab’s framing it that way derailed a good opportunity for a much better discussion we’re now not having) and I don’t have the slightest concern about what anyone thinks of what I watch or how much or why or when, something which should be obvious from post #22. As I stated at the outset, my interest in looking it all up was prompted by AB’s wording at one point which I thought was kind of lame.
AB and I could not possibly be less alike in our views on this, so by what mysterious route did you arrive at the conclusion that AB and I share a “side”?
:dubious:
Ok, I have some thoughts on Amateur Barbarian’s positions regarding television et al. BUT I want to make sure I have a clear and accurate understanding of his argument. So before I post my thoughts, could you read this, AB, and let me know if I grok it?
Amateur Barbarian has specific definitions for “watching tv” and “television”. Specifically:
He then explains that the material “television” broadcasts is called content. There is a subset of this content called commodity content, which is explained as:
Thus it appears commodity content may be shown on television (though not exclusively so), but it is not television itself. A tv station may broadcast commodity content and add in advertising when doing so, but that doesn’t change the fact that the commodity was not created for that purpose. In contrast, nom-commodity content broadcasted by a tv station is television itself, because this content was created specifically to be an advertisement delivery vehicle. This intent is why, in AB’s opinion, stripping all advertising (commercials) from this content doesn’t change it into commodity content.
So, to put his definition into my own words, “television” is 1- the transmission of advertising-driven video by a channel/service/provider to video screens; said channel/service/provider has absolute authority over what content will be transmitted and when it will transmit it (ie, the programming schedule). It also is 2- the video content (shows) created specifically for def. 1 to deliver advertisements to viewers. Without advertisements, this content would not exist because it would serve no purpose.
So. How’d I do?
Here’s the thing. Everyone says they aren’t affected by commercials. They don’t watch them. Yet companies keep on spending a ton of money advertising stuff. Study after study shows that people are affected by the advertizing, even when they try not to be. It really is impossible to not be affected unless you just don’t watch.
AB’s problem isn’t his opinion on advertising. It’s that he can’t not sound like an elitist snob when discussing it. The is smug, but it doesn’t make him wrong.
Oops; okay, you don’t like Game of Thrones. My bad. I have never watched it and have no interest in it, so I don’t read the GOT threads here.
I don’t know why you think handing out lollipops is an act of shaming. Lollipops are delicious, just like Nutella.