Those of you who know me personally know I’m not a violent person. I love all of God’s creatures, and most of His appliances as well, and would never do Them any harm. But since moving in July, I have been without a television, and you know what? I haven’t looked back.
Besides everyone’s favorite unwatched show Arrested Development
I’m not knocking TV itself, because as I said I do enjoy some TV shows. I’ve simply replaced the actual TV with downloaded shows and DVDs. No commercials, no murder updates. But in the end it’s not even about that, it’s about self control. Fighting the withdrawal symptoms. I could stock up on DVDs, and watch those every waking hour, or just have them going in the background. If you have a TV and can sit down and watch one show, but then turn it off and go to the gym, that’s great. Congratulations, you’re not addicted. However, I don’t think that’s the case for a lot of people, and certainly as a kid I lacked that self control.
Creating Passionate Users has a great post about the physical effects of watching too much TV. They explain how TV news plays on your innate instincts of orienting towards movement, and the brains inability to distinguish between images of violence and seeing it firsthand. Radio and the internet let you listen or read about events, letting you picture them in your head with a lower visual resolution that won’t give you nightmares.
But assassinating your TV isn’t as easy as just throwing it out is it? Maybe it is. It’s probably harder to quit TV if it’s still in your house, but you swear only to watch it at certain times. As with any addiction, the first step is admitting you have a problem. If you don’t have a problem, then fine. But maybe you do, and can’t admit it to yourself. Either way, DVD, TiVo, bit torrent, they’re all ways to cast off the shackles of television. You don’t need to watch awful local cable commercials, and late-breaking panic attacks any more.
I found the best way to cut back on TV without throwing it out is to cover it with a sheet or blanket. My big problem was instinctively turning the TV on instinctively and then getting sucked in to whatever is on (mostly food network, gotta see how the recipee turns out). The physical act of moving the blanket was enough to make me realize what I was doing before I hit the power button. Turning it off after my show was over was another issue, however.
Ha, some German website linked to this post.
outta sight, outta mind. put it in the closet if you can’t bring yourself to kill it.
The blanket trick and the closet trick both work great, and they’re even better together. My TV has been at the bottom of my closet under a stack of blankets for over 2 years now, and we’ve only kept it taken it out to watch the Oscars. Of course, once they stop broadcasting standard definition signals we’ll probably lose even that reason to own one…
Excellent article!
I’ve been TeeVee free now for a little over a year.
How it happened was we moved to a better place and didn’t bother
to get cable. I have a HDTV tuner, so when I tried hooking it up,
reception was unreasonably poor. The difference between analog and
DTV is the latter is either on or off; there’s no in between (”snow”).
Ironically, the one station that did come in
was PBS. Unfortunately, our local PBS station’s budget must be
around $50/month, because if you watch it for a few hours, you’ve
seen basically all the shows they’ll ever broadcast until the next month.
Over a short period of time, I lost interest in what little TV I
could get and simply stopped watching. The only reason I would watch it at all
was to view my DVDs. Every 2-3 months, I’d get nostalgic for the
mindless drivel and play with the antenna for 15 minutes … but
once I managed to get the reception down I noticed that the shows somehow got “stupider”. I mean, they are not funny. They’re not
exciting. They’re just about stupid people in unrealistic situations.
I can’t believe I used to watch and … nay, enjoy
that junk!