We don’t have TV. More specifically, we don’t have live TV. We’ve
got a TV, which we use for Netflix, our Wii, and DVDs. I’m just going to
use ‘TV’ to mean ‘live TV’ here, because you’re a busy reader and
that’s going to save you several words throughout this post and then you
can more quickly get on with your important business.
There are a couple big reasons we don’t have TV.
First: advertising. I’ll probably write another post on what I think
about advertising, but for now I’ll just say that I believe advertising
mostly exists to make you want something you didn’t know you wanted (and
certainly don’t need), which results in money transferring itself from
your pocket to the pocket of somebody who already has more than enough
of it. Advertising does this in a lot of frankly ridiculous ways, like
ads for toys showing all the children playing with it enjoying
themselves so much they look actually crazy. You’re never going to enjoy
that My Little Pony Playset as much as the insane child in the
commercial, so don’t waste your money. As far as I can tell, Leigh and
Erin generally aren’t interested in fad toys or fashions, and I believe a
big factor in that is us not having TV so they’re not exposed to as
much advertising as they would be otherwise.
Secondly, the attitudes displayed in a lot of TV
shows are just awful. I’m talking about supposedly harmless shows like
Victorious on Nickelodeon, which is about a group of high school kids
that display a lot of attitudes I don’t think are ok for anyone to have,
neither adults or children. I don’t know this as a verified scientific
fact, but I believe that there’s a part of your brain that doesn’t
realize things on TV aren’t real. That’s why movies can be scary,
because that part of your brain thinks oh my God there’s a killer
cannibal rapist in this room with me right now Jesus Christ turn it off
make it stop. In the same way, I think that part of your brain doesn’t
realize a situation in a sitcom doesn’t actually involve real people
(Not that they’re robots. Except for Bender, who is actually a robot.),
and in some small way you’re influenced by the mean or stupid things
those characters do.
That doesn’t mean I think TV doesn’t have redeeming
qualities, though. There are some very entertaining shows, very
educational shows, and sometimes you’re tired after a long day at work
and just want to watch George Foreman infomercials. As I said earlier,
we have Netflix, which we use for watching documentaries and TED talks (http://www.ted.com/talks),
as well as plenty of movies. One day there’ll be George Foreman
infomercials too, but for now we just do without. On the plus side, not
having TV saves us £15 a month, and if you’ve got more than the basic
package it could save you a lot more.
The main differences with Netflix are that there
aren’t any advertisements and it’s not a passive entertainment stream.
With TV, it encourages you to just sit there watching whatever’s on,
even if you’ve seen it before, even if you’re not really that
interested, because they want you to see more of their advertisements.
With Netflix or any on-demand service, you’re making a conscious choice
about what you want to watch, and when that finishes, you stop watching.
Not everyone is the same as us, and for many of you
TV might work out just fine and fit in well with your life. For us,
though, we’ve been without TV for almost two years now, and we don’t
have any plans to bring it back.
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