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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

I assumed this was going to be "ambient TV" as in slow TV, like the videos that are just of a train[0] or a boat[1] going from one point to another, or walking around Tokyo at night[2].

Instead, this sounds more like what my girlfriend uses "The Office" as: TV that you're so comfortable with you like to have it on when you're doing other things and not actually watching TV.

Personally, I think it's some kind of avoidance behavior and not something that should be encouraged. I'll admit I haven't read the article though, because I am constitutionally opposed to learning about shows that show Americans going to Paris and wearing berets.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rDjPLvOShM

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxK5Dztte8

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qGiXY1SB68

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I like your definition of ambient TV. I like to turn off all the lights and use my OLED to light up a room using only 4K video of a 4-hr train ride. Now that's ambient tv.

The BBC has also commissioned a bus ride and a reindeer trip as well as the canal boat in the Youtube links above, under the series name "All Aboard!" - the sleigh ride is very good for a Christmas background and is on DVD.

They also have a series of shorter progrogrammes following the creation of an object, again without narration, under the "Handmade" series.

All great ambient slow TV.

>Instead, this sounds more like what my girlfriend uses "The Office" as: TV that you're so comfortable with you like to have it on when you're doing other things and not actually watching TV.

Friends is the same way. Much of the hubbub over its becoming big again when Netflix won the rights a few years ago was from young women discovering the show, but I suspect that just as many of the viewers were slightly older women who've seen every episode multiple times and put it on in the background while going about their day.

Adding some anecdote: I'm male and watched Friends in the 90s. Now my 13yo nephew has got into it via Netflix.

Interesting take on "avoidance behavior".

I've always viewed it as something as simple as background noise, but I know TONS of people who do this (myself included), so I imagine there's probably a much deeper phenomena at play

I don't think it's necessarily avoidance behavior, but excessive use of ambient TV may be avoidance behavior.

For example, my girlfriend experiences tinnitus, so having a completely silent house is annoying to her, since she just hears a high pitched noise instead of silence. But if you use ambient TV to avoid getting lost in your own thoughts because of fear of where they might take you, or if you use it as a stand-in to avoid feelings of loneliness for actual human company/conversation, then that is where I see it as unhealthy.

We all have avoidance behaviors, but are they bad because of that?

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