The Case for Not Having a TV
lopespm.com
lopespm.com
It's really weird visiting relatives houses now, where the norm is to have the TV on all the time. Like... how do you have a conversation over the noise?
Now that I've got my own kids we still don't have a TV. We've just a few laptops so streaming shows can be watched wherever.
The problem with this is that laptops are a terrible way of watching a streaming show (or anything else) if you're more than 1 person. A large-screen TV is much nicer to sit in front of when you have a couple or group watching the same thing.
But these days it's getting really hard to know what people mean by "watching TV" or "owning a TV". Do they mean watching over-the-air broadcasts with ads? Or do they mean using a large screen as a glorified monitor, connected to the internet for streaming shows or for watching pre-downloaded movies? The use-cases are quite different.
Well, I'd agree but my wife and kids don't seem to care. They'll all huddle around a 14" laptop while I'll be like "we could at least use my large monitor?"
So, do I "have a TV" or not? I'm not sure, because "having a TV" seems to frequently imply watching OTA TV with ads, like people did in 1975.
I mostly consume media on laptops or desktop PCs. Watching on mobile is tedious for me; so I don't do it. I consume news in written form so I don't care for the editorialized dramatized version that is still popular on TV. Whenever I see that (on other people's TVs or in hotels) it always strikes me how dull, one sided, stale, and boring that content is. Just not a very efficient way to learn about what's actually going on in the world. Which I do care about, especially international news. And not having video, makes me a bit more detached from the drama. I get the facts but not the "OMG this is so terrible" infotainment angle that CNN and others thrive on. Whether it's tsunamis, earth quakes, political scandals, etc. I read about it and then move on with my live. I don't need to see the dead bodies in the street, see some weeping people, hear some outraged people commenting, etc.
I have ad blockers so I never see ads on Youtube. So, it's a completely ad free experience to me. The only sponsored content I see are in video promotions on Youtube.
I don't have a TV. I mean I still watch YouTube and movies and stuff. Just on different form factor.
I either pirate (proudly; piracy is a net good for society and will eventually be normalized), or pay for nor DRM digital media, see stuff in theaters, or buy physical discs.
Not to mention gaming and browsing has taken a lot more of my time than simply watching something because it happens to be on.
And even then I had to quickly find an antenna cable from the Box of Cables I'll Certainly Need Someday, only because the web stream was so unreliable at the time.
After we moved out of that place, I never bothered to pack up the antenna cable and threw it out. We've been Bluray/DVD and streaming only from that point on.
It would've taken longer, but I don't follow sports, so I don't need "live" TV even for that. And even then there is a 0-60 second delay on the "live" tv compared to some streams. (The upstairs neighbours cheer for a goal a good 15 seconds before I see it on my stream :D)
I wouldn't even know how that would work, then again, I'm sure someone in the 80s wouldn't have been able to imagine life without TV.
Even more likely is, "I never use the web directly: I have my agent / AI interact with the web on my behalf".
not having a tv in 2023 is like not having a fax machine. yea, cool. you and everyone else of your generation. but like people above said, maybe you don't have a tv but you waste 4 hours a day on TikTok. I don't see how it's different. nothing to be proud of, if you're just wasting time on "tv 2.0".
They're already doing it: they don't use Facebook, which in the minds of the Boomers equals "the internet".
I personally haven't used the internet in ages: I have an ad-blocker on all my browsers.
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