Did you stop watching your #television? As in, does your TV set sit gathering dust because you can watch Hulu, Netflix, Amazon; or because you find interactive screen media more interesting?
If you're accustomed to not having the television on, how do you manage when you visit relatives or friends and they have the television on?
Are your cultural and sociopolitical perspectives very different from that of someone who watches your nation's average hours of television per day?
@christinao Are you doing research for a story/experiement?
@christinao Stopped using our TV for anything but video games years ago.
When I go to my mom's house the TV is always on unless she's working in the yard. I generally ignore it without problem. It's mostly just background noise or something to focus on when the conversation lulls.
The last question is pretty hard for me to answer as I'm not that social with people in person and the people I do talk to tend to not watch much TV either.
@christinao I watch Netflix, hulu, etc on my TV, but I do find the commercials really weird and jarring now whenever I see normal broadcast TV.
@christinao 1. i never really did watch tv, tbh. my parents always had the remote when i was a kid. i'm still not really in the habit of watching things.
2. it's annoying. i have a hard time with multiple streams of speech (i.e. someone talking over the TV) and i also don't like much background noise in general... i also, as other people have said, hate commercials.
3. i don't know how it's different, but i don't know how i could possibly watch tv for that long and not get bored
@christinao I'll bite.
I stopped watching TV regularly years ago, I'd say during the latter half of college, so from 2002 on. Working at at TV station and having a degree in Electronic Media, and therefore knowing how it's all put together, made me want to watch even less.
I think your second question is a leading one: you're assuming that people who don't watch TV are watching the various Internet streaming services, as if TV and the streaming services are the only options. (1/2)
@christinao I actually don't watch the streaming services, either. The closest I get is some podcast subscriptions.
When I was visiting my parents last month, who watch TV almost constantly when they're not sleeping or doing something else, I went online or indulged in my geolocational geekery on my laptop. Sometimes I'd be in the guest bedroom on my ham radio.
I'd say I'm more of a radical leftist than my parents, who are quite liberal by American standards.
@christinao We haven't had cable for a couple years. It hasn't changed much for me because I was getting all my news online. It affects my 6 year old son a lot more. Netflix allows us to limit his screen time easily, but he tends to want to binge watch ONE show in his allotted time, so I feel like he's not getting a healthy variety of fun + educational kids TV like might be on cable. Plus without kid TV as background noise, he's potentially missing out on kid culture, and snippets of learning.
@christinao In regard to the other questions:
Commercials are jarring, honestly. And I really struggle with the idea of channel surfing until you find something you don't NOT want to watch. It makes me want to scream "your time is worth more than this". But social media is very similar - posts chosen by other people populate your feed - so I guess an hour wasted watching CSI: Miami is not worse than wasting it online.
I suspect anybody who cuts the cable already has non-mainstream views.
@christinao My TV set serves as an output for my PS4. When I want to watch a defective video game, Netflix is enough.
Also, the internet has better porn.
@christinao I don't watch soaps/dramas or the news. Though I do watch documentaries on them. YouTube for music and Now TV for films
@christinao when I visit friends and relatives it becomes background noise or my savoir from awkward silences!
@christinao well, sometimes, most people in my vicinity, who do watch dramas are the politically educated. The majority of the public do watch soaps. So you could say they are more social?
@christinao I'm not one to cross TV out all together. I like my documentaries and my comedy! But I like to be in control of what I watch. I don't want my day to revolve around a certain soap, at a certain time everyday. I prefer people who are still reading, who are open minded and who are aware of what is happening around them. The ones who are living in the real world!
@christinao
I never had cable TV in Taiwan because the English choices were dreadful--HBO & a few other movie channels, a couple of documentary channels, & CNN. We just used our TV for renting movies. One day, after we hadn't rented a movie in a while, my wife threw out the TV.
I use YouTube for Stephen Colbert & John Oliver, & Google Play for movies. I watch a few YouTubers for amateur medieval information & a few other random videos. Maybe an hour a day all told, but a very wide variety.
@christinao Stopped watching TV when I moved out of the house for college. A show has to be really good for me to bother signing up for a streaming service to watch it. I typically sit down with the SO on a Friday Night and watch a movie.
Visiting relatives these days, with the TV on is like when there's a squirrel outside the picture window harassing my dogs. It doesn't matter how trash it is, I can't focus on conversations or anything. My eyes get drawn back to the magic box.
That and when visiting others if they wanna zone into the TV I can wander off and/or find a quiet place to do something creative for awhile.