If you know my family, like at all, the fact that we haven't had cable TV in nine years probably won't surprise you. We traded it in to send money to a Foster Child in Niger. Even though it took some adjusting at first, we've really liked not having it.
In Hometown, we have cases and cases of DVDs and a whole lot of VHS tapes from when we were kids. Dad has even gone the route of a big ol' flat screen and a Blu-ray player.
What I've liked about the switch was the ability to pause, and to play whatever you want whenever you want.
Want to watch Fraiser at three in the morning and pause it to take a pee and put some socks on? Go nuts.
And I know, you can get the PVR and Netflix and all that. And I suppose that works.
But maybe I'm just not evolved enough to get past the ownership of a shiny new box set of a TV show I love.
The biggest thing, though, was not having commercials. And I'll get to that in a minute.
Roommate grew up on TV, and so we have it now, and have so for nearly two years.
I'd say that on average, I'll watch maybe three to six hours a week.
Well, for every half hour of a show, about twenty minutes is the TV show itself with ten of commercials. For an hour, that's twenty minutes.
So, for that rainy, boring week where I watched six hours, I saw two hours of commercials.
Ever since getting commercial TV again, I've found myself wanting things more. One particular example I can think of was at Christmas, I was constantly seeing a commercial for a Tim Horton's coffee mug,
I started to want that mug. Real bad.
And passing a Timmy Ho's downtown, I stopped myself before entering.
Why do you want this??
I never thought I was affected by advertising, and like everyone else who assumes they have a stronger mind than the Mad Men, I don't. I want to be normal. And I want to be happy.
The fulfillment I would get from that dinky made-in-China ceramic mug would last me just a few minutes. An artificial achievement as a substitute for something, say, I crocheted or an assignment completed. I was being sold a feeling, not a mug.
Advertising, through my thinking about it mostly, has really affected the way I see the world. I'm trying to be very conscious about not simply accepting bus shelter messages and girls smiling on the pages of magazines as the truth.
Whatever that is.
In Hometown, we have cases and cases of DVDs and a whole lot of VHS tapes from when we were kids. Dad has even gone the route of a big ol' flat screen and a Blu-ray player.
What I've liked about the switch was the ability to pause, and to play whatever you want whenever you want.
Want to watch Fraiser at three in the morning and pause it to take a pee and put some socks on? Go nuts.
And I know, you can get the PVR and Netflix and all that. And I suppose that works.
But maybe I'm just not evolved enough to get past the ownership of a shiny new box set of a TV show I love.
The biggest thing, though, was not having commercials. And I'll get to that in a minute.
Roommate grew up on TV, and so we have it now, and have so for nearly two years.
I'd say that on average, I'll watch maybe three to six hours a week.
Well, for every half hour of a show, about twenty minutes is the TV show itself with ten of commercials. For an hour, that's twenty minutes.
So, for that rainy, boring week where I watched six hours, I saw two hours of commercials.
Ever since getting commercial TV again, I've found myself wanting things more. One particular example I can think of was at Christmas, I was constantly seeing a commercial for a Tim Horton's coffee mug,
I started to want that mug. Real bad.
And passing a Timmy Ho's downtown, I stopped myself before entering.
Why do you want this??
I never thought I was affected by advertising, and like everyone else who assumes they have a stronger mind than the Mad Men, I don't. I want to be normal. And I want to be happy.
The fulfillment I would get from that dinky made-in-China ceramic mug would last me just a few minutes. An artificial achievement as a substitute for something, say, I crocheted or an assignment completed. I was being sold a feeling, not a mug.
Advertising, through my thinking about it mostly, has really affected the way I see the world. I'm trying to be very conscious about not simply accepting bus shelter messages and girls smiling on the pages of magazines as the truth.
Whatever that is.
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