Turning Off Your Brain

"You go to your TV to turn your brain off. You go to the computer when you want to turn your brain on." -Steve Jobs



One night years ago, after partaking of a plant that rhymes with Heyyouwanna?, one of my friends said something prolific that I will never forget: "TV is nothing but a bunch of people watching other people live their lives instead of living their own."

Deep, huh? I have a hard time explaining to the people that I work with (and people in general) why I don't watch TV. When someone asks me if I've seen a commercial, I feel like an alien. I can't stand to watch TV because I feel like somehow I'm being brainwashed by the commercials and I feel like I'm being dumbed down by TV in general. I don't know why this is, but I can't remember a point in my life where I've ever liked television. As a child I watched movies over and over. I have Stand by Me and The Three Stooges Meet Hercules practically memorized. When I was a teenager I was too busy riding my bike or playing Dungeons and Dragons. As an adult I can hardly bring myself to watch most movies, much less watch a 30 minute episode of mind-numbing contrived situations. Not that I dislike all TV. I do like some comedy, like Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, South Park, King of the Hill, The Chappelle Show, Married with Children, and most of all, The Family Guy. Those are all pretty edgy comedies that to me are funny. But I prefer to watch them without the advertising and the timing of trying to base my schedule around a TV show, so I usually rent or buy the DVD's after they come out.

Two people at work I know watch TV all the time. One of them is confused as to how I could spend so much time on the Internet as opposed to TV. The other one is trying to convince me that I really need to watch the show Smallville,..."because man it's really a cool show after you get into it." That certainly sounds enticing. Both of these people at different times have asked me what TV shows I watch and when I told them that I don't watch TV they just looked at me confused like, well, what do you do then? As if one couldn't live without TV. I explained to one of them that I surf the Internet because I feel like it's an interactive experience that I choose the path of (active) instead of just watching a screen waiting for whatever comes on next (passive). I read news. I look at websites. I follow Apple news religiously. [I think this is mostly because I'm trying to major in business and I find Apple to be an exciting business to follow, for many reasons.] I even, get this, read books sometimes. I go to college 4 nights a week. I go to the gym 3 times a week. I go out and take photos. I listen to spoken word (Henry Rollins and William S. Burroughs) and comedy (Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Patton Oswalt, and David Cross). I listen to (recently) audiobooks from iTunes. I used to play video games quite a bit for a little while, until I deemed that a waste of time and decided to stop that pretty much altogether. I go out to see live comedy instead of watching canned laughter on TV. I try to live my life instead of watching other people live theirs on TV.

Don't get me wrong, I sit on the Internet more than most people could ever stand to, probably more than most people even watch TV. And I'm an Internet-loving homebody. I knew the first few times that I got on the Internet back in '96 that I was going to spend a good majority of my time on the Internet when I got my own computer. Nothing has changed. I'm on the Internet all the time. I'm addicted to it and I freely admit that. As far as TV and culture go, consider me willingly ignorant to whatever is going on there. I understand that some people are up on things more than me because they watch TV. Again, I'm willfully and happily ignorant to that side of culture and I'm completely happy with that decision. If it weren't for DVD's, I wouldn't have a TV.

Not that there is anything wrong with watching TV, as long as you realize what you're dealing with. And most importantly that you watch the right shows. With that said, I'm off to browse the Internet.

And now for some links to some anti-TV sites I just found:

WhiteDot.org
TurnOffYourTV.com
TV Turnoff

How's that for propaganda!