@thatgermandude posted about why he quit watching TV and he mentioned me and asked that I post about why I quit watching TV. I am writing this post at his request.
For clarification I do watch television series, and movies and such. I just watch them commercial free. I either torrent them or get them from services like Netflix, Amazon, etc. I stopped watching televised news, and regular TV a long time ago. More than a decade ago now.
Early on I noticed a growing trend of what you could call fear mongering. Time and what could be on TV changed a lot during my life time. When I was young if you wanted to see anything R rated you had to go to a movie theater. Until I was around 6 or 7 and cable and HBO became a thing. For the first time you could watch movies on your TV a few months after they were in the theaters. This included R rated titles. My mother was pretty strict when I was younger about not letting me see such things.
As I grew older what was permitted on TV continued to expand and grow. Gradually "If it bleeds it leads" began to dominate news. They only wanted to talk about the sensational, or horrific things. They were so fixated on this that they would seek out any negative stories they could find. Gradually the news began to be more about all the bad things that happened. Just as many positive things happen, but they are not what the news wants to report. In fact, many of the negative things they are reporting constantly now are at historical (all time lows) yet the sheer amount of reporting on such topics gave the mental impression things are getting worse.
As to regular TV over time regular shows have scenes that are far more gruesome than anything in R rated movies back in my youth. This doesn't particularly bother me as I've always been a fan of horror, sci-fi, good special effects, etc. In fact, when most of society was increasingly sheltering their children from violent video games and movies, I was doing just the opposite. The difference is I was also teaching my children the difference between reality, and fiction.
9/11 was a huge change in my life. In reality, it changed the entire world. Much of the problems of today had their seeds on that day. I happened to be home sick on that day lying on the couch watching it unfold. I was in shock just like everyone else.
I thought it was crazy what happened and I went a couple of months where I was pretty much like any "normal person". Then one day I stumbled across some people posting photos and asking some pretty compelling questions about the Pentagon on that day. It got my mind thinking... but I still wasn't quite there.
A guy passing through my town happened to give several 9-11 documentaries to me sometime within a year of the event. I remember one of them was "9-11 In Plane Sight" and it starts out defining what Conspiracy Theory actually means before it digs into the video. In fact, the delivery was very reasonable and geared towards just giving information and letting me make my own decision. I remember at the end of it I was likely a little pale and said "holy shit, we did it" and that was my impression then. I know far more now than I did back then and this was before movements such as Architects and Engineers for 9-11 truth had come into being.
9/11 In Plane Site - Directors Cut
This is one of those things they mention in a lot of psychological discussions called a Paradigm Shift. Paradigm shifts do not typically occur unless there is a shock that accompanies it. I have little doubt I had a paradigm shift on that day.
Now in my defense I've always been interested in mysteries, stories about the unknown, etc. So I also was well aware of JFK, and several other long standing Conspiracy Theories. They interested me, but I can't really say they impacted my life much back then.
Having this revelation was like getting a new prescription of eye glasses. Once this realization was made I could be able to see cases where motives were more probable in one direction than what the official narrative was passing off. I could see the bias and the force feeding of information, it became more obvious. I could watch how people in my town would react to a news story. I even saw people reacting to news that I knew was false. I was getting first hand experience in watching propaganda at work. They taught us in school about propaganda in WW2 and it is like they want us to pretend that propaganda suddenly went away after that war. It didn't go away. They simply got far better at it.
I got used to being attacked as a Conspiracy Theorist, and later a Truther. It was sad as the people generally had no clue what the word Conspiracy or the word Theory mean, much less when combined together. Then it was even more ironic that Truther was turned into a derogatory label. Someone who seeks the truth is seen as a bad thing...
I realized this was mostly a conditioned response. The news, the media blitz, and the politicians were carefully dictating who the "popular kids" were, and who the "nerds" were. Making certain words be bad and make people flinch and avoid such labeled people as though they are Lepers is exactly what they want.
I was having a big moment of waking as an individual. I was freeing myself from group think, and trying to fit in. I was finding out who I WAS rather than trying to act like a carefully crafted ideal of what people should be.
I could see that the television was the tool that was trying to keep us stuck in the group think worldview. So we actually unplugged from TV for two reasons. At the time were in financial straights so not having a cable bill saved us a little money, and two because the commercials and bias were making us angry.
The longer we went without TV the easier it became to see the bias. When you are not being bombarded with propaganda day in and day out it becomes very obvious when you see it. When you are being bombarded with it then it becomes more difficult to see just like a droning sound you might learn to ignore, or an odor in an area you might learn to ignore. I think this happens with propaganda as well. We become desensitized to the fact it is there. You can be very intelligent and still fall prey to this. In fact convincing an intelligent person to defend propaganda is one of the best victories for a propagandist.
After months then years of no typical television if I happened to visit an establishment like a bar, restaurant, doctor's office, etc where the news was playing I'd fairly quickly start to get angry as the telling of one side of a story, intentional leaving out of facts that would change a story, and the overt bias is so obvious that it is hard not to get angry when you see it.
Another thing happened while I was away from television. It went from an occasional pharmaceutical commercial, to that being primarily what is on television in terms of commercials. It is all about big pharma slamming their products on us. It is about the corruption in that system and how pervasive it has become in our media as well as our government.
There are many things I don't like about television and I could probably write about it for a very long time.
I will clarify again that I never stopped watching movies or TV series. I simply bought DVDs, streamed them from streaming sites, or torrented them. Thus, I've avoided commercials. I also see clips of the news as I am researching topics by finding them on youtube, vimeo, and occasionally their own website. So I didn't stop occasionally seeing the news. I just stopped being bombarded by it, and I stopped letting them control the only narrative I was hearing.
Extra Media That Influenced me over the years
Nevermore - Poison God Machine
"I know what it wants now...the void
has swallowed the light and the machine
wants my soul"
The media machine knows what to do
It knows how to feed the poison to you
Useless information for your useless little lives
The tv lies and pacifies
Do you believe everything you see?
Children of the void come follow me
Denounce your faith and penance the savior is unseen
I am the new drug, your poison godmachine....poison
Poison godmachine
Poison is a word, God is a word used for fear
In subtlety we obey through ink and broadcast wave
The doubts and fears that shadow media decay
Deprogram this affliction and the cathode ray unclean
I am the last nail, the empty soulless screen.....soulless
Poison godmachine
And we eat the poison, we created the poison godmachine
I remember seeing some TV ads back in 92 at somebody else's house, and being amazed that there were still people who didn't know how to record programmes on a video recorder and fast forward through the ads.
These day I just freak out that there are people who pay for netflix and don't know how to torrent everything.
I supported Netflix, because I thought it is a good deal. They produced a lot of good shows like the Marvel series and House of Cards, but the whole 'let's change our rating system because Amy Schumer got 1 Star' made me really mad. I'm on the verge of canceling my subscription to them.
Really good article. I remember the world seem to change even though I was very young watching tv back in 1963 when John F Kennedy was assassinated. 9/11 was another shift, I know one thing about that day, we were not given the true story and buildings don't fall like that without demolition type help. Especially building 7, I remember the reporter said building 7 collapsed but it was still standing. I stopped watching tv back in 2007, never looked back!
I cut the cable cord about 5 years ago. The first thing I noticed was how much more I got done. I never realized how much I scheduled activities around the TV. Saw a newscast at a friends and you are correct nearly every commercial was pushing a new drug. I like netflix, but getting rid of cable was the best thing I ever did! I have never missed it and no more couch potato!
yup
same here.
I was sent to a Bomber Base in 1971 to...
after I was there for a few months I took some leave and returned home.
when I watched the TV all I saw were
What I saw in person is NOT
what I saw on the nightly news.
SO
I quit watching network TV
I stopped watching television simply for the reason there's nothing on. Netflix and Amazon are producing higher quality content without being subverted from the rating system. Just look at ESPN, they laid off over 120 employees because nobody watches them anymore. Instead, people are streaming sports, or are doing away with cable altogether.
This post was an interesting read for me though I disagree with some of it.
I personally have the same relationship with TV as you do. I watch series and movies, sometimes shows I like, but very rarely real-time. I lived without a TV for a long time, but now we have one at home, but most of the time it is used with my Android set top box (if that's what it's called). On top of this, digital television here has a rewind function, so you can watch stuff later and skip through commercials and we sometimes use it though the only reasons we keep the TV subscription are the fact that it's bundled with our internet connection and I watch a few games here and there.
I personally agree that TV is rarely a reliable source of information, but so is the internet. You see exactly the same fear-mongering and propaganda online as you see on TV, it's just different people with different agendas, delusions and/or information. Conspiracy Theories if you'd excuse the term hijack the same psychological mechanism that the news media you hate so much, it's just a different source and medium. As mentioned above, I never watch the news on TV, but the more I've researched this types of topics including 9/11, there more I've traveled away from most of the theories out there since I've found a lot of logical contradictions.
It's not fair to assert that people don't know what they are talking about or don't know what a term means just because they disagree with you in the very same way as any derogatory term is unproductive in a conversation like this one.
I think it's important that we try to unplug from the propaganda not only when it's coming from TV, but regardless of the medium. The medium is not the problem, it's the sentiment, agenda and content. Always look for the facts and try to make up your mind after you've assessed them, not before. If you make up your mind in advance (or "trust your gut feeling") you are bound to find "evidence" to support your preexisting beliefs and to arrive at some wrong conclusions a good deal of the time.
I really hope you will not find this comment disrespectful to your post or to yourself as it is not intended to be so. I know those are touchy subjects, but I find it productive and personally enlightening to engage with people that I disagree with at least on some level.
No, I don't disagree with you. I was asked "Why I stopped watching TV?" which I answered. That doesn't mean I haven't come to many of the same conclusions as you when it comes to OTHER sources of information. All I can try to do is apply reason and use my mind based upon ALL of the information I can gather.
It also seems you may be reacting to that sentence some. Notice it is not an absolute. I said generally. Generally the general public really does not understand the meaning of those words, as they don't take time to find out.
Does that mean everyone? No there are quite a lot of people that do know what it means, and hopefully the number is growing.
Yet it is rare that someone that actually knows what those words mean, and what they mean when combined will actually use it as a derogatory term against someone.
Not at all. You handled it well. I prefer to talk to people that disagree with me as long as we keep it civil. That is generally where I learn the most new information. Learning by talking to people that only agree with you can be a much slower experience.
Yep, a good deal of my comment was on a tangent really ;)
I guess we certainly agree on most of the methods as I do agree with everything in your reply; we might be getting varying results on some questions, but that's to be expected anyway, isn't it? :)
P.S.: I keep forgetting to mention the Nevermore song! Good share! \,,/
I respect and thank you for sharing your thoughts. The information bombardment is real and it cuts both ways. By all means kill your TV. Just don't stop learning, don't hold your 'beliefs' too tightly, avoid the big 'they' or 'them' fallacy. It's us. Empowerment isn't granted to or from anyone, it is seized. Steem on freaks, I love you all. Be kind.
I may stop learning when I am dead, then again I might not. We'll find out then.
Excellent article! We had satellite TV for a while and then gave it up because it was "annoying." Previously we'd had had cable... but after giving up the dish, we just didn't feel inclined to have commercial TV again... so now the only "connection" we have is the Internet. Anything we watch is movies-- Netflix or Amazon Prime... and that's pretty limited.
As I have aged, I just find that TV simply isn't "interesting." Giving a choice of how to spend my time, TV is just not one of them. Movies (except a select few) don't even hold my attention very much... the trend is one of of wanting to "create" (write, do art, photography) rather than "consume."
Thank You for this response @dwinblood!
The title almost sounds like I forced you to write about the topic. In that case, I am glad I did! :) While you also tell your own personal story, you are able to tackle the problems with TV and especially TV News much more wholistic than I did. A lot of points, you make, were on my mind, but I could not really fit them in and I also doubt my ability to write a really long piece and have people actually read to the end. Well, it shows the gap of experience in writing articles between us I guess ;).
On the topic: for me it is always interesting to see how people can have totally different experience and still end up with a lot of shared conclusions and values. In my life there was never a real turning point... well maybe when I heard about socialism and the fights against the bourgeoisie in history class, how the communist party leaders Liebknecht and Luxemburg got sold out by the social democrats. My family was also social democratic voters (SPD). And well I went further left because of what I saw social democrats do: nothing, unless it is about saving their very own ass. And yeah, if you are radical left you don't trust media, it's just a given.
I will do a (hopefully) short comment on your other video about labels because i somehow ended up talking again about my leftist background.
Great article. Thanks for writing it.
I'm pretty much the same as you -- I stream what I want to watch like selected TV series.
I don't normally watch mainstream news or commercials anymore.
Yep 500+ channels and nothing on decent watch.
Bingo. Cut the chord, turn the bastards off.
Rick and morty though! haha
https://steemit.com/tv/@biddle/who-else-is-pumped-for-rick-and-morty-season-3-episode-2