Preface
Usually TV is a non-concern for me, concerning all the things that bog up my time. But for the post's sake:
The Stand
The Points
- I think the primary reason that I just am willing to be for the motion is the fact that it simply is that, a waste of time. The qualifier "stupid" is a redundancy to just being a "waste of time" - by the very fact of it being a "waste of time" already is a negative stigma. For TVs can make people addicted to the screens, those very people always promising themselves one more second, or one scene in this case, that then will they leave to do something. It certainly has to have a hypnotic quality to become a "waste of time" in the first place.
- To expand my first point, TVs, despite whatever content it has now, have a good chunk of their screen time being full of advertisements. For while ads may not be inherently bad, wastes time of watching the show that they want to get through. Which, following the motion, is a pretty big waste of time, but might I say is clever that it at least obeys the tenet of TV content, being watchable.
- To go even further, despite the educational shows that are on, they have to sell the TV-goer with ads, that already are taking screen-time from the show, and talk how good the product their sponsors are making. Now whether the ads and sponsored product is good or not, matters not. The point of clarity is the fact that educational content can be mixed in with completely irrelevant content that matters not to even the grandeur scope of that particular content. If the ad/sponsor is directly tied to the content, it's by a miracle that it works - but there has been a trend that sponsors are at least finding their appropriate fields, but not so much regular-random ads.
- Even if we were to relax the talk about ads and sponsors, the content on TV can always been found on the internet in probably two-four searches to approximate the actual content. But for TV, there's a lot of wait time to find that specific content that specifically plays during that time every week (or day if it's a daily show). Even so, we record shows nowadays which defeats the purpose of waiting around for it to broadcast and now we waste time just by catching up on what we missed. And this is the truest form of it being a "waste of time" - that we make a duty to spend time catching up on TV content when that time could be spent elsewhere we at least can feel we done something done feel bad after binge-watching a show.
- To actually go on the binge-watching aspect a little bit more, it's becoming a phenomenon to binge-watch a show that hasn't been seen in the TV scene since even its inception. Things like Netflix and Amazon Prime certainly do benefit and continue to promote this behaviour - to the point we make jokes like "Netflix and chill" (though yes I know it's unrelated somewhat) because we know this ridiculousness of this TV-going paradigm. In fact, it plays on the disappointment that TV-goers have faced with TV in recent times, but it also plays on desperate latching unto a possibility of watching just a decent show for long lengths of time - thus one of the many causes of binge-watching which plagues human activities must be outright stated as-is, with no scent of resentment or tolerance of such status it may have.
- Even if we were to put all those points to the aside, there's still one problem that TVs cannot do truly: have many apps, sites and tabs up at the same time while having tons of information at one tab at any time. Id est, the computers and phones have the ability to truly multi-task where the TV just plays one show or app at a time. Exampli gratia, I can have YT playing in the background while I play a game like Half Life 2 or make a wicked meme on Photoshop.
- To develop this tangent even further, I can access at any time a library's worth of content on a site that can be bookmarked on the spot. TVs are, as aforementioned, glorified recording boxes that I have to sift through and eventually pin-point the exact times I want to use for any research. If I want to use a quote but I feel lazy to write word-for-word, I can copy and paste it from somewhere in the Internet.
- To go even further, the TV's ability to play things "Live" has been dwarfed by the likes of LiveLeak, Twitch.TV, YouTube Live and so on and so on that traditional TV companies are migrating to YT to rake in some of the new cash to be earned. (But YT is currently suffering an "adpocalypse" which may never be resolved, and may even continue further.) In fact, the project like DLive should be shamelessly promoting itself to earn a slice of the internet pie.
- To go unto points of what TV has done to society in general that is mainly negative. One major point, which I wouldn't be surprised is echo in another fashion, is the general destruction of the attention span of generations affected by the TV. It had gotten so bad that we only are seeing a recovery now thanks to parents intervening more in the millennial generation's life than the boomer generation's parents had done. And the TV had done it by progressively promoting and rewarding TV shows that conform to the thirty-minute episode structure which later feeds to a generation that has only known attention-grabbers and knew not how to focus hard on important details for good lengths of time.
- To go further, TV had destroyed patience along with attention span (which play off each other). With the general trend of thirty-minute episodes, people would passively over time accept that things can come quick than they usually do. Which conversely made people pathologize waiting forever for things to happen, it must happen on the minute. Once-more, I should clarify that the trend of patience-decay is reversing nowadays.
Sir, this is powerful but I have a question, how did you know that you are (the iron Felix)?
For you truly are the iron FELIX.
Haha haha
Powerful debate.
Haha, good one and thanks for the compliments.