Turn Off Your TV!

yaardi · 2015-09-20T06:01:45+00:00

Nothing wrong with watching series and movies. I just avoid the commercials and the talk/music/reality shows, those are mind-numbling.

HappyScribe · 2015-09-20T10:13:39+00:00

I gave up TV a couple of years ago. The first few months were the worst, when I'd use all of that extra time to surf the internet. Eventually I realised I needed to get out of the house and spend part of my day offline away from anything electronic.

Culturally, the only things I've missed are Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and House of Cards- So I spent a couple of hours googling the highlights of both and reading the respective wiki pages. In essence I caught up two years of TV in about four hours.

Now I literally can't watch TV - the commercials, the game shows, everything annoys me. It's like when I gave up sugar and wheat - at first I didn't believe it was possible, now the idea of going back to how I used to live feels me with horror.

mikesteane · 2015-09-20T10:11:26+00:00

I recommend the book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Gerry Mander.

One Amazon reviewer said this:

Mander presents four main arguments, and dozens of corollary arguments, against having television as any part of our lives. Any one of them alone might seem plausible but perhaps overblown, but the overall effect of their combined presentation is overwhelming. I closed the book absolutely revulsed by the nature of this technology and how it has manipulated us. I can anecdotally attest to its ill effects in my case, certainly -- I can recognize thousands of brands but only a few plants. My direct knowledge of the world has been reduced by about 20,000 hours' worth of actual experience interacting with real people, time that I spent instead glued to the boob tube, absorbing hundreds of thousands of commercials. I don't have a TV anymore, but whenever I am around one that's turned on, I find myself hypnotically drawn to stare at the screen, irrespective of content. This occurs even if I am in the middle of an interesting conversation -- to my embarrassment and dismay, my eyes dart as of their own accord toward the flickering images. I have to stand facing away from the TV to prevent this. What I consider to be my natural aesthetic sense has been perverted such that I can hardly look at a man or woman -- or myself in a mirror -- without automatically, subtly judging the person's appearance against an internal metric, a deep and narrow palette of beautiful faces and lithe body parts, implanted by hundreds of thousands of advertising images. This phenomenon subtly cheapens and distorts many interactions I have with people. .... Just scan the table of contents to Mander's book, ..., and you will begin to see the array of influences these forces have in our culture and in our individual minds. Please buy the book, give it to everyone as gifts this year, especially to parents of small children. I see parents use the TV as a pacifier, but as you will read, it is an incredibly high price to pay just to keep the kids temporarily quiet

PeteMullersKeyboard · 2015-09-20T05:30:44+00:00

Pretending like all TV is useless is silly, there are most certainly worthwhile things to watch. Obviously most TV is shit, as most things in general are shit. There are very few things in this world worth putting any time into, and that includes entertainment. So, just use discretion. I watch a few quality TV shows, because I enjoy them. It doesn't mean I'm some hopeless, awkward basement-dwelling troll because of it.

awalt_cupcake · 2015-09-20T04:40:09+00:00

I've cut out all tv including netflix. Don't miss a damn thing about it. I find that people are too busy watching and talking about shows and don't do anything worthwhile at all. The only thing I watch these days is south park the the new PC episode actually fucked with me. I laughed at a few of the jokes but at the back of my mind I'm thinking "oh fucking shit this is too real".

Pros: I have more time in the day and I can hold a conversation with women which has helped my game significantly.

Cons: can't talk shit to the average boring person.

RunawayGrain · 2015-09-20T06:49:41+00:00

I don't have a television, and one of the things I notice is that I get things done. Some of my co-workers drag in on Mondays and are pretty noisy about no having enough time in the weekends to get home projects they are working on done. Almost immediately they launch into a recap of multiple shows they watched, probably several hours worth and a Sunday afternoon game.

BallisticTherapy · 2015-09-20T09:12:40+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FOuRw9AiRo

HappyMGTOW · 2015-09-20T13:24:01+00:00

TV was never a large part of my life, reading replaced it. I would also caution against too much reading it is better than television in myriad ways, but used as an escape for fantastical reasons, it is equally as dangerous, in some cases more so.

Read, but read quality.

Watch but watch quality. (No commercials, stick to streaming)

For the love of God, don't give children media, let them go get skinned up outside building forts or actively playing, you're going to thank yourself. I thank my parents every day, they thank themselves as well. Don't feed the children with cotton candy for the mind, give them a hunting ground to track the steak, kill the steak, then eat the steak.

And never let either reduce your time in the real world. (Found time only guys, found time only).

Thanks OP, think I'll be getting that book for my found time this week.

Layinudown · 2015-09-20T18:17:59+00:00

So spot on. Especially the idiocracy comparison. I feel the same way when I see people watching commercials on tv with their undivided attention.

CyberninjaZen · 2015-09-20T20:14:17+00:00

I have not watched tv in years. Complete waste of time.

[deleted] · 2015-09-20T23:12:28+00:00

One of the saddest things in my life if watching my father waste away the remaining years of his life watching about 12-14 hours of television everyday. It is like a nervous habit he can't be at ease if the TV is not on. It drove me nuts growing up to never have silence in the house.

I physically can't watch TV I start fidgeting after about 20 minutes and lose all concentration. Mindless TV is just so vapid and inane.

I thiink it depends on how one watches TV, if you tune in to watch something specific or educational that is ok but mindless channel surfing is a pathetic waste of time.

nivekx · 2015-09-21T00:49:35+00:00

Back in high school I could watch 13-15 hours of TV a day (man what a lot of wasted time that was) I thought that was just part of me, a habit that I had adopted and could never get rid of, I used to "study" (if the kind of effort you do in high school can be called study) with the TV turned on as background noise, and I thought it helped me concentrate. Then 5 years into engineering school and at some point I dropped TV altogether, I rarely watch more than 10 mins a day and that's in the morning when I'm getting ready for the day and my family is watching news or whatever. I still watch shows ocassionaly Netflix&Chilll that kind of stuff but not to the degree I used to. Getting away from the TV is probably one of the best decisions I ever (unconciously) made.

Opanion · 2015-09-21T01:28:17+00:00

It's called Talmud vision for a reason...

saibot83 · 2015-09-21T10:45:16+00:00

I live in Sweden and it's gotten to the point that you can't even watch the news anymore because it has veered completely over into outright propaganda. I never watch tv these days and I don't miss it for a second.

RXRob · 2015-09-21T12:09:03+00:00

When i moved house last April I decided not to get a TV license. It's the best decision I ever made.

My cable bill went from £60 a month to £12. Plus I save £12 a month by not having a license.

I've caught up on loads of classic movies. Including a huge Kubrick shaped gap.

I've listened to more new music than ever. And I used to be a professional DJ.

I'm seeing more friends through sports because I have to leave the house to watch them.

Keep the television. Disconnect your aerials.

Not_Reddit · 2015-09-28T02:59:17+00:00

But, but, but .... Blazing Saddles is on !

Title	Turn Off Your TV!
Author	HappyMGTOW
Upvotes	40
Comments	31
Date	September 20, 2015 4:19 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/3ln4j3/turn_off_your_tv/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/turn-off-your-tv.36565 https://theredarchive.com/post/36565

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