Everyone agrees with this statement: smartphones are amazing tools that have changed human history ruined everything.
Go to sleep with a phone in your hand, wake up with a phone in your hand. Scrolling while driving, in the bathroom, while conversing with others about the content we have consumed via phone. etc etc etc. We know how it has made the youth depressed psychopaths and other demographics drooling scrolling goons. Scrolling maximizes pleasure and escalates brain rot, a price we pay for productivity.
Enough. Nothing new can be said. I am tired of phones and phone discourse and talking on phones and talking about phones and complaining about phones and phone culture.
Put down the phone and turn on the TV; it has better content, and it has an off button.
I can turn the TV on weekdays at 7pm for Jeopardy! with Ken Jennings, turn it off (or mute it) through Wheel of Fortune while I wait for Survivor to air at 8pm on Wednesdays. Or, I can turn it off after Jeopardy! Then, I can turn it on Sunday at 12pm for the NFL pregame shows and leave it on until midnight because I am watching NFL all day, because I haven’t wasted my time scrolling throughout the week. Then, if I really want, I can turn it on for Monday Night Football. After Jeopardy!
Shows seamlessly blend into one another, from the 6:30pm news to the game shows to the scripted TV shows to the new at 10pm to late night, Nick at Nite sitcoms. If that is still on, I am not sure. It’s been decades since I’ve watched TV.
While I am not watching TV, I can daydream about the TV I have watched. Unlike the reels and tweets and rolls and tweels that I forget the instant it ends. (It is cute to watch reels of possums playing dead because they are scared. I didn’t know that they do that lol I’ve only ever seen mangy possums eating garbage. Even mangy critters can be cute sometimes.) However, possums playing dead is not much to fantasize about. I would rather recall the rich drama of Survivor and the stunning plays and crushing blows of the football field, which can occupy my mind during work downtime when I cannot look at a phone.
TV can also be interactive, beyond the act of clicking mute on a remote. I can yell answers at the screen as I watch Jeopardy! (Ken Jennings became a giddy nerd, impressed when a contestant answered the full title of the sequel to Avatar, going off script to declare to the contestant, “Yes! You knew the name of the sequel to Avatar!”)
I watched a season 2 episode of The X Files called Darkness Falls, from 1993. What a treat! It was like a mini-The Thing! Then I watched two episodes of some John Grisham lawyer thriller too. Meh.
I watched the very first episode of Survivor from 2000, then I watched the next one a few days later because I couldn’t resist. But, I should force myself to watch these episodes once a week. This is what I like most about TV: there is 24/7 content, but the best stuff is rewarded by weekly patience. The anticipation makes the show better. Binging dilutes this effect. There is no time for savoring.
David Foster Wallace was addicted to TV. He didn’t have a TV in his house or else he would never write and would go to friend’s houses to watch TV. What does that say about our internet connected word processors? And our internet connected brains and attention spans?
Nothing that hasn’t been said a million times already.