"I don't even own a TV"

the second

totally the second

i mean, there are televisions in this house, but i barely then them on, so that's where i'm at.

"...or avatar of cultural snobbery or whatever are more annoying" (sorry, cut off)

for what it's worth i do watch video, just over the internet

It all depends on the person. Some people just don't own a tv or watch any tv because they don't care. Other people pride themselves on that fact—yes, they are real—and it's those people who deserve scorn.

seems more like it tbh

Out of those two choices, the first. However, more and more people don't watch TV on an actual TV, so if there was an "I don't even watch TV" option, I'd pick that one.

I wonder whatever it is that you "take pride in" and how I can pour coruscating scorn on it.

It's cool, I don't like you guys either.

Is it wrong to automatically assume that people who don't own/watch tvs have more fulfulling lives than tv watchers? Or is that a stereotype? Do these people just spend the same amount of time reading trashy novels, or are they out working in soup kitchens and tending to community gardens?

I also wonder how much of this supposed "pride" is entirely projection on the part of a listener who feels weird or conflicted about their own consumption of media.

I don't care who has a tv or not, I only care about the people who brag about not owning one and wanting "bad ass mo'fo" tattooed on their forehead for it.

sadly there's no option for that, so I'm writing in "Minnesota".

...and projects their own ~guilt~ about what they feel they "ought" to be doing instead of watching television onto people who simply don't.

I don't care who has a tv or not, I only care about the people who brag about not owning one

Exactly

oh is this one of these questions that only has one real 'right' answer and anybody who answers #2 gets dogpiled?

xpost

...and projects their own ~guilt~ about what they feel they "ought" to be doing instead of watching television onto people who simply don't.

Sometimes this happens, but other times people are actually huge snobs. I know this is hard to believe.

In its favor, the "i don't even own a TV" remark is one of the shortest annoying things people can say. It generally doesn't branch out into a longer unwanted conversation.

Where does the "brag" in this sentence come from?

People who insist that others are "snobs", I mean I know where I locate the snobbery in this equation.

I can't remember the last time I went to someone's tv-less house and said "holmes you best get a tv in this motherbitch or you ain't gonna see my fine ass ever again" and then did doughnuts on their lawn and left

feel like there must be a more up-to-date version of this. Maybe "I don't use Facebook"?

so in other words you already had an axe to grind and you used a poll as an excuse to bring it up?

cool xxpost

I think this debate is a relic of a bygone age, really. Not a TV doesn't mean much in this day and age, especially if you own a computer.

Nothing wrong with not owning a TV, or not telling people about it. Also in decline, I think, is the sort of smug ostentatious flourish that's meant to make people think you spend the rest of your time scoring operas or translating Proust.

More annoying that both is the sort of person who wants to show off how *discerning* they are in their TV-watching, which is kind of the equivalent of bragging about how you don't listen to pop music.

Isn't that why you start a poll like this, like, always? xp

"I don't get what the hype is around Breaking Bad, maaaaaaannnn...."

xpost polls, that's where I'm a viking

i own a tv, i use it as a 2nd computer monitor

I'm surprised that a trapdoor didn't open up underneath me after I clicked on the first option.

"Actually, we're having goose this year"

It's probably the "actually" that's indicative of smugness and unwarranted pride.

Haha I'm the I don't &c guy kinda, I haven't owned a tv for the best part of a decade and all but gave up watching it because of books (hola aimless) cinema beer and the fact I have to work, I like tv tho & would watch it more if I could.

Snobs who boast about not watching TV are definitely a thing but good for you if you've never come across one. I feel no guilt about watching TV because I'm a typical Guardian-reading HBO/Danish import-watching asshole.

It never fails to amaze me, the things that people will get incredibly judgmental about, and then justify their behaviour by claiming "OH BUT THOSE PEOPLE I'M JUDGING ARE SO SNOBBY AND JUDGEMENTAL". This isn't about anything except projection.

I like tv. I watch a lot of it, but not as much as I once did, and I could probably be just fine watching even less than I currently do. It doesn't make me feel lowbrow and boring, and it's pretty easy to tune out the constant advertising and flip through channels if you don't like what's on.

I guess I'm just curious how the other half lives. If you're not watching tv, it seems like you'd have all this free time to be creative or contribute to society in some beneficial way. But maybe you're just playing Minesweeper. I dunno.

branwell otm itt

this poll is the equivalent of an anvil and about ten of us are standing under it.

OH BUT THE STRAW MAN DEFINITELY EXISTS AND LO I HAVE SEEN HIM

^^^really doesn't hold much weight with me, I'm afraid

It never fails to amaze me, the things that people will get incredibly judgmental about, and then justify their behaviour by claiming "OH BUT THOSE PEOPLE I'M JUDGING ARE SO SNOBBY AND JUDGEMENTAL". This isn't about anything except projection.

― BLEEEEEEE Monday (Branwell Bell), Monday, March 31, 2014 3:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol any more projection than you presuming to know our experiences with other people?

I used to work with someone (British) who would only go and see foreign-language films because "the quality is so much better". Surprisingly enough they didn't like any music made after 1970 or so either.

It never fails to amaze me, the things that people will get incredibly judgmental about, and then justify their behaviour by claiming "OH BUT THOSE PEOPLE I'M JUDGING ARE SO SNOBBY AND JUDGEMENTAL". This isn't about anything except projection.

You're underestimating how enjoyable this can be fwiw.

Before I moved my TV over to the new place, I was watching a 17-inch laptop screen - it kind of made me wish I went that way full time. 95% of my viewing is documentaries, mlb.tv and TV shows, I can't say I'd be missing a lot.

OTOH, I then hooked up the 55-incher and haven't seriously considered going back. Partially sunk cost - I got the big TV free and it's not worth selling so what else am I going to do with it?

I don't even know people who say, "I don't even own a TV."

I do a television census each year and anytime the person at the door says "b-b-but I don't have a tv" I reply "whassat, think you're better than me", then fling an Insignia 50" at their forehead

:D

my most recent ex frequently mentioned that she didn't have a TV but it wasn't as a badge of honor, it was a cost cutting measure. I mean she was a horrible horrible person but for reasons that had nothing to do with television ownership.

i have a tv but i don't watch it really, though my wife and i watch a small amount of movies, maybe 1-3 per month. cable packages are expensive. i have a toddler son who takes up pretty much all my time except for my job, i don't really have a lot of time to get engrossed in tv shows. like i said we do watch movies though, after my son goes to bed.

i don't brag about not watching tv but i get annoyed when sometimes all people and the internet talk about is fucking breaking bad or girls or whatever. i did watch the wire though. it took a huge chunk out of a summer a few years ago. i felt like i was probably pretty annoying b/c all i wanted to talk about with people was the wire.

Neanderthal, did you ever think that maybe you're the horrible person?

Both can be annoying but I find the second category more irritating because the non-tv-owning-snob is still kind of an underdog in the grand scheme of things whereas the person mocking them is kind of unwittingly being a bully on behalf of the status quo.

As I said in the other thread though, I feel like the "I don't even own a TV" guy has increasingly become a strawman. Maybe up through the late 90s it fit a certain recognizable profile, but I haven't heard anyone even take a side on TV ownership in many years except in context of having cable vs getting content through the internet.

I did have one friend who even up until like three years ago was all "I DON'T BELIEVE YOU THAT THE WIRE WAS GOOD, IT'S STILL TELEVISION. IT'S THE MEDIUM." Then he watched it.

Under our most conservative estimate, we find that television ownership is associated with approximately a 6% reduction in the likelihood of having had sex in the past week.

well, youd have to find something to do i spose

but most of my shows last an hour and you can go again straight away, just saying

Wohl claims Cass first contacted Surefire Intelligence about an “estate matter” involving a “dishonest accountant” in February 2018. So I asked him at the press conference how Cass contacted Surefire when Surefire didn’t have a website at the time. “She found me over the Internet,” Wohl replied. “It was either Angie’s List or Craigslist.”

Wohl says that Cass contacted him again around October 1, after seeing for the first time a photo of Mueller, who was named special counsel in May 2017. Why hadn’t Cass previously seen a photo of one of the most famous men in the news in the previous 15 months? According to Wohl, she’s not political and doesn’t watch the news. “She doesn’t even own a TV,” he told me after the press conference.

thinking about all those "oh I actually don't own a TV" people, how's that working out now bitch what are you playing jacks or something lmao grow up

— Law Boy, Esq. (@The_Law_Boy) March 16, 2020

always wondered where all those shitty 90s standups went, i guess it was to Twitter?

Coffins and crematoriums

Ant, who does not own a television, enjoys reading, particularly historical novels.

I don't own a TV but watch lots of TV, need to know how annoying I am

I don't own a TV, I just steal a new unit each day

I don't own a TV, I just break into a random person's house and watch their TV.

Seven years ago I didn't even own a TV, now I own THREE TVs, every one a secondhand gift from a friend or family member who felt sorry for us.

How soon will this be "I don't even use GPT" / "I don't even have a crypto wallet" etc

how much longer will it be before owning a television is comparable to still having a landline phone and the premise of this thread has become an anachronism?

People do love their giant screens though (even if they're no longer receiving terrestrial signals)

"i don't even own a deadly bird flu virus that killed 98% of the world"

xpost lol my friend keeps upping his screen size to the point where he's going to have a movie theater in his house.

I have the same small TV from 2012.

I don't even own a TV ah fuck

I don't even have a USB TV stick plugged into my computer.

i have 55" and tbh the criticism i have of it is that i couldve and shouldve gone to 65" now i look at it

watching normal TV (like in a hotel room) is kind of a jarring experience now.. commercials have been a thing of the past for so long that I forget that regular broadcast TV is still mostly commercials for mattresses and taco bell

I have a pretty small (by modern standards; compared to the TV of my childhood it's gigantic, of course) TV but when it arrives in my new apartment (end of this week, I think) I'm not gonna have cable or a digital antenna for network channels; I'm just gonna use it to watch Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu and Amazon Prime stuff, or maybe some of the weirdo channels that come through Samsung Plus, like there's a channel that shows nothing but episodes of Bob Ross's painting show 24/7.

In the business those are known as “FAST channels” and they are very popular and very profitable. The ads can be targeted quite precisely because everything you watch via Samsung Plus is tracked. All that activity allows them to fit you into a pretty accurate “bucket” of viewers, which makes the ads they serve you worth a lot more than the ads that get sold against some random cable channel.

How do they know who you are? You don't need to make an account to watch those Samsung Plus / Plex Live channels

Presumably because your TV has to be connected to the internet to see them...so, cookies or something like that.

Yes, same principle as the annoying amount of ads I see watching some YouTube channels on my Smart TV

I wonder if it's somewhat informed by the demographic information they already have about each specific show's viewership - probably not rocket science to bucket ads most likely to appeal to people binging Portlandia 24/7 versus [HUMOROUS COUNTER-EXAMPLE HERE]

in my life, the time i used to spend in front of the boob tube has basically just become screen time. so i don't have a TV, but i watch youtube or netflix on my laptop. try to limit that time, though, if i can. i really like and miss normal TV and enjoy watching it when my friends have the football game on.

Evan they may not know your name but that’s not the important part, the important part is your viewing history. I’m not sure about Samsung but many of these platforms also track what you do on the rest of the TV eg what searches you make, what streaming services you spend time on etc and all of that helps slot you into certain niches that they then sell to advertisers. PlutoTV is by some measures the fastest growing streaming service

"i don't even own a tv" shouldn't have in any way mapped to a statement along the lines of "i dont use a terrestrial service" it's tbh a really weird turn to take

I don't think it is a turn. The cliche is out of date. "I don't even own a TV" was about channel surfing, antennas, cable company boxes, the local news, passively watching shows you would never conceivably seek out. I once found myself transfixed by a wedding planning show when my rental unit had a cable box and I had a TV capture card in a computer. I half ass Had A TV

Now... well, ilx is kind of special. You might be able to post here on a 486. But if you're on the internet, you probably "have a TV" in the modern sense.

Our parents sold our TVs in the mid-70s. We went without for about 3-4 years, it was actually pretty glorious.

You missed the best seasons of Laverne & Shirley

I'm not sure "missed" is the right word there

what i'd say is that there's definitely something very real at the core of skepticism toward mass telecommunication, but at some point "i don't even own a TV" become a sort of spiritual materialism for people who were attached to what the idea represented but who weren't sufficiently nuanced in their thinking to understand how their own habits and consumerism essentially made it a hollow and sort of self-aggrandizing thing to say

otm

"i have my mom's netflix password but i don't even use it"

I think the instances of this being brought up as a trope are way more numerous than ppl who actually do this, but perhaps that's my echo chamber.

Surprised no one seems to have brought up Pulp Fiction! Tarantino was clowning this expression even then

“Okay, you don’t own a TV. But you know what TV is, right?”

i have 55" and tbh the criticism i have of it is that i couldve and shouldve gone to 65" now i look at it

― Ár an broc a mhic (darraghmac), Tuesday, March 28, 2023 1:58 PM (yesterday)

same

found out a friend bought the 65" new generation of the 55" model i have and briefly felt a sense of missing out

I do know people who don't own a tv and also don't watch streaming series, just read and go out to movies etc, nothing but respect tbh.

does anyone else not watch 'shows'

I also regret only going for a 50-something" TV the last time I bought one, the 65" one wasn't really that much more expensive, but I was going from a 34" and I figured this was already huge. I now realize that bigger is better, I totally want the full home theatre experience.

i don't even watch video

I try to mostly stick to watching movies, no TV series or other video content.

lol oh yeah, I already forgot about that thread

I also regret only going for a 50-something" TV the last time I bought one, the 65" one wasn't really that much more expensive, but I was going from a 34" and I figured this was already huge. I now realize that bigger is better, I totally want the full home theatre experience.

― silverfish, Wednesday, March 29, 2023 10:06 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

See, here I, the "don't own a TV" guy, really am different -- I mean, the truth is, I actually DO own a TV but I never bothered to unpack it the last time we moved, I barely even watch TV on the laptop, I watch it on the iPad, smaller and more portable is better

experiencing BEN-HUR on your apple watch the way god intended

I've never had broadcast television/DVR/cable/satellite. By the time I lived on my own in the mid 2000s, torrents and stuff like rapidshare had arrived, so I simply downloaded Lost etc. on my brand new DSL connection. I even had some nifty Mac app where I could select the shows I wanted, and it would automatically scan for when a torrent was uploaded for the latest episode and start downloading.

As such, I haven't watched TV with ads by choice in decades (i.e., not counting being in a bar with the TV on, hotel room, etc.) As Andy the Grasshopper said, it's quite jarring to see it again. It's probably my imagination but it seems like the breaks between commercials are so much shorter. I do see ads on the Roku TV app sometimes, because sometimes I'm too lazy to get up and fetch my laptop to watch a five minute video (I try to airplay/chromecast if possible to avoid even that.).

I don't watch TV, I intentionally sit in front of my 85" 8K Gigant-o-tron with my eyes closed.

Burning question of the moment: do the blind listen to tv?

Yes and in fact I learned a lot about 'audio description' for shows/movies from this podcast: https://www.20k.org/episodes/athousandwords