The Television is Cancer - 2016-05-23
If there is one thing that I have noticed in both the U.S. and Spain which annoys me the most, it's the addiction there is to the television. Of course, by television I am not only referring to the physical TV unit but also when watching TV programmes (or YouTube series for that matter) on an electronic device such as the TV, phone, laptop, or whatever you can watch endless hours of meaningless content on. It has reached the point that the television basically controls most peoples' lives. People will change their daily routine just to watch a series, something that I find extremely excessive. People let the TV series control their lives and let it determine when they eat, when they sleep, what activities they do, it's basically like a job... except you get nothing out of it except for a temporary numbness that distracts you from your real-life problems (huh, sounds like an addiction, doesn't it?).
However, I personally don't care if someone wants to do such a thing to themselves, it's your choice how much you want to destroy your life on pointless content which won't help you get anywhere in life. My issue is when people want to impose it as part of the already pathetic _small talk_ which consists of nothing more than pointless statements that just about anyone can agree with because they're extremely objective! (unless you are talking to a 'Social Justice Warrior' in which case whatever you say is somehow disagreeable and makes you a horrible person). So since people have finally discovered that 'small talk' has a lack of substance to it (seriously, how much substance can you get from sports and other extremely simple topics of conversation) they decided that it should be filled with even more insubstancial information by saying how amazing a TV series is and how great a certain scene was, how much they hate a certain character, and how the newer season isn't as good as the older one. Again, stuff that, for the most part, everyone agrees with!
So, how does this affect me? Because when I meet someone new the first thing they try to talk to me about is the newest season of who knows what show that everyone likes nowadays, and I have to respond with "What's your favorite GNU/Linux distro?" or "What's your opinion on the Chinese economy?" (you know, topics with a little more relevance and importance in the world).
Now, of course, this isn't all TV programmes, there are some (mostly documentaries) which have a lot of interesting and important content, and it's not that I hate anything that doesn't teach you something either, I love anime, there's very little material of importance in most anime. My issue is when people make their lives revolve around what they watch and force me into it because that's the only thing they know enough about to have a so-called 'in-depth conversation' about (when in reality it's not even in-depth considering their level of knowledge of the actual shows they're watching in terms of cinematography).
So, please, keep your bad TV habits to yourselves unless mutual interest is explicitly stated, in which case go full throttle ahead.
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