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Why I watch television on the computer. And why it sucks.
So, pretty much as soon as I got this assignment, I realized one of the problems with my preference for watching everything either streaming or downloaded - after no problems for over a year, my wireless decided to betray me! That put me out of the television watching business for about three days. So, I actually only wound up watching three hours of television during the assigned period. I was not even so much in the television watching mood when I started, so much as I was thinking, “Oh! I better watch something or I’ll have nothing to write about!” So, I caught up on two episodes of “Skins”, which is a brilliant British television show that I would not be able to watch alongside British people were it not for the computer. The first episode I downloaded from a super secret tv show sharing community, but no one had posted the second one yet, and I finally found it divided into 6 parts on youtube. That was moderately irritating, but I got to watch it, so I don’t really care. On the last day of the assignment, I watched an episode of “Heroes” streaming on Hulu.
Watching things on the internet is great because you can watch them whenever you feel like it and you can pause them and do other things and come back. My attention span for watching hour long shows isn’t what it used to be. I like to pause and check my email, tweet comments about the show on twitter, and sometimes talk to a friend on instant messenger while watching, especially if they’ve seen the episode already. That way, I can discuss it with them while I’m watching it, even though I still pause it even if it’s just to make a quick comment, because I don’t like to miss anything. This means I will actually spend like three hours watching an hour show, or something like that. I’m probably exaggerating, but certainly double the time if I’m trying to chat simultaneously. Actually, this would be easier to do if I was watching television on the television, because I wouldn’t need to pause anything, because no window would be covering another window. My friend and I, every week, used to watch “Roswell” together and text back and forth the entire time. Before I even had a computer and was still new to having a cell phone.
My parents always have their television on, whenever they’re awake, and my sister used to be the same way when we shared a room. When she moved out, I was so excited to finally turn the tv off, that now I just never turn it on. I remember years of trying to read books with the tv in the background, and it was really annoying. Yet I do grow nostalgic for the routine of things, the same tv shows rerunning on channel 11 every late week night - the voices of “Friends” and “Frasier” characters as familiar as those of my own family. I even used to have a tv walkman ,which picked up tv channels instead of radio stations, and I loved that thing! It didn’t always pick up strong signals, but it was amazing at the time to be in a car, driving somewhere or walking somewhere and listening to a tv show I would otherwise be missing. I have really good memories of wandering around Miami on vacation with my family listening to Bianca’s coming out episode from “All My Children.” My sister and I used to record our favorite episodes of our favorite tv shows or whole tv show marathons on audio tape to listen to in walkmen in the car too, and we could listen to those for hours. I’m pretty fond of the audio without the visuals, you pay more attention to the dialogue and sound effects and you can recreate the scenes in your own head, so it’s more active than watching something on an ipod. It’s also just a different way of experiencing a show, although, as shows get more and more complicated, you certainly wouldn’t watch a show for the first time that way. Imagine how confusing an episode of “Lost” would be!
I do miss "Buffy Tuesdays" and looking forward to specific nights for specific shows even though half the time I managed to have some time conflict and had to watch things on tape rather than when they were actually on anyway, but at least it would generally be the same night. I actually started watching tv on the tv again in actual time, briefly, for the last season of “Battlestar Galactica” so I could go discuss it with people online as soon as it was over! That was pretty exciting, rushing to get dinner before and everything so I could be in my room the moment it started. Very nostalgic. Definitely, the easier it becomes to watch a tv show, the less exciting it gets. The easier it is to do anything, the less exciting it gets. Like, I used to rush out to buy new cds and that was terribly exciting, but now it’s like why bother? You can just download everything. Yeah, technology pretty much is sucking all the fun out of things. I used to have a whole collection of carefully labelled Buffy, Melrose Place, Dawson’s Creek video tapes complete with all the old commercials and everything, and I wound up throwing them out and getting the DVDs. The DVDs are very much not the same. I miss starting watching a series in the middle, and if you didn’t know what was going on? That’s it, you’d just be stuck trying to figure out what happened in the earlier episodes. Maybe they’d rerun them in the summer. Now you want to start watching a show, you download it in order. Boring!!
Furthermore, we spend our entire lives on computers. For school, for work, for chatting with long distance friends, for the million other things that I do because I’m probably clinically addicted to the stupid internet. The last thing in the world we need is to spend more time on the darn thing! At least watching tv on the tv would be an escape from the computer.
Before I owned a computer and I just used school labs, I used to sit in front of the tv with a notebook and a pen and write notes on television shows and then I’d write up a whole review/reaction thing to type up and post on one of my forums at the school lab the next day. Television and the internet have been intertwined for me as long as I can remember, before I even had a computer.
This whole paper made me so nostalgic for television on the television, I got up and put on the first thing I found, so now I’m half-watching CSI Miami (never seen it before) while I write this and it’s making writing this easier, as I feel distracted but just distracted enough to not be obsessively editing and deleting everything I write which is what makes writing everything for school awful for me and take forever. Besides, it’s a television class, so this is strangely appropriate, probably.
There’s something lovely about having the television on. It really does make you feel less lonely, like people are always telling me. It connects you to the world, as you are sharing an experience with all these other people at the same time. Real time is pretty glorious that way. I’m watching the same boring sofa commercial as many others are right now! I don’t even know when any of my shows are actually on. I don’t even know what networks some of them are on. They just show up for download and Hulu. I would have to figure all that out were I to attempt to change my ways. And some things I couldn’t watch anyway, like Big Love, because it’s on HBO and I don’t get HBO. So yes, television on the internet serves a purpose, if you want to watch shows you can’t otherwise (foreign, premium cable) and it spares you from having to rush out and buy videotapes so you don’t miss your favorite shows while you’re in class or out with friends. Of course, tivo and dvr have the same function, but I know seriously nothing about either of those. Plus, if you watch television on the television, inevitably at some point you will wind up with the News on your screen and be too lazy to change the channel, so you will wind up informed about at least local and possibly global events, whether you really want to or not.
I’d be happier if my remote control worked, but, wow, watching television is awesome! I can’t believe I’ve wasted all this time not watching it. Also, if you watch tv and flip channels, you’re bound to stumble onto something you never would have watched otherwise, which could be really wonderful. You could find a whole new show. Instead of only exposing yourself to things you already know you like, or decided to start downloading based on recommendations. There are so many interesting things you could just never know about...like there are movies that are in theaters and I don’t know a thing about them because I haven’t seen any ads ! I miss ads!
In conclusion, I’m going back to watching the shows I can watch on the television and spending more time watching television and less time hanging out on the internet. That’s not true. I’ll probably just do both at the same time, but then at least my mind will be doing more at once so...that’s good, I think. Distracting sensory overload. Merging technologies is overall of the bad. No more television on the computer!
So, pretty much as soon as I got this assignment, I realized one of the problems with my preference for watching everything either streaming or downloaded - after no problems for over a year, my wireless decided to betray me! That put me out of the television watching business for about three days. So, I actually only wound up watching three hours of television during the assigned period. I was not even so much in the television watching mood when I started, so much as I was thinking, “Oh! I better watch something or I’ll have nothing to write about!” So, I caught up on two episodes of “Skins”, which is a brilliant British television show that I would not be able to watch alongside British people were it not for the computer. The first episode I downloaded from a super secret tv show sharing community, but no one had posted the second one yet, and I finally found it divided into 6 parts on youtube. That was moderately irritating, but I got to watch it, so I don’t really care. On the last day of the assignment, I watched an episode of “Heroes” streaming on Hulu.
Watching things on the internet is great because you can watch them whenever you feel like it and you can pause them and do other things and come back. My attention span for watching hour long shows isn’t what it used to be. I like to pause and check my email, tweet comments about the show on twitter, and sometimes talk to a friend on instant messenger while watching, especially if they’ve seen the episode already. That way, I can discuss it with them while I’m watching it, even though I still pause it even if it’s just to make a quick comment, because I don’t like to miss anything. This means I will actually spend like three hours watching an hour show, or something like that. I’m probably exaggerating, but certainly double the time if I’m trying to chat simultaneously. Actually, this would be easier to do if I was watching television on the television, because I wouldn’t need to pause anything, because no window would be covering another window. My friend and I, every week, used to watch “Roswell” together and text back and forth the entire time. Before I even had a computer and was still new to having a cell phone.
My parents always have their television on, whenever they’re awake, and my sister used to be the same way when we shared a room. When she moved out, I was so excited to finally turn the tv off, that now I just never turn it on. I remember years of trying to read books with the tv in the background, and it was really annoying. Yet I do grow nostalgic for the routine of things, the same tv shows rerunning on channel 11 every late week night - the voices of “Friends” and “Frasier” characters as familiar as those of my own family. I even used to have a tv walkman ,which picked up tv channels instead of radio stations, and I loved that thing! It didn’t always pick up strong signals, but it was amazing at the time to be in a car, driving somewhere or walking somewhere and listening to a tv show I would otherwise be missing. I have really good memories of wandering around Miami on vacation with my family listening to Bianca’s coming out episode from “All My Children.” My sister and I used to record our favorite episodes of our favorite tv shows or whole tv show marathons on audio tape to listen to in walkmen in the car too, and we could listen to those for hours. I’m pretty fond of the audio without the visuals, you pay more attention to the dialogue and sound effects and you can recreate the scenes in your own head, so it’s more active than watching something on an ipod. It’s also just a different way of experiencing a show, although, as shows get more and more complicated, you certainly wouldn’t watch a show for the first time that way. Imagine how confusing an episode of “Lost” would be!
I do miss "Buffy Tuesdays" and looking forward to specific nights for specific shows even though half the time I managed to have some time conflict and had to watch things on tape rather than when they were actually on anyway, but at least it would generally be the same night. I actually started watching tv on the tv again in actual time, briefly, for the last season of “Battlestar Galactica” so I could go discuss it with people online as soon as it was over! That was pretty exciting, rushing to get dinner before and everything so I could be in my room the moment it started. Very nostalgic. Definitely, the easier it becomes to watch a tv show, the less exciting it gets. The easier it is to do anything, the less exciting it gets. Like, I used to rush out to buy new cds and that was terribly exciting, but now it’s like why bother? You can just download everything. Yeah, technology pretty much is sucking all the fun out of things. I used to have a whole collection of carefully labelled Buffy, Melrose Place, Dawson’s Creek video tapes complete with all the old commercials and everything, and I wound up throwing them out and getting the DVDs. The DVDs are very much not the same. I miss starting watching a series in the middle, and if you didn’t know what was going on? That’s it, you’d just be stuck trying to figure out what happened in the earlier episodes. Maybe they’d rerun them in the summer. Now you want to start watching a show, you download it in order. Boring!!
Furthermore, we spend our entire lives on computers. For school, for work, for chatting with long distance friends, for the million other things that I do because I’m probably clinically addicted to the stupid internet. The last thing in the world we need is to spend more time on the darn thing! At least watching tv on the tv would be an escape from the computer.
Before I owned a computer and I just used school labs, I used to sit in front of the tv with a notebook and a pen and write notes on television shows and then I’d write up a whole review/reaction thing to type up and post on one of my forums at the school lab the next day. Television and the internet have been intertwined for me as long as I can remember, before I even had a computer.
This whole paper made me so nostalgic for television on the television, I got up and put on the first thing I found, so now I’m half-watching CSI Miami (never seen it before) while I write this and it’s making writing this easier, as I feel distracted but just distracted enough to not be obsessively editing and deleting everything I write which is what makes writing everything for school awful for me and take forever. Besides, it’s a television class, so this is strangely appropriate, probably.
There’s something lovely about having the television on. It really does make you feel less lonely, like people are always telling me. It connects you to the world, as you are sharing an experience with all these other people at the same time. Real time is pretty glorious that way. I’m watching the same boring sofa commercial as many others are right now! I don’t even know when any of my shows are actually on. I don’t even know what networks some of them are on. They just show up for download and Hulu. I would have to figure all that out were I to attempt to change my ways. And some things I couldn’t watch anyway, like Big Love, because it’s on HBO and I don’t get HBO. So yes, television on the internet serves a purpose, if you want to watch shows you can’t otherwise (foreign, premium cable) and it spares you from having to rush out and buy videotapes so you don’t miss your favorite shows while you’re in class or out with friends. Of course, tivo and dvr have the same function, but I know seriously nothing about either of those. Plus, if you watch television on the television, inevitably at some point you will wind up with the News on your screen and be too lazy to change the channel, so you will wind up informed about at least local and possibly global events, whether you really want to or not.
I’d be happier if my remote control worked, but, wow, watching television is awesome! I can’t believe I’ve wasted all this time not watching it. Also, if you watch tv and flip channels, you’re bound to stumble onto something you never would have watched otherwise, which could be really wonderful. You could find a whole new show. Instead of only exposing yourself to things you already know you like, or decided to start downloading based on recommendations. There are so many interesting things you could just never know about...like there are movies that are in theaters and I don’t know a thing about them because I haven’t seen any ads ! I miss ads!
In conclusion, I’m going back to watching the shows I can watch on the television and spending more time watching television and less time hanging out on the internet. That’s not true. I’ll probably just do both at the same time, but then at least my mind will be doing more at once so...that’s good, I think. Distracting sensory overload. Merging technologies is overall of the bad. No more television on the computer!
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Mostly I just like being able to say "I don't own a TV." and have ppl look at me funny. I love it.