It's an easy way to find common ground for casual conversation. Same goes for sport, mention the latest $popular_sport_match and you're bound to find that at least a few people will have seen it, or heard enough about it to make conversation.
For some sports it's even an international thing. I don't really follow rugby, but when I was recently in Fiji, I spent a fair bit of time talking about rugby and the Lions tour that was on at the time, because it was something that I could talk about with most British and South African people. Obviously, you can't go to another country and talk about the Red Sox, but for international sports, it's a great conversation starter.
Same goes for things TV shows like Game of Thrones, everyone watches GoT.
It's the same with the weather, it's an absolutely banal topic, but it's a common ground, we are all experiencing the weather.
There's no way you're going to know any reference, just ask, there you go you started a conversation.
I was afraid of this race-to-the-bottom scenario on campus at my university (and probably any university across America).
People would bring their cell phones into the dining halls and the student center. This isn't a problem if a few people do it, but it almost seems contagious to me. When people disconnect themselves from the public, while they are in public, it destroys the whole purpose of being in public. They become absorbed in their phones, which eliminates any possibility of meeting a new friend or starting a conversation. That in turn causes other people, who would have done those social things, to turn to their phones so they may go to the only place they may now communicate: social media.
It all seems so silly: hundreds of students in a student center or other public space, all heads down focused on their phones. Then what was the point of having a student center in the first place? I feel bad for people who struggle with forming new relationships, as the public space is decreasingly helping those people meet others.
My university president even mentioned in a "fireside chat" video that a great challenge our campus faced was a student engagement problem. I wonder why? Not like the university did anything toward that effort... in fact, they installed even more televisions in all the dining halls across campus.
I'll shamelessly admit, though many would disagree with me, that I hope one day in the near future public store owners, campus owners, etc. all ban screens (phones and TVs) in public spaces. It's fine to use them in your home, but I believe it's destroying the social fabric when everyone is always glued to a screen, even in public.
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Also relevant: when I was young my mom was concerned that I was addicted to the computer. She wasn't wrong.
But at least my addiction is limited to the private realm. It would be impractical to lug around a desktop computer everywhere I went to extract every precious minute of entertainment possible. The stereotype of the guy playing World of WarCraft in his mom's basement is at least limited to that basement.
Today we have the equivalent of those guys and girls playing WoW in their mom's basement, but it's not in the basement... it's everywhere.
I think there is something different with mobile devices though, I've seen kids using iPads before and they barely manage a couple of minutes in one app or game before they switch out to another. I really how this sort of behaviour is going to manifest when they grow up, are we heading for a generation with zero patience and attention span? I see it even in adults these days.
One thing I got really good at as a kid was being patient. When waiting for an appointment, I'll usually sit there and wait without staring at a screen. It's nice to have a few minutes to just do nothing.
There's plenty of time in the day to teach a 6 year old to program, no worries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14909897
My opinion, of course.
I maintain a blog about a passionate subject and receive literally no hits at all.
Every week I ask myself who I'm really doing this for...
(Don't look, it's not there)
I don't miss the black mirror when it's turned off.
I don't miss making special space in my house for another screen.
I don't miss Netflix.
It has forced me to be more conscious about what I want to watch, and where and how.
I'm all for demoting the object in terms of rooms, but if you rid your house of it completely I'm not sure what you mean by deciding what, where, and how to watch television?
We still watch TV shows and Movies, periodically, but on a short-throw projector.
This takes up less room by day, of course, and because we have a convenient wall or blind to use as the screen it also doesn't lend to a 'circle of chairs around the TV' visual that I expect some people do not like. And, of course, if doing a genuine time-fill there's laptop, desktop, or tablet to catch up on something - though the comparatively low-quality experience seems to mean this happens less frequently.
Because it takes some small amount of effort to set up, and bulb life is a gentle back-of-mind consideration, we tend to watch TV in the evenings, and intentionally.
A perhaps subtle distinction, but I know enough people who've grown up with the TV on all the time, and who now find that so normal that they've inflicted the same thing on their own children. Visiting the homes of people with an always-on TV puts me in the same mood as having to listen to talk-back radio, anything with adverts, 'news' video+audio at train stations, and so on - viz. foul.
As an aside, decent projectors are around AUD $1k - less than a TV with a smaller display (albeit a better objective quality). For people who don't have an always-on approach to TV, it's a good option in terms of cost, experience and gentle encouragement of being more thoughtful with what / when you watch.
But just getting the device out of our home space means that I won't, like the author of this post, relapse into old habits! :)
If the author if this article felt getting rid of their TV made it easier for them to live the life they want to live, I don't understand at all why so many people in this thread feel the need to criticize that.
Imagine an obese people wrote some blog post about throwing out all the cookies in their cabinet so they wouldn't be as tempted to eat them. We'd applaud that. Likewise, an alcoholic quitting their job bartending to get to a better environment.
But when it comes to media addiction, well... maybe it hits a little too close to home for many of us? Easier to criticize someone who tries to do better than to take an uncomfortable look in the mirror.
I loved not having a phone for a while, then used a tablet for a few things that were more convenient by app than website, in addition to a PAYG Nokia in case of emergency (in the car, or at home where I have no landline) and eventually bought a cheap smartphone in Amazon's prime day sale to combine those two functions.
But the result is that I use my 'phone' like a tabket: it's never in my pocket, and it functions as a phone only ICE. I'm not sure I'd have done that and stuck to it if the transition had been direct from daily 'normal' smartphone use. I was never 'addicted' any more than the average person, I've never been into Snapchat et al., but I suppose I was close enough to notice and harbour distaste for that trend.
Yeah, the above is a little snotty, and if TV was becoming a problem for him and removing it was the only way he could keep himself from wasting too much time on it, fine. But linking that process to taking up vinyl (for unexplained reasons) is a strange turn at the end of the post.
For me, TV is fine. I've been enjoying GoT episodes on Sunday night for the last few weeks. I don't consider an enjoyable show a time-sink, unless you binge-watch for days on end (that's a rarity for me).
As others have said, my cell phone and a variety of interesting websites {cough, cough ... HN ..cough} take-up MUCH more of my time. I'm definitely considering a break from my smart phone, the habits I've developed seem unhealthy. That being said, I would never use my phone at a urinal!
Had we been in the late nineties, author would have taking up trick yo-yos.
"Replacing it with a turntable went even further. Do you have any idea how complicated it is to play music on those things? I didn’t. Playing a record usually involves removing the dust it easily collects, as well as cleaning the stylus (the part that comes in contact with the record). Records have 2 sides, each containing a little over 20 minutes worth of music, so you have to flip them. Some albums take up 2 or even 3 records.
I’m pretty sure I’ll never become addicted to that process. But its length is what’s great about it. The time it takes to setup prompts me to pause and enjoy the experience. Now ask yourself, when’s the last time you took a breath and enjoyed the music?"
Come on man, who are you trying to appease? It's not yourself.
Modern music is a click away. And dismissing it for the next track is another click away. Folks have confused the activity (listening) with the instant-gratification/enjoyment of the music. Both are important. Else the music just becomes so much cotton-candy sugar to our senses. Instead of an experience.
I wonder if it will ever become socially unacceptable to hand your phone to someone else, to show a photo or whatever.
