People Who Don’t Have A TV
That is a life choice, and one that you have every right to make. Making that choice does not automatically turn you into Einstein or Ghandi or some sort of a saint. You are not better than people who have tvs any more than people who don’t have boats are better than those who do. In fact, the way some of you go on and on about your Super Hipster Wonderfulness…you might be a little bit worse.
People Who Have Cancelled Their Cable
This is kind of a subset of the first one. In this economy it’s pretty common anymore for people to think “here’s a hundred bucks or two I could use for, like, food and stuff.” So there are a lot of people cancelling their cable. They can see and apply announcement #1 with the following addendum:
Stop telling everyone about it like you’re Warren Buffet or Alan Greenspan. It’s a basic household budget decision, not some great economic plan. We are not impressed.
People Who Get Their TV Shows Via Hulu
Yes, you’re smart. You’re hip and you’re cool. But you made that choice and so you can stay out of Twitter or off Facebook or, at the very least, off the forum talk boards for certain shows. Nothing is more aggravating than gathering to talk about a show only to have some budget-conscious hipster start raving about “Stop! I can’t see it until tomorrow! We Watch it on HULU!!!” If you save money by watching a show with a 24-hour delay, don’t hang around the water cooler.
People Who Watch Shows Via Netflix
These people are a thousand times worse and they drive me nuts. If you are getting a show in packaged form on Netflix that means you aren’t seeing it until two to ten months have passed. Do NOT go into someone else’s conversation where they are plainly talking about the show and then yell at them for spoiling it for you. This actually happened to me this morning. If you know you won’t see Eureka’s current season until Thanksgiving, don’t go to someone’s Facebook conversation about last night’s episode. Honestly.
Also, maybe you better not post snotty, snooty highbrow tweets like “Finally watching LOST on Netflix. Thought I’d try to see what all the fuss was about.” I know that you want to spin it like you aren’t the last kid on your block with X-Ray Specs, but this makes you come off like a tool.
People Who Watch Shows Via Pirate Bay
Honestly? Screw you. Just. SCREW YOU. I don’t say that often. But I say it now and I mean it.
I pay for HBO. That doesn’t make me a sucker; that doesn’t make me gullible; that doesn’t mean I’m wealthy. It means that I am a grown-up and I pay money for things that are for sale. I don’t steal.
You’re not striking some blow for Open Source. You’re just a cheap jerk who has no problem downloading Game Of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood even though you don’t pay for HBO.
Mad Men is on AMC đŸ™‚
That’s right! I have a mental block against that show. I keep assuming it’s on HBO because my brother has Mad Men/TrueBlood viewing parties on Sunday nights. Or “had” when they were both on. So in my mind they’re linked like that. Either way…I pay for AMC too. (Sons Of Anarchy FTW!…oh wait. That’s FX. What’s AMC? Oh yeah. Walking Dead. ::small yay::)
But yes – tons of like for this post, especially the content thieves. I may be cancelling uVerse for budget reasons but that doesn’t make me a saint. It just makes me budget conscious. And I like my Netflix but if I ever harp about how it’s greater than sliced bread (not bad but kinda ok) – remind me of this post.
I love love love both Netflix and Hulu. Honestly, most of what I watch is via Netflix and Hulu and HBO.
But I seem to keep finding myself in these Hipster Death Matches. TWOP and some of the threads on Westeros.org are especially bad.
We watch everything via Netflix, but I have never really had issues simply avoiding spoilers. However it is nice when people give a spoiler alert of some sort first so I know when to avoid. I’ve been aggravated a time or two when people post a Facebook status such as “I can’t believe the killed off So-and-so.”
Not that I’ve ever noticed you doing such things. Such as your Eureka blog post was clearly labeled as contains spoilers to I simply didn’t read it.
Yeah, I think the etiquette goes both ways. I’m STILL miffed over people who spoiled the gold medal hockey game during the last Olympics because we were at some meeting and had to watch it delayed by 30 minutes.
I don’t post naked show comments on any short form thing (ie. facebook or Twitter). My live tweets for GoT are not giving away plot points.
At the same time, if a person says in her Facebook Status “that episode of Eureka we just watched blew me away” and someone else comes along into the comments and says “don’t tell me anymore…etc.” … UGH>>>>
Trying to figure out how to tell my FB friend nicely (she is a fellow church member) to stay out of that Eureka discussion if she doesn’t want to know how it turns out. That is kind of typical behavior for her.
I thought your solution worked well. I was tempted to say pretty much the same thing, but since it was your thread and your friend, I just opted to add it to this post–which was already half-written in my mind after Sunday’s GoT debacles.
Well, I grew up without a TV. And, from this side of the divide, a lot of what you perceive as “going on and on” and bragging looks more likely to be explanation. TV and TV shows are pretty central to our culture; the assumption is that everyone watches TV and is ready to discuss it. So there are numerous times in a week when a person is asked “do you watch ______?” or “can you imagine what just happened to ______________?” And the only possible response (if one has no TV) is “sorry, I don’t have a TV.” Those people have to talk about it a lot because they get asked about it a lot. They’d probably just as soon be able to have a conversation in which the issue doesn’t come up.
No. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about people posting things about TV shows to their FB and then adding comments like “This is the garbage that is rotting the brains of everyone in the country. So glad WE never bought a TV.”
Or if I mention a TV show that I watch responding to me with “really? You watch TV? I thought you were smarter than that.”
Or if I write a post about Game Of Thrones’ problems with oversexualising the adaptations and forgoing essential book plots in favour of adding brothel scenes unrelated to any of the plot threads and the other person responding with “Well what do you expect from TV. It’s a base medium and the people who watch it have destroyed their brains already.”
And several other similar examples. The way I see it, the choice to watch tv is a leisure time option. There are positives and there are drawbacks, just as with most options that face people in their lifetimes.
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Also let me add that growing up in a Mennonite church I knew several kids whose families didn’t have TVs. We never mocked them or made them feel out of touch in youth group but they did get picked on at school. So I know there’s a probably a bit of defensiveness in some people’s stance on the issue.
Defensiveness, certainly. Though IIRC it wasn’t so much being picked on as having repeatedly to assure incredulous people that, no, really, we didn’t have a TV. And the absolutely not understanding what was going on in many conversations, and asking about it, and being told very dismissively “it’s about something on TV,” thus shutting me out of the conversation.
By the time I was in about 4th grade, there were a couple of other girls in the class who also had no TV at home, so it became more accepted.
I don’t have a TV, but I follow a couple shows on Hulu and Amazon. (Fringe and The Killing)
That make me bad?
Not at all. With the life circumstances we’ve been through lately I didn’t word this as carefully as normal.
My issue isn’t with how people receive their shows–as long as it isn’t stealing.
It’s with the times people who watch shows that way (on delay) expect to not be spoiled. I’ve run into this multiple times of late. Like more than two dozen separate occasions.
People come to fora where shows are discussed immediately after the shows air and these people berate folks for spoiling them. That’s my issue.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
I should also add that I follow some shows on Netflix and Hulu out of season my self. ‘In Plain Sight’ and ‘The Killing’
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
Like you, I pay for my HBO specifically for Game of Thrones..and because I’m far too impatient to wait for the DVDs.
HBO is an interesting player in combating the acquiring of content by alternate means. From what I’ve read, they put out their peer-to-peer copies of shows so they can track if you’re acquiring them this way and can then send you the nasty-gram saying you should stop doing so. I have to admit I love their craftiness.