For the Love and Hate of Television--Lucy Whitman Sandmeyer

I'm a binge watcher: I'll lie down in with my phone held in some precarious position and watch until I can’t keep my eyes open or until my mom tells me I’m being unhealthy. Though usually that doesn’t deter me from whatever excellent series I’ve committed way too much of my time to. Ask me if I watch TV though, and I’ll say no. We’ve got maybe seven channels on my TV, and most of them frequently play advertisements for dementia medicine or dentures, so I rarely/never use the “TV” part of my TV. Instead, I’ve got Netflix and Amazon Prime and YouTube and a couple other websites that keep me entertained without (m)any advertisements. This unhindered form of TV has become more and more popular as I’ve grown up in this technological age and it’s made me beyond spoiled. It means I only watch what I want, when I want, without interruption, save for concerned parents and the occasional text or two. 

This freaks me out. I’d rather spend my live watching Bones then working and becoming a forensic anthropologist. I’d rather watch spy movies than get off my butt and workout. I’d rather live through other people, fictional people, and that’s really not good. In fact, it’s terrifying. I consider myself a pretty reasonable person but knowing I’ve spent about two and a half 24-hour days watching one series convinces me otherwise.  What I think happens is unscheduled, uninterrupted periods of relaxation happen very little in our work-centric school system (and sometimes society) so we take solace in things that require the least amount of attention possible. What this tells me, for me at least, is I need to be doing things with my life that make it more fun than living vicariously through made up people. Unfortunately, my education, while sometimes enjoyable and usually interesting, is time consuming, hard, and not a good enough incentive to stop turning my brain into mild mush, full of unnecessary TV plot facts. So I’m going to keep watching my Bones, and Narcos, and Buffy, and Marvel movies/AOS, and feel bad about it but good enough not to stop.