It's A Twisted Life According To Gene

< It was bound to happen sooner or later. The invention of a video-capable mass communication device was pretty nifty, as are all new distractions. Don’t you agree?
So now you got it; what exactly do you do with it? Well, back in the 30’s they started making them commercially available, and people began figuring out how to make people want one. Entertainment was the big draw. You know, variety shows and such. Television helped news travel faster, too, but then radio, which had been around longer, was already doing a pretty good job of that.
It started off innocently enough alright. Most people were able to get a handful of stations offering a variety of distractions. The stations themselves shut down for the night, usually with the Star Spangled Banner and a video of a flag waving in the breeze. Then on came The Indian with his high pitched sound wave.

Then the morph began. Some people enjoyed being distracted so much that they wanted more. The people who delivered the entertainment began testing different forms of distraction, trying to find the limits. More people were becoming attracted. And the broadcasters began figuring it out. Just about anything they could dream up would garner an audience.
For a while, the regularly broadcasted shows were slightly glorified versions of life in America. They were mostly true to life in the good parts, and really didn’t deal in the bad parts. It was an exaggeration of the ideal family life. Something to strive for, I suppose, but something to fail against as well.
Advertisers began seeing the wisdom in flashing their goods before us as often as possible right from the start. Companies began pouring money into television advertising, sometimes becoming the sole sponsor of an entire program. They wanted input into the viewer capturing, and the censorship issues. They wanted to find the limits also, but they were adding a new dimension, they were studying people. They wanted to figure out how to make you think about their products, their brands.
Eventually, people began watching more and more television. Stay at home moms found the electronic baby sitter to be a very useful tool. Those on the go would tune in to the morning news to get the weather before they rushed out the door. On more than a few occasions, when the television was left on, the distraction would suck the stay-at-homes into the “stories.” Soap opera breaks were the norm for many a harried housewife. Between the soaps and the kiddie shows, the tube burned all day long. When the bread winners got home there was news to watch and maybe a sporting event to help them unwind from a hard day at the salt mines. Television was offering something for everybody, and everybody wanted something. Small portable television sets even began showing up on the kitchen counter in the hopes that more work might be accomplished.
Before long every room in the house was equipped with a television set. The need to converse with others was quickly disappearing. Public gathering places such as taverns and restaurants all had television sets installed. In stores where televisions were sold, it became a common sight to see people glued to the screens, watching, always watching.

Today there are hundreds of stations, broadcast, cable, and satellite. Twenty four hours a day, three hundred sixty five days a year, they have the capacity to invade our space. The nature of the new “reality” shows has turned us into Peeping Toms. The twenty four hour news stations, which aren’t really “news.” instruct us as to what we should be thinking. The advertising is now aimed at titillating us into buying, buying, buying. Once we are hooked, the cable and satellite sellers, just like drug dealers, keep raising the prices. Is it any wonder we have become a nation of morons?
My darling, Pretty, and I have abandoned television. We have not even owned a television set for the last two years. We don’t miss it. Time that was once wasted in front of the screen watching reruns of Leave It to Beaver is used to actually communicate among ourselves and with others. We read, we write, we explore the world around us.
Admittedly, we know little to nothing about who is winning American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, or Celebrity Apprentice. On occasion we run into folks who know nothing but who is at the top of the heap in those endeavors, and we find them very difficult to communicate with. How do you keep from laughing at the look on their face when a drooling chatterbox stops talking in mid-sentence about some jock doing the foxtrot, because it just dawned on them what, “I don’t watch television, we don’t even own a television set” means?