TV Turn-Off Week: Rising to the Challenge
Posted by Skrud at Tuesday, April 25th 2006 at 10:34am
It’s official TV Turn-Off Week. The challenge is to unplug your cable for an entire week, and try to live without TV. The timing couldn’t be better: it’s exam period, after all.
Kathy Sierra, highlight of my morning syndicated feeds, invites her readers to rise up to the challenge.
So, is there anyone here who isn’t already diligent with their Tivo, who is willing to disable the TV tuner (unplug cable/antennas, etc.) for a week and watch DVDs or shows on the computer? (Under the assumption that for most, viewing habits change dramatically when you shift from having television available 24-7 vs. watching specific shows–as mindful choices–on a computer.)
I think the point is to quit being a slave to the television: turning it on for the sake of having it on, as oppose for the explicit purpose of watching a specific show. There’s a key difference in watching something because you’ve conciously made a decision to do so. So I’m going to give this a shot. As long as I have Diggnation, I think I’ll be fine.
Officially, TV Turn-Off Week started yesterday, so I’m going to make up for the day missed by going up to and including next Monday.
Good idea! Being a slave to the tv implies being a slave to Ads, which is bad. Really bad. We spend more time watching ads than actually shows, so why not just unplug the darn thing! The only problem with the challenge would be the Habs during the series. Who would want to miss a game? Ok, I get it, back in the 20s with the radio on and the images in your head!
2 words: Hockey Playoffs.
No way.
I think people are following in the words of what is said, but not in the SPIRIT of what is being said.. If you really wanted to take part, you should turn your computer off for a week too. Because quite frankly, there’s no difference between the two, except PC’s ACTIVLY rot your mind, whereas TV’s do it PASSIVELY.
Whatever, I don’t watch TV anyways. I’ll take part only because I don’t need to change anything. Fuck TV and everything on it.
Gotta agree with Fig on this one. For me, after living for four months without TV, one week feels like nothing.
Now living for a week without a computer, or more specifically, without an Internet connection, there’s a real challenge.
In reference to FiG, part of the spirit is to turn off your mind to the advertising.
I don’t think I’m ready to go without my computer for a week. At least not until I’m well out of range of my family. I think the worst thing ever would be to have to spend a week talking with my dad … (ah well, another rant in the making).
I agree with FiG. Well, partially because Assuming most of the advertising I’m exposed to are from the browser and email, I am exposed to much less advertising than TV because of my sweet little adblock-noscript-enabled fox, GMail filtering and POPFile. Well, that’s a bold thing to say. The ads are not as intrusive as in TV, that’s for sure. The days of the flashing banners and annyoing Flash ads are mostly gone for me.
Still, I am exposed to a considerable amount of junk on the net. The news websites have exploding headlines that have mostly nothing to do with reality.
In any way, except watching Discovery Channel once a week or so I realy don’t watch TV. Turning off Internet access, well THAT would be a challenge.
There’s alot of advertising on the internet.. In fact, I would say WAY more than there is on TV..
Once you leave the hallowed ground of Skrud.net, there’s not many sites that dont’ have some pretty obvious advertising schemes.
To tell you the truth, I don’t mind advertising on the internet.. it’s the way it shoudl be.. I’ll take an internet bogged by advertising and spam, over an internet which is controlled and censored by the government ANY DAY!
The only good thing about advertising on the Internet is that it’s becoming more “relevant” (for lack of a better word) for those seeing them compared to TV ads.
Google ads are a good example. They’re usually related to what you’re searching for or the content of the website you’re visiting.
I can,t really participate at that challenge, because i,m already not listening to the television. i think it,s was the best thing in my life to do!
How relevant are spam messages? How relevant is ANY non-google banner on ANY website?
And what I was saying is that some of the tools today are getting better and better to block ads. We’re still exposed, ofcourse. But we do chose what sites we take. Although, as I mentioned, many of the ads are actually hidden. The explosive news headlines are examples: they are meant to enthril you to make you prefer this site over others, or get your appeal towards something the news-writer wants. Even films we download have hidden ads in them: films we made our best to avoid watching on TV or in cinema to avoid the ads come to the internet still infected with ads. James Bond is an example.