After 3 months without TV...

[Ladyhawk]

...the magazine rack in the grocery store appalled me. Who CARES about Brad Pitt's love life? Where is the real news?

The masses are being lulled into complacency and presented with smoke screen. Unbelievable!

[genieroze]

1. Where is the real news? You are reading it. eom

[Warpy]

2. TV news is worse than useless, it's damaging us

Jon Stewart was right about that. Those blowdried bobbleheads who are being paid to spread propaganda are hurting us.

I haven't watched TV news since 11/2. I can't imagine watching it again in the forseeable future.

Cognitive dissonance has diminished, and I imagine my blood pressure has dropped.

I barely know who these "stars" are, and I like it that way. I'll get my news of the world online, thanks.

[UdoKier]

3. Don't forget all the homoerotic Men's Finess mags...

What the hell is with the explosion of those things lately? How many magazines do you need to get in shape?

[mhr]

4. Congrats On Your Withdrawal - It Gets Easier With Time

TV Free for almost 4 years now.

[PowerToThePeople]

5. 2 1/2 years for me

w/out internet I would have no clue what current events are.

edit- yup, streaming radio is good thing, NPR, DemocracyNOW! broadcasts, and just found Air-America online, though it is strongly liberal (more in your face than I ussually am) the comercials are far from liberal minded.

[kineneb]

6. No real TV since 1979!

I haven't had a real, functioning TV since I went away to college in 1979. My computer has a TV board and cable, but it now has only the basic service, which I haven't even looked at since last summer, and before then just HGTV and the Food channel. (If I want news, I read the foreign papers online or listen to streaming radio.):)

[neebob]

7. Well, you could try not looking at the magazines

unless you have an irresistible urge to know which female stars are gay or read about Scott Petersen's jailhouse confession. Those are two I've noticed recently. Of course I'm talking tabloids. Today I saw a magazine cover - not on a rack, but in an internet news story - that struck me as hideously appalling. It was the February cover of Vogue, with Melania Knauss (Donald Trump's fiancé) in her wedding dress. Who gives a shit about these greedy, showy, ridiculous people and the massive Louis XIV-style ballroom they've built at Mara Lago and the big poufy Dior dress that won't fit in a chair so she'll have to sit on a bench and change into a Vera Wang gown after one dance. I certainly don't, and yet for some reason I couldn't resist reading this "news" story. It made me mad. So I guess I hear ya. I've had the TV off since November myself.

[bliss_eternal]

8. No tv news here AND

I've stopped communicating on other on-line forums I used to frequent.
I get so tired of the fact that people seem more concerned about Brad Pitt's love life than they do about the state of the country.

So sad. :(

[WeHoldTheseTruths]

9. This is a really large topic . . .

. . . for me anyway. Makes my head spin.

* The effects of TV in other countries besides the USA

* Not just the content, but the medium itself -- no time to think for one thing

* Thank goodness for the World Wide Web

* There were things I liked (and presumably are some now I would find of value, contentwise)

* Would love to re-see some of the stuff I watched as a kid, just to see through my eyes now what I watched

* so much I thought at the time was a serious effort to get informed/ "find the truth", and mostly just messed with my mind

* on thinking about it, only about 10% of the 40 years since finishing high school have I had a TV watched in my home. The only time I can recall missing it was other people referring to stuff and I was left out of the conversation.

* Not using one's time or life watching TV opens it for alternatives, but one still has to choose wisely. But almost automatically more reflection and thinking happens at least to some degree.

* Mostly, not TVing gets one free of the "brainwashing" and consensus reality -- that is hard if one does not have people also free to talk with

* (and, keeping to the focus of this board,) imagine elections in a TV free society -- and it's there now, the problem of trying to use it to constructive purposes, like getting people to vote for intelligent honest candidates

* The implications of this for suporting onesself and family / participating in the economy

* Since Internet, magazines pretty much fell by the wayside too for me

* Not watching TV is like giving up eating one particular kind of chocolate candy -- there is still plenty more candy around to deal with