== How to stay very, very dumb = By Mark Morford

It's a fact: TV sitcoms destroy your brain. But what else can you do with all that unused mental power?

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/05/14/notes051408.DTL&nl=fix

It's one of the most powerful and disorienting and disturbing feelings I've ever known and perhaps the very best reason I can think of that I now watch very little mainstream TV, much less sitcoms, much less those howlingly soul-deadening laugh-tracked things featuring Kelsey Grammar or Charlie Sheen or maybe that enormous guy from "Everybody Loves Raymond," shows that make your soul curdle like fresh soy milk in the sun. It's also the sole reason I've trained myself to instantly mute all TV commercials when they appear and turn my gaze from their grisly carnage lest their death lasers of hyperbranded idiocy penetrate my flesh and make me impotent and encephalitic and Republican.

The feeling is this: You're sitting there zoning out in front of some mindless slew of shows and you're sucked in and not laughing in the slightest and actually only remotely amused, even as, deep down, some benumbed part of you is quietly screaming, oh sweet Jesus with an old "Will & Grace" DVD, why the hell am I watching this swill? It's not even funny or interesting or even all that entertaining?

And then three or four or nine hours into your TV drone, you begin get that slimy feeling on your skin and your face is all oily and your jaw is slack and your genitalia feel all shriveled and your heart is palpitating strangely, and you finally say OK that's enough and shut the damnable TV off, and wham.

That's when it happens. The sledgehammer. The slap. The roaring silence. Suddenly the room caves in and the walls shudder and your brain snaps back to life and you leap back into your wary body. Ah yes, reality. Action and movement and thought. Here we are again. ...

They have a liveliness about them, an alertness, that is often missing in heavy TV viewers. They actually spend their time reading and working and have a lot to say about different things. They also have longer attention spans. Ironically, a couple of them are actors who work in TV. Found out from them that they rarely watch the box, and NEVER the shows in which they appear. Frankly, I'd rather hang out with them in person or via email--but to help keep money in their pockets, I do try to watch their performances. And that's about ALL I do watch on TV.

thats being schooled, big dif.
I can tell you which of our friends watch faux snooze and the ones who listen to limberprick. Oh but they say they only listen to rustyboilass 'cause someone else has it turned on but they don't pay any attention to it, yeah right. My first response when I hear his voice is WHO THE HELL IS LISTENING TO THAT SWILL, then I turn and leave.

I can't stand it if I'm a captive audience to Faux. Even changed banks because the one always had Faux blaring when you went in to make a deposit.

It's that simple. You'll be a certifiable idiot in no time at all.

And in some respects I agree, but in others... not so much.

He writes, "Few things are worse in this human world than creation by committee, by crowd and consumer and the masses." The Ayn Rand argument from the "Fountainhead", that group consensus is always worse than a single vision because it filters down to the blandly acceptable.

Well, in a way, everything we do is done by committee. (I always wanted to have this argument with the former Russian citizen.) We are part of a larger society. We take in the information that society throws at us and use it to develop what we consider our own opinions. But in actuality, those private opinions are remarkably similar to the next guys opinions, and the next gals thoughts.

We are programed, so to speak, by our society. Our thoughts, our opinions our desires are a result of all the opinions and facts thrown at us by our educational, political and social systems. We simply filter all this information from them into a view of our individual self. We are simply a product of our society. Our opinions, despite our romantic notion of the individual visionary fighting against the mass cultural identity, are simply a distillation of our society's input.

Even Ayn Rand was shaped by her Russian heritage.

If you interact online with people of not-so-great intelligence, you'll be just as much of a vegetable, eventually. I fell into gaming, initially, and swear I lost 1/2 of my vocabulary for a while.

As for committee rule, it depends on the committee, I guess. If you've got a group of like-minded individuals and no politics involved it's very possible to launch a wonderful creative endeavor.

If, on the other hand, your committee is made up of people who aren't at all on the same page but find each other necessary for what outside forces they bring along, you're going to have a mess on your hands IMO.

TV does not equal brainless rot any more or less than books or music or films. Those media all have their gold and their crap. Aside from the political heroes often cited at DU, such as Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann, there have been and are many, many works on television that teach, entertain, or both. I am thinking of programs like The Wire, Lost, Twin Peaks, X-Files, South Park, The Prisoner, The Simpsons, Deadwood, Firefly...the list goes on and on. Great art, filmic art, and on your TV. That's not to mention the better non-fiction efforts of cable channels such as The History Channel and TLC. Or, of course, PBS.

The recent argument has been, it seems, that TV seen online, or certain TV shows, are somehow "not TV," as though TV must be the brainless stuff and the good exceptions get on air by accident. Like every other media in a money-driven society, TV has its share of triumphs and disappointments.

Mr. Morford, don't blame TV for your lazy ass sitting watching the worst crap, don't blame the TV for YOUR actions. And then to write such boring, cynical dross and make it publicly available, as though you are saying something interesting or new. You want good TV? It's out there. You want the crap? Plenty of that too. You want to wander the woods communing with the Mysteries? Go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you. But wasting readers' time with your lack of imagination, your inability to take control of your environment, just stop it. Try discerning what matters and what doesn't, and advocate for ideas with freshness. TV was never as bad as its critics made it out to be, nor good as though who would have you watch its worst want to delude you into thinking. It's one more hustler for your spending dollar, but so is the little theatre down the street featuring Strindberg or O'Neill.

Point in fact, to sum, there are those who make TV that is art, that is well-made and challenging and thoughtful. There are also those who are selling tits n ass for a buck. Something in the amorphous thing called human nature gravitates toward both.

to try to understand the foreign languages (even the Brits are hard to understand sometimes -- esp when they mumble asides.)

Morford's probably writing this column because a new book about "cognitive surplus" was published last week. One of the book's premises was that sitcoms helped a newly industrialized society cope with free time.

Also the writers' strike last year hurt american TV very badly. It really does suck right now.

I need sitcoms, myself. I hate hate hate washing dishes and use the laugh track to keep from falling into a vortex of negativity when it's my turn to clean the kitchen.

dealing to the lowest common denominator and infinitely customizable works leads to two dead-ends in creation. one reaches for the worst of mob mentality in banal and repetitive entertainment, and the other leads to soulless, formless reflecting pools for individualized narcissism. so TV as well as Network Portals holds the dangers of copping out in the act of creation.

TV and 'Net can be mediums to open doors to great creativity. but it is far too easy to give up and let pablum and narcissism clog up these venues. it takes the effort of the individual give birth to a creative work and this current Web 2.0 meme he feels is giving accolades without expecting the effort. and there's the rub.

too often praise is dolled out for substandard product on all mediums. with no standards and everybody as an audience meaning bleeds into apathy. this leads to more failure. so he's cautioning us to be aware of this narrative, that the inherent nature of a technology does not liberate it from basic expectations and pitfalls.

it's an important discussion to be sure. by lowered expectations and everyone expecting their fully customized 15 minutes of fame, praise becomes expected and talent, along with basic discernment, becomes unnecessary. it's a question about the very nature of the artist (and the audience) in a landscape of decaying meaning.

When I go into the break room at work and the TV is on, it's really hard for me to stay. Usually, the first commercial drives me away. Luckily the other break room lacks a TV, which for me, is a great feature of that room!

The thing he discussed in the last part of the article, though, is the fly in the ointment. Yeah, I want more interaction but I also want my net experience to be filled with creative people discussing or displaying interesting ideas. The average person creating a website is likely to create a myspace type creation, something that, for those of us older than 16, is, well, mind numbing. I didn't kill my TV just to be talked down to by my computer.

But honestly, when I think about the fact that 90% of the people I am friends with, I met in some form or fashion through networking on the internet, I'm grateful beyond words to be living in this time with this amazing creation at my disposal. Even if there weren't a million other nifty things about the net, the networking I've personally been involved in makes the net worthwhile to me.

And my last comment about the amazing net: While the filkers will joke that the only reason for the internet is porn (and there is really cool porn all over the place), I don't see it that way at all. I'm not going to pretend I don't look at the dirty pictures and read a salacious story here and there, but if you put a pie chart together of my internet use (and that of my sweeties) you would find that porn is such a small slice of what I use the internet for. Man, the things I have seen and been exposed to on these magnificent tubes is just a wonder, an absolute wonder!

It shrivels the brain. I'm right on the verge of getting rid of the thing altogether. As it is, I seldom turn it on. It just sets there, taking up valuable space.

"free credit report dot com bay-bee..."

:rofl:

I mean if he can't control himself enough to walk away from the tv if it isn't entertaining. He should have developed a hobby or something else he can do.

For the record i watch and enjoy 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother, both of which are sitcoms.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

and, from the Reality TV shows I've observed (not watched, mind you)... sitcoms are an intellecutal improvement.

:shrug:

and the recent ones have been heavy on the sit..and very light on the com part, so we haven;t watched any in quite a while..

I do love all my wonderful PBS & University channels, adn always find great things to watch.. Just tonight I watched "Ice Blink".. I highly recommend it..

and for a laugh, you just cannot beat Mexican Midget Wrestling... My son and I always enjoyed watching that one :)

I hate the damn thing. It's mind-numbingly senseless most of the time, and a head injury has left me with the inability to distinguish between background and foreground noise.

I have not owned a tv since I divorced way back in 1975, and yes, the tv was another instrument in our divorce. Well, along with a few other personality quirks, but.....

I gave up tv (rather, gave up paying for cable) this year. I miss Seinfeld and the Simpsons. The other night I caught an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at my friends house; It was pretty good.

He writes from deep within his soul. :-)

Nova... Nature... Frontline... Bill Moyers... NOW....John Adams... My Son Jack.. Generation Kill (coming)....Bob Dylan (coming) ... Nova Science Now...Scientific American Frontiers.... Cousteau...Daily Show... Colbert... KO... BBC World News... The Wire... Deadwood... Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.. Rome... Sand and Sorrow... Ghosts of Abu Ghraib...

My mind just gets duller and duller....

es caga americana y toda la misma :D

tô bebido :D