Right so I've reccently been posting about how much TV I myself watch, and Australians as a whole, and really wondering, why do we watch TV.
I think we watch TV in two ways, passivly and argessivly
Passivly watching TV is the sort of TV you watch after you've had a long day. Its TV you watch in fornt of dinner, or when you doing something boring and want entertainment. Its when your channel surfing and then land on a show, something that you enjoy, but you don't activly engage in. Breakfast TV, and sitcoms are perfect example of this, at half an hour, lots of people can just crash infront of an episode of the big bang theory or whatever, to rejuvinate, but it isn't like you'll be devasted if you miss an episode, its just fun TV.
I think we watch TV in two ways, passivly and argessivly
Passivly watching TV is the sort of TV you watch after you've had a long day. Its TV you watch in fornt of dinner, or when you doing something boring and want entertainment. Its when your channel surfing and then land on a show, something that you enjoy, but you don't activly engage in. Breakfast TV, and sitcoms are perfect example of this, at half an hour, lots of people can just crash infront of an episode of the big bang theory or whatever, to rejuvinate, but it isn't like you'll be devasted if you miss an episode, its just fun TV.
Then you can activly watch TV, and I have to say as a person of extrmes, this is the only sort of way that I watch TV. Activly watching TV is when you really engage in the show, you deliberlty go and watch it, instead of just finding something to watch. You'll probably watch every episode, or if your more on my scale of active TV, you definitly watch every epsidoe, you read interviews by cast members, you talk to other people about the show, and you'll look forward to episodes. You'd classify yourself as a fan of the show, instead of just liking it, maybe more like passive TV.
So if thats the two forms of TV, why do we watch it? Well as I've mentioned before, Escape. People watch TV to get away from their life, if they've had a big day and want to relax in someone else's life, or they find active engagement in a show, in doing something different. yet this still doesn't explain why we watch TV.
Taking it a step forward, I think its more about emotions, and our emotional connections. A good TV show will make us feel something, it will manipulate our emotions, it will completly suck us in to its world and it will do this all in 43 minutes. And we, I'd argue as humans, want that. Its not that we want to escape nessirly your life, its that we want to escape ambivilence of feeling. You go out with your friends for a few hours, you (hopefully) are happy for those hours, or maybe you are in work and possibly bored, but do you really know what you are feeling? What we are usually doing is feeling a combination of emotions, or just noting at all, just 'meah' we are rarely sure of exactly what we are feeling, expect if we are feeling the extreme. (ie you know when you are absolutely elated, and heart broken, but honestly how many other points in your life, how much of life do we feel ambivalent?) and as humans I think we fear this 'meah', we are constantly haunted by our limited time, and we feel a need to make use of time, not to waste time, except we don't know how. We feel like feeling nothing is wasting time, we have to be feeling something, we have to do something, that's why we go skydiving, or scuba diving, for experiences yes, but more so for emotional clarity, to feel something different.
However in a good TV/movie/book/whatever we get crystallised extreme bursts of emotion. We know exactly what we are feeling, and this fills us with happiness. It lets us know that we are human, we are capable of feeling, and that we are not wasting our time. Of course I feel that this is all happening on a sub-conscience level, it is for this reason that we enjoy doing these things, and we want to do these things, because so often our conscience mind labels them as wasting time, and not important. But I'd argue that watching TV, or entertainment in general is still a very important thing, and quite frankly we shouldn't be ashemed of the fact that we watch huge amounts of TV, because TV, and entertainment in general is still important.
So if thats the two forms of TV, why do we watch it? Well as I've mentioned before, Escape. People watch TV to get away from their life, if they've had a big day and want to relax in someone else's life, or they find active engagement in a show, in doing something different. yet this still doesn't explain why we watch TV.
Taking it a step forward, I think its more about emotions, and our emotional connections. A good TV show will make us feel something, it will manipulate our emotions, it will completly suck us in to its world and it will do this all in 43 minutes. And we, I'd argue as humans, want that. Its not that we want to escape nessirly your life, its that we want to escape ambivilence of feeling. You go out with your friends for a few hours, you (hopefully) are happy for those hours, or maybe you are in work and possibly bored, but do you really know what you are feeling? What we are usually doing is feeling a combination of emotions, or just noting at all, just 'meah' we are rarely sure of exactly what we are feeling, expect if we are feeling the extreme. (ie you know when you are absolutely elated, and heart broken, but honestly how many other points in your life, how much of life do we feel ambivalent?) and as humans I think we fear this 'meah', we are constantly haunted by our limited time, and we feel a need to make use of time, not to waste time, except we don't know how. We feel like feeling nothing is wasting time, we have to be feeling something, we have to do something, that's why we go skydiving, or scuba diving, for experiences yes, but more so for emotional clarity, to feel something different.
However in a good TV/movie/book/whatever we get crystallised extreme bursts of emotion. We know exactly what we are feeling, and this fills us with happiness. It lets us know that we are human, we are capable of feeling, and that we are not wasting our time. Of course I feel that this is all happening on a sub-conscience level, it is for this reason that we enjoy doing these things, and we want to do these things, because so often our conscience mind labels them as wasting time, and not important. But I'd argue that watching TV, or entertainment in general is still a very important thing, and quite frankly we shouldn't be ashemed of the fact that we watch huge amounts of TV, because TV, and entertainment in general is still important.
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