CozyNet Blog

I haven’t watched TV since 2011

I’ve not watched the boob tube since at least 2011, which was right around when LOST ended. When it was finally over, that was the last I ever sat down to watch TV as a routine ever again. I have seen it here and there, but it’s not intentional. It was always riddled in too many advertisements, which is why I didn’t ever care to watch it again after LOST.

Somewhere around 2015 I remember there being some hubbub about cord cutting as people were moving to streaming only services like Netflix and Hulu and away from conventional cable / satellite services. I did have a Netflix account at the time so that I could watch Star Trek without having to break out my cassette tapes or to dig around for the DVD’s I’d misplaced. It was like $6 a month, which wasn’t bad at all, and plus I didn’t have my NAS server until later that year.

Gradually that price would climb up and I didn’t have any reason to keep the account around except that my parents were using it to watch stuff on the occasion, so one day I told them that I was going to end my subscription to Netflix. It didn’t bother them since by then Netflix replaced all the old shows and movies they liked.

The streaming services catalog turned sour pretty quickly once the publishers / broadcast networks and VC funded media companies took off like wild fire, causing a clamp down reaction on existing shows. And just like with the old days of cable channel bundling scams, you now have to subscribe to all these different streaming services to find what you’re looking for.

Since I’ve been disconnected from that scene for years now (TV) and never really went that far with streaming, any time I find myself in a situation where a TV is playing, whether it be over the air broadcast network, cable, or some streaming service, it’s always a jarring experience.

It’s become way more annoying than I remember it being. The average shot length in modern editing practices is so franticly short you might as well be watching a slide show. I guess it’s highly captivating for some people, but it instantly makes me frustrated because I can’t follow anything that’s happening or being said so I just look away. The dialogue isn’t any better too.

Sometimes when I seen an old western movie, I’m genuinely amazed by the footage and scenery because you can actually see it and take it all in. It’s an art form for sure, but whatever garbage is being made today is the antithesis of art.

Have you ever noticed in reality competition shows, assuming you’ve ever seen one, how its core messaging revolves upon a selfish individual pursuit of merit often achieved by ruthless deception, betrayal, and treachery? The shows will even implement divisive mechanics to further promote and exploit this behavior. On the surface there may be a thin veneer of “team work,” but it’s usually intended as a spectacle of comedic dysfunction for the audience as well as to pad out the runtime so advertisements can be crammed in.

Breaking down whatever you’re watching or even listening to into its major theme can make for an interesting exercise. More often than not it’ll fall into the following categories of: Consumption, Reproduction, and Violence. Subconsciously and even spiritually, this sort of media is brutalizing culture. I recommend not watching or listening to any of it.

There were YouTube channels I use to follow from my feed reader that I would remove for repeatedly falling under one or more of those themes because I don’t think any of it’s healthy to watch. I’m down to just a handful of channels now where the only benefit I’m getting out of the platform is in DIY informational content.

Thinking back to when I stopped watching TV, it wasn’t a conscious decision at all. It just happened without thinking about it, which is to say that there was absolutely nothing of value remaining on TV. This time with YouTube, it’s different. If it came to it, I would consider paying for just the instructional videos, but would never use that platform again for anything else. At the moment, you can pretty much watch and even download everything of actual valuable substance for free if you know how, but I suspect those days are quickly coming to an end so guess what I’m using my NAS for? :^)

I still keep the old TV around, but these days it’s a dedicated weatherbox since it’s the only place I can get live coverage when tornadoes are zipping around. Other than the occasional PS2 game and weather broadcast, it just sits there like a relic from a bygone era collecting dust.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Date: 2025-07-01