Thursday, January 09, 2020

Permanent Anger and Anxiety

I dropped off the truck to have some work done, and took a walk on the nearby Rail Trail.  When I got back it still wasn't done, so I sat among the magazines and tried to nap a little.  The TV was too loud, and I am too easily distracted by conversation anyway, so I heard about an hour of ABC, including the noontime news.  I also caught a few minutes of The View, lots of presidential political ads, and promotions for ABC specials on Jeffrey Epstein and (everyone in NH groans) Pamela Smart.

Everyone's unhappy, everyone's complaining, everyone is accusing. If this is what people watch during the middle of the day, no wonder we're all so upset. I'm irritated just listening to it, with no visual whatsoever.

Note:  I wondered if Tom Steyer was the type of liberal who is well-meaning but just misguided, until his ad said "I'll be honest with you..."  Kiss of death.

3 comments:

Sam L. said...

Daytime TV... Don't the suicide numbers get higher then?

Stephen Taylor said...

My wife and I normally don't watch television, and we don't even have cable, and haven't had since 2000. Based on what I read, I don't get the sense that we're missing much. However, we recently started taking cable from August to January, so that my wife can watch high school and college football. (She doesn't do NFL, oh, no, not since Kaepernick). At any rate I sometimes watch with her, and I was astonished to learn that blacks no longer represent 13% of the population but their numbers have increased to between 70 and 80%. At least the commercials suggest that, at any rate. And there are black hipsters. Who recreate with white hipsters and East Asian hipsters. Yes, this is a thing, if I am to believe the TV commercials. And this female assistant offensive coordinator with the 49'ers? What fresh hell is this? (Is she just a little bit butch?) I watch these commercials and I just laugh at the bizarre depictions of American life. Then I leave the room.

Texan99 said...

We do watch recorded series and movies, but almost never anything live that would require us to sit through an ad. These days I notice that the only likely way to get my attention with an ad is to slip in picture on a side-bar. If it's a very appealing and surprising picture, I may well look further into it. This works well for food-gifts by mail, for instance, and sometimes clothing.

The other way merchants can get my attention is by having the best search engines. I buy a lot of household goods online. Anyone who makes it easy for me to narrow down the list of products to what I'm actually looking for scores, especially if they also make it convenient for me to examine all the specs that interest me. Don't make me guess what it's made of, or what the exact dimensions are!