Smug

I pride myself on not being addicted to the television. One of the cool things about J and I is that, while we enjoy certain tv shows, we don't really talk about them all that much. We don't get overly upset if we happen to miss a favorite show. This is perhaps due to the fact that we don't live near each other, but it seems like compared to many people, we just don't see tv shows as a big part of our conversations.
This is not to say that we don't enjoy tv shows. The ones that we both enjoy are The Office, Lost, and House. Other than that, well I have my shows that I enjoy, like ANTM, Project Runway, Mad Men, but I can't really say that my life would be significantly affected if these shows were to suddenly disappear.
So I guess this is where the smugness (or perceived smugness) comes in. Sometimes I wish I could just cancel my cable all together. I don't need tv. Of course I will never do such a thing, due to societal pressure and the fact that there are some shows that I do enjoy, and I don't like watching shows on the internet. But still....I think it would be so liberating to be free from the television. DVR already makes a lot of this liberation possible. I was too lazy to sit down and watch the whole 2 hour episode of Lost last night. Of course I DVR'd it, so I will easily be able to watch it today. And it will be less than 2 hours because I fast forward to the commercials. I can't even remember the last time I watched a commercial voluntarily.
I know that it's a bad idea for me to get rid of the tv though. I do need to relate to people. I noticed that in the past few weeks, I barely had any idea of who was running in the primaries. I don't watch local tv commercials, I don't listen to any radio except NPR or XM radio, and I don't read the newspaper or news websites.
So for me, not having a tv contributes to my isolation-I start to live in my own world, comprised of the gossip websites that I read and the facebook updates that people post. And the articles on Wikipedia that I read.
Did you notice something about that last sentence? Perhaps I am the ultimate hypocrite, because while I can live without the TV, I absolutely cannot live without the internet. I read gossip blogs like a fiend. While I don't care for any celebrities, nor do I watch any of the ridiculous amounts of reality shows that they are on, or even the movies that they are in for that matter, I do like knowing what goes on in their lives. I love salacious "blind items." I am addicted to looking at pictures of outfits from various awards shows, even if I don't watch the shows on tv. I guess this is part of my personality as an information gatherer. I want to know everything-and I enjoy reading it more than watching it. I am a profoundly verbal person. I have trouble sitting and watching a movie for two hours, but I have no trouble at all looking at websites and reading articles for 2 hours or more.
To each his own.
I was inspired to write this by some facebook statuses, if you must know. So many people doing Lost countdowns and using way too many exclamation points. I mean, I was reasonably excited, but geez. Is it really necessary to countdown every day with things like LOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 days!!!!!!
I don't know, I guess I just get annoyed easily. Or I am a curmudgeon and don't let people express their joy. Or I am apathetic and don't care about people's opinions. Whatever, maybe I am just tired of the constant oversharing by people on facebook about every. little. thing.
I'm not going to quit facebook because of it of course. I could never do that. But I can complain. And I figure, it's ok to say that here, because people must deliberately come to my blog in order to read my posts. Unless they have an RSS feed or something, no one is obligated to read what I say. Not so with facebook!