Covet mind control

You know, this is going to have to come from someone who used to watch five hours of TV each night and to someone who now hasn’t tried to turn on the television set in months. I would say TV is a mediocre form of entertainment. People like it, it must be alright. It’s probably not the healthiest activity you could participate in; when you watch TV, your body sort of goes into this hypnotic state where you can’t move, even if you really know you should be doing something else. Change the channel, find something interesting, watch it for five minutes, become bored, change the channel, watch a rerun, change the channel yet again, pop into the middle of a series you’ve never seen – how do we enjoy this so much? Yes, watching TV can be an incredibly relaxing task where several actors being paid to appeal to people just like you can entertain you. You can learn about a new encounter of Bigfoot up in the mountains or feel like you’re part of the Bachelorette. You form a personal connection with these characters you will never know or see and begin to find yourself entranced by what they do, hopping back to see the new episode every week.

To me, this is all just a waste of time. Every now and then I may be at a friend’s house and sit down and watch a show or a movie with them, but it’s not one of my favorite past times. I can’t get into shows like I used to, probably being the fault of stumbleupon giving me a short attention span. Instead, I like to use my time wisely; riding my horse, taking walks outside, spending time with family, doing homework, studying, helping around the house, or reading books. Now that I think about it, reading more books were what pulled me away from the television. Shows or movies only give you one perception of the story. The director knows exactly how he wants to get his certain message across. However, books allow for so much freedom in interpreting the texts, creating the characters in your head, and making them act how you envision them to. That’s a good use of time, in my opinion. TV is cool and all, I just wish people wouldn’t watch it to the crazy extent they do and find some better things to do.

Elaborating on my last point, television can definitely be a convenient delivery system for advertisers to display a message. People view television as a safe world. It’s some not paper meant to make you vote for Romney or some heavily opinionated trap. However, you just have to realize that the director can show any message he or she wants to in discreet and covet manner. We can find ourselves start to see things in the light that our favorite television character sees them in. Inconspicuous mind control at its finest.