During my first semester at University, I spent hours every day concentrating as hard as I could on the task of IGNORING the television, so I don't really feel like I've been watching tv at all. Now that I'm home, I watch it way more than is healthy.

It's all my mother's fault. She watches tv all the time, so I sort of end up sitting down next to her whether I intend to or not.

We use the television in a strange sort of way. We don't watch movies. We don't watch sitcoms. We don't usually watch the news. Instead of watching things that we enjoy - things that entertain us - we watch things that we can judge.

In the morning, we watch shows about small claims court (which I actually still haven't developed a taste for) where we can play judge. I think he's lying. I think she's stupid. God, what white trash. Etc.

We watch HGTV a lot, so that we can pass judgment on the taste of the interior decorators, the homeowners, the hosts.

We watch E! news and The Soup so that we can make fun of celebrities and criticize what they are wearing.

We watch Gastineau Girls, America's Next Top Model, and Being Bobby Brown so that we can gawk at how spoiled/shallow/stupid the rich and beautiful can be.

We watch Dr. Phil, Nanny 911/Supernanny, and Wife Swap/Trading Spouses so that we can criticize the way people handle their relationships with others.

This is beginning to sound like a self-condemnation, but I really enjoy doing all those things. And I'm not sure that there's necessarily anything wrong with it. The people I'm criticizing can't hear me. What do they care?

However, it's kind of a chicken/egg thing. I'm getting very judgmental, snarky, antisocial, etc. lately. And while I'm faily certain that these new television viewing habits are just one more symptom of that, it's not impossible that they're feeding my unfair judgments of people I know in real life.

I haven't been seeing very many of my old friends from high school, mostly because I'm afraid I'll get pissed off at them. Everything pisses me off these days.

Fucking television!

posted at 5:26 PM by Alison

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