TV experiment - are you brave enough??

Hooray! i finally have 3 people brave enough to try the experiment, (though a few more volunteers wouldn't go amiss). thank u brave peeps.

i suggest (for the sake of the sports fans) that it starts this sunday and you can decide amongst yourselves which catagory you will choose...

1. no tv
2. picture but no sound
3. sound but no picture

observations will be recorded here whenever possible.

have to go to work now so i hope a few more of you will have refistered your participation by the time im back

I watch hardly any TV at all most of the time. When I DO however I find it makes me want to just keep watching and watching constantly.

That's why I download episodes of TV shows I like one at a time instead of buy the box set (a mistake I have learned from). I'll buy it after, so I can own them but don't have to watch them.

If buy the box set I will literaly not be able to control myself and will just watch episode after episode all day.

Since I stopped watching TV all day I have managed to get so much more done. I find that if I go into the living room (the TV is always on) I find myself becoming interested in things that I really find boring (soaps).

Stay away from the TV!! It's addictive

Originally posted by justyc

Originally posted by Vegemite
anyway I would but my family wont hear of it

did you ask them? if so, what were their reasons for not going without for 1 month? would they agree with you if you told them they were being brainwashed/hypnotised/controlled/incapacitated? if not, ask them what the last adverts were the next time you see them watching a commercial channel

I think they said "But a new Alias is coming on this week!" Idiots

Originally posted by justyc

i suggest (for the sake of the sports fans) that it starts this sunday and you can decide amongst yourselves which catagory you will choose...

1. no tv
2. picture but no sound
3. sound but no picture

So you are saying you want each one of us to stick to a different situation?

If thats the case, and I don't have any objections from my fellow guinea pigs, I would prefer to pick #3, but I am willing to do any of the 3.

And yes, I will not start untill Monday - I MUST be able to watch the superbowl.

[edit on 3-2-2005 by American Mad Man]

[edit on 3-2-2005 by American Mad Man]

Other then playing PS2 with my son i can safely say i havent watched the tv in over 3 months now , its no biggy i just dont really give a crap whats going on outside of my little slice of the world...........

Like I said...I'll be the brave soul to do number 1! Wish me luck!

Originally posted by justyc
i made a suggestion in this post www.abovetopsecret.com... regarding an experiment to be done with television but only 1 person was brave enough to take me up on the offer. Eastcoastkid suggested it should be a thread of its own so i am hoping that there are some members out there who are brave enough to deny tv for 1 month and post their experiences here.

the experiment is to choose one of the following and record in this thread your experiences...

1. do not turn on the tv for 1 month
2. turn the tv picture on but leave the sound off
3. (if tv is capable) turn the tv picture off but leave the sound on

please register your interest here in participating in this experiment.

Heh. Can I do this retroactively?

I watch perhaps 1 hour of tv a month. There aren't any shows I follow, and my taste in humor just isn't what current tastes in humor are. I haven't really watched tv (except for the occasional series or news broadcast) in well over 15 years, and I don't miss it. I think the last show I followed was Deep Space 9.

I have, though, experienced the test conditions.

There have been times when the tv is on and I'm not interested in the program (spouse or kids watching.) I sit and work on the computer or draw, and just wish for earplugs and the unpleasantness and stress (irritating noise) makes me get up and leave or find a headset and CD with Perky Music so I don't have to listen to it.

If it's on with no sound, I don't watch. I'm aware it's there, but the pretty pictures just don't hold my attention.

[edit on 3-2-2005 by Byrd]

Originally posted by Byrd
There have been times when the tv is on and I'm not interested in the program (spouse or kids watching.)

perhaps i should add a 4th catagory (which i doubt will get any takers) of getting a member who doesnt watch much tv (such as yourself), asking their partner who watches tv regularly to agree to 1 of the conditions & the member should record their partners reactions. hmmmm

Originally posted by justyc


1. do not turn on the tv for 1 month
2. turn the tv picture on but leave the sound off
3. (if tv is capable) turn the tv picture off but leave the sound on

Just a suggestion: Exclude number three. Sound is influence.

I'd join in, but a friend of mine & I did a variation of this awhile back. It was very difficult w/my job. I've got tv moniters all around me at work w/news on 24/7.

I wish you all the best. It's a great experiment.

[edit on 19-09-2003 by EastCoastKid]

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
Just a suggestion: Exclude number three. Sound is influence.

there is a reason for both no sound/no picture choices but i wont make it until then end of the experiement as it would influence the participants.

Well sorry guys....You'll have to find someone else....

I can't do it. My mother wants me to watch T.V. with her and when I told her that I can't and why she said then I can't use any kind of electronics.

So its either give up everything out here...or just quit the experiment. Sorry. Find someone else.

Originally posted by hatchedcross
Well sorry guys....You'll have to find someone else....

I can't do it. My mother wants me to watch T.V. with her and when I told her that I can't and why she said then I can't use any kind of electronics.

So its either give up everything out here...or just quit the experiment. Sorry. Find someone else.

i don't suppose you could pursuade your mother to take part in the experiment alongside you? after all, what is 1 month without tv to ask of someone?

are people so addicted to this medium that they cannot now function without it? makes you wonder....

for all you parents out there force your kids to go without TV.

Originally posted by Vegemite
for all you parents out there force your kids to go without TV.

...and vice versa of course, or is that too much to ask? it seems to be.

comments anyone?

Originally posted by justyc
the experiment is to choose one of the following and record in this thread your experiences...

1. do not turn on the tv for 1 month
2. turn the tv picture on but leave the sound off
3. (if tv is capable) turn the tv picture off but leave the sound on

please register your interest here in participating in this experiment.

(and)

...it is purely an experiment to see what happens when you do not watch/listen/see tv programmes for 1 month.

Does 7 years count?

I hate TV. I've hated it since about 1995. I went from 1995 to 2002 without even owning TV. I read a lot, browsed the internet, played computer games, listened to NPR, PRI, and MPR on the radio. Went to Irish pubs, and played a lot of chess with total strangers. I got more writing done than I ever did in the rest of my life combined, and felt able to think more clearly.

Starting in 2002, I bought a 42" projection because the price was unreal (something like $100), and I wanted to play X-Box games and watch DVDs. This was all the TV got used for.

By about 2003, I'd exhausted most of my entertainments around the house, and sometimes friends and I would play something we called "sync". Where you get blitzed, then turn the TV on mute, and then put on some music, and watch for sweet-spots where the music would sync up perfectly to the TV. This is the most fun I've ever had watching TV, which isn't saying much, to be honest. Up till this point, I'd never watched a complete TV show since about 1994, and certainly not with both sound and video going at once.

Late 2003, I meet the woman who is currently my fiance, and she watches a lot of TV. Talk about culture clash. Now I actually watch about 2 shows a week. "24" on Fox (which I watch religiously) and... occasionally "Ghost Hunters" if my sweetie happens to be watching TV and notices it's on.

That's about it. She watches a lot less TV now, perhaps one show a night. Most of the time, when she does, I'll work on my novel, or balance our budget, or play a computer game.

I don't think I'll ever be the kind of person who can zone out on TV for hours on end, night after night, ever again. I actually rather resent my TV, except that it makes it a lot easier to watch DVDs and play X-Box.



[edit on 2/4/2005 by thelibra]

That was perhaps the most interesting post of yours i have ever read Libra. "Synching" is hilarious when wasted, its just a shame most of the music i have doesnt contain any lyrics!

Originally posted by MERC
That was perhaps the most interesting post of yours i have ever read Libra. "Synching" is hilarious when wasted, its just a shame most of the music i have doesnt contain any lyrics!

Howdy, MERC. Glad to hear from you again and hope we can bury the hatchet from before.

About "Sync", it works equally well with techno/electronica and even some orchestral music. I haven't tried it with Jazz yet, but that might be interesting. Here's some fun combinations:

1.) "Disaster TV" (videos of floods, stunts gone wrong, etc) - to almost any of Hans Zimmer's soundtracks.

2.) The News, or any "Extreme" - to any of the classic Queen hits.

3.) "Whose Line is it Anyway?" - to techno/electronica

etc....

Originally posted by Vegemite
for all you parents out there force your kids to go without TV.

Great idea

As for the rest of the challenge, it's not so hard, well, the not watching tv part.
I haven't watched tv in years.

I can't partake in these tho:
2. turn the tv picture on but leave the sound off
3. (if tv is capable) turn the tv picture off but leave the sound on

I don't have televison programming.

Good luck everyone!

I grew up watching probably min. 2-3 hours of tv a day. Last fall I turned our cable off and put the tv in the spare room where we never go...
My 1 year old is much happier, the daily headaches my boyfriend used to get are gone, I read about as much as I used to watch and amazingly we now have time to play with the little one.

We play games and actually talk to eachother now. We are healthier, we even got workout equipment and use it. I have so much time on my hands outside of work I don't know what to do with myself.

After a couple weeks, I didn't even miss it. I used to go crazy if I missed a show I wanted to see, now it doesn't seem to matter. My house is cleaner, I have an easier time socializing, my finances are better taken care of and I appreciate daily activities like I had never imagined.

Turning off the TV completely changed my life. Sometimes, I feel a bit disconnected with society, but it is more a mindset difference than a lack of knowledge about events. For the most part I don't know daily current events from the news, but everything that is important gets around to me anyways.

Originally posted by justyc
are people so addicted to this medium that they cannot now function without it? makes you wonder....

Yes. For the grown, it is the equivalent of the baby's pacifier. See what I was saying about its power (back in my thread)? The control it wields over those willing to submit themselves to it is astonishing.