I physically removed my TV from my house

reply to post by Stop-loss!


sir..
interesting on the screens....strange but interesting..
what is your opinion of the war on terror? just wondering...thanks

I can't imagine I would ever get rid of my TV entirely.

I watch local news (mostly for the weather) and a few sitcoms. 30 Rock is friggin hilarious.

As others have said the propaganda is a finger flick away from being turned off if you don't like it. Don't let your TV control you.

Bah, I haven't totally gaven up the ghost yet. I use it, from time to, time because it's, still has some, things to offer. Even though I, only watch a, couple of televisons shows. Television shows that, are actually good, to watch nowadays.

Till the end of days I'll keep watching Bourdain.

I don't have "TV" ... as it doesn't get any channels.. I don't have any fancy Satellite, or HD tv tuner, or Digital Cable or whatever else is the new fad. It was costing us $140 a month just for internet and TV. Screw that! .. Got rid of the TV and found a better Internet provider and turned that bill into $29.99! .. next thing to go is the Cell Phone!

I would never get rid of my TV though.. that's irrational.. Besides, I love my Blue Ray player, and my PS3, and my Rockband/guitar hero.. (just got done playing it actually) .. but I do agree, life without TV is a good life.

reply to post by downtown436


In a few months you will dramatically change. Everyone around you, your coworkers, people at the supermarket, your neighbors will seem like complete brainwashed idiots.

When this happens it will be hard, and you will go on a few rants at first for maybe a year in an attempt to brake people out of their drunken stupor. Eventually you will find your attempt useless and will develop a double life, a face to show the world, one they will accept.

By the second year things will become much more clearer, much more easier and you will do fine.

You have a whole new world ahead of. You will discover new forms of education as your spoon fed delusional world slowly is starved away. You will realise that you are not stuck on a rock with a bunch of idiots but rather that they are stuck on this world with you. Enjoy

reply to post by downtown436


Hell Ya! - Can I say that here?

5 Years ago I gave up the all the subscription offerings. At this time I still have a TV, nothing fancy, hooked up to a little Pentium 3 PC that I push movies though.

Here is a quick run though on my experiences:
1) I stopped scheduling my life around a Box - I had no idea what a grip it had on me, until I stopped doing it.. The feeling was great, and almost immediate. I had the Tivo etc etc - but it still became a weekly - gotta watch all these shows so that next week, i'd know what happened/was happening.

2) My Friends and Family thought I fell off the short bus. Looking back it's almost humorous now.

3) I started to view the world differently.. I no longer had someone barking in some fashion in my face about how things are.. I was forced to start paying closer attention to the items around me.

4) Because I now had to "use all of my senses" and then "think" about it to come to conclusions on what is happening around me, it became very apparent what I was being told did not match the reality I was finding.

5) 3 Years after I gave up the TV, I started dating a super cute girl. There was plenty of attraction on a physical level, but on the conversation side of things, it felt like I was listening/talking with a TV. Drama - that is way over blown on the TV, was felt to be needed in her/our life/lives. Behaviors that would be absurd in everyday life, where acted out on a daily basis with her as if with out it, life wouldn't be complete. I fully believe this behavior was learned from watching TV and social interaction shown on it. Am sure there are other factors, but for me it was painfully curious.

6) With that experience came further reinforcement that the TV is most defiantly a brain washing tool. But also so much more, it is a behavior washing tool as well. This might make a good new post, but I really wonder about all the silly Drama people bring into all situations, how much of that is a "learned behavior" vs "natural behavior".

7) Diet and Eating behaviors changed as well, I stopped having the sudden impulse for fast food, or a bag of chips. Late night food cravings stopped.


So, where am I at now?
1) I've talked a lot of my family and friends out of the TV. It became/it is now very easy to point out all the issues with the TV and what it does to people. I have yet to find someone that has it pointed out directly in a one on one/face to face conversation that didn't end up going home and thinking deeply about it. Almost always, I will get more good questions from them within a few days.

2) My critical thinking ability went up by leaps and bounds.. I can only attribute this to the fact that I now have to "Think for Myself" rather then just have someone constantly tell me.

3) My researching abilities also improved vastly. I really enjoyed the programs about history, learning, building, etc that another poster has previously mentioned. Once I was no longer being "fed information" and now had to use other tools to seek out answers to various trivial questions, the results of which quickly turned those shows into nothing but a boring 30 min or such laden with commercials.

It Changed My Life..

In Summary - If anyone has seen the movie WALL-E - I would relate the feeling much to when the residents of the ship became unplugged from the "Chair"...

It is YOUR Brain - Don't let someone else think for you...

Originally posted by IgnoreTheFacts
Ha ha, scared of the tv having control over yourself so you remove it from that house...only to get on something that has far more brainwashing and damaging potential....the internet, lol.

Seems to me, OP, that your T.V. is not the real problem here.

Epic FAIL.

The television is, has always been, and probably will always be the #1 socialization tool in the world. Pick up any book on sociology and it will cover this in clear, unadulterated black and white.

The internet is entirely at YOUR disposal. For now. The two will most likely merge completely within this generation, however. For the most part, it already has -game consoles are internet capable, and PC's/laptops are video-movie integrated, and stream content. The crucial point of difference is, despite the TROLLS and ZOMBIES on the internet, there is still a sizable portion of open sourced knowledge and projects which encourage growth and positive development. For the time being, the CORPORATIONS of the world still cannot interrupt your internet use (at least not in the USA) with their commercials, which have BILLIONS of dollars invested in color scheming, to voices sounding just right and subliminals to excite your reptilian mind.

Most modern humans are hollow, programmed clones. Rarely are they ever more.

Are some people so insecure that they feel if they watch tv they will become a mindless zombie that walks in the crowd of conformity? where everyone is part of a collective that share the same wants,needs and aspirations devoid of any individuality? that's not being a free thinker imo. I still don't watch any of the mind melting trash on TV...unless you think Sci-fi fries the brain. But there are alot of things on TV that are worth watching. Simply avoiding TV like the plague is a negative move.

[edit on 24-12-2009 by Solomons]

Originally posted by Solomons
Simply avoiding TV like the plague is a negative move.

No it is not.

Simply avoiding the TV (and the nonsense it spews) - that is a positive move.

TV is a brainwashing tool? Perhaps. Did something or someone persuade you this was true? Perhaps a friend or neighbor? Maybe it was something you read on the internet?

reply to post by Exuberant1


There are many worth while things to watch on TV. Avoiding trash is a good move, avoiding everything on the tv because of the trash is not.

Originally posted by Solomons
reply to post by Exuberant1

 

There are many worth while things to watch on TV.

All of which you can find on the internet.

Any info that comes from the TV can be acquired faster via reading.

Only TV addicts defend TV.

Considering TV a brainwashing tool is taking conspiracies too far IMO. There are some programs such as the News, and political documentaries that are often biased and made in a way that is likely to change people's opinions willingly or not.

However, I doubt very much David Attenborough or Peter Kay for instance are likely to do a lot of brainwashing.

Getting rid of your TV may be good socially for your family, but to keep it and be selective about what you watch and how often will really not harm you.

Spend too much time on ATS and THAT will brainwash you, god knows i've been there and it looks like you're there too.

I haven't had access to television broadcasts in a decade. I chose not to have one when I was 20. Infact, its not really a choice. I literally can't watch it. It just makes me cringe when I see what people are spending their time doing. As a result, I don't always know what people are referring to when talking about TV as it is a big part of their lives but I get a kick from that as it seems in 10 years, I've missed nothing.

Anything I want to see, I either borrow a DVD, watch it at the flicks or watch it online as I still consider some television and film as an artform. The TV is a phenomenal power over the people as you end up watching what they want you to watch and you agree to it.

Getting rid of your TV is a bold statement and a difficult one to make so congratulations on this. You've stepped up in an arena where so many others can't.

Th8nker

I applaud the OP's decision.
I also recommend Jerry Mander's "Four Arguments for the ELimination of Television."
What goes for TV only applies to films partially. I think it is good to be flexible in the sense that if you want movies, you can see dvds or internet download. I sometimes watch good TV series from downloads - recently I liked Stargate and Heroes. But then commercials are cut out, you control the timing totally (and your family does not have to stop everything dead in its tracks because the show is coming). And if there are more than subliminals in TV, then you do not get that kind of effect on dvd or torrenting. I think it is technically possible to do all the stuff some posters described here, but it is not neccesary for an explanation of the phenomenon of TV addiction. I saw people turing into TV junkies under black and white East bloc TV which was far more primitive than subliminals or any kind of mysterious radiation.

In fact, I think some of the crazier, more paranoid stuff on these boards about mind manipulation etc. is simply an assimilation of the experience of having grown up with TV.

I have lived wihtout TV most of my life. There were only a couple of years when I was dragged into it a little. And life barely happened then...

When I was 16 I started meditation every day. That was the end of it.

I could no longer just eat and crash into a chair and let go into programs I cannot even recall now.
Alpha state is not bad in itself, all relax states involve that and deeper (theta etc.) But watching TV when you are tired ... especially the salad style nonsensical cut up sounds, the music pieces that have absolutely nothing to do with your internal emotions - you cannot relate well to your own self.

I have seen many marriages and children totally ruined by the herion-like fascination on TV. I have seen dysfunctional, hyperactive and very neurotic people most of whose problems came from the endlesss frustration of unfinished emotional lines attributable to various TV shows. Actually, it is the medium that matters, for I know people that watch a few selective shows like animal rescue ONLY and they do not seem to exhibit this deficic of attention and this dissociated state of existence.

Children who are tubed neglect their studies, their personal hygiene and do not get a description of the world from their family. On top of that, Waldorf educators who usually discourage parents from letting kids watch TV point out that chidlren need to develop their own visualization skills before being inundated with outside pictures.

In neuro-linguistic programming, the various movements your eye makes when recalling, imagining, singing, feeling etc. are traced to an eye map.
In heavily TV-afflicted countries, NLP researchers found that people no longer even looked with their eyes to the side where constructed images lie. They could only imagine things from memory.

Waldorf educators usually say they can tell from nonverbal cues if a child is exposed to too much TV. They become possessed by a peculiar restlessness, act as know-it-alls, even though their actual experiance in the world of adults is nil, and the more TV they watch, the shorter their attention spans are. They become unable to learn a foreign language or read a book from cover to cover.

What a loss.

And what a gain when you tune it off! You can learn to play an instrument, do Tai Chi or Yoga or whatever, make contacts with people, and you can stiull be in touch with world politics etc. if you have Internet. Even though there is all kinds of stuff on the Internet too, positive and negative as well, it is not the contents that make TV the single vilest invention of mankind - a total destroyer of societies (see what happened to Canadian natives after they got hooked on TV - their entire collective identities were erased. Traditional foods, stories, music, shamanism, religion interested only a few. And these people had survived the conquest of the white settlers and the semi-arctic cold.) It is the medium, not the message. There are good and interesting shows about animals, foreign cultures etc. that even cultural purists would endorse. The problem is simply that you have a box that has nothing to do with your intentions, timing, society, traditions, heart, your religion, spirits, love life whatever but claims to replace all of these.

My eldest daughter turned into a Cartoon Network junkie when she returned to Europe with me, depressed over our separation and not yet able to speak the local language. She refused to eat, except for some junk snacks, did not want to go to the bathroom when nature called, did not what to go out and explore the world at all, CN existed from dawn till dusk with its mind-chopping silly sounds. When we got her off, it took her weeks to come tzo her senses and start to play and eventually she quickly picked up the language and formed friendships.

Mander did not start out in his epic study "four arguments" with the assumption that there is something wrong with the medium. He thought - with early theoretician Marshall McLuhan - that TV is basically OK or neutral, it is the contents that make it bad. After years of painstaking research, he found that this neutral presupposition was deeply flawed. It was the medium that was faulty not the contents.

He also describes his own experience of being bored after school up to the point where he would set out to do something. This he found was a universal pattern of creativity. You are bored, do not know what to do. The tension mounts until you start cleaning your room, calling a friend, taking a walk or anything to get rid of boredom. And that is when you actually start doing the single most creative things in your life.

People addicted to TV, says Mander, will postpone this subjective wave of psychological creativity until they go to sleep.

And if you want to do visualization, shamanism, meditation, healing, psychokinesis etc. the best idea os to use your TV set maximum as a place you put your houseplants on. But sometimes it is wise to do what the OP did.

In my own experience, reading and writing on the Internet does not have a similarly debilitatig effect, although a few factors may be similar.

Merry christmas to all of you out there.

Kokatsi

Its all about balance. As an adult, you should be able to handle having a television in your home without it making you go crazy. I'm not gonna sell my car and get a bus pass because I hate traffic and want to kill half the drivers on the road. Its all about balance man.

I rarely watch TV, but I am capable of filtering.

As many have said, I enjoy local news. I also enjoy House MD, 24, Lie To Me, and other stuff. I also enjoy comedy central.

However, I rarely watch it as many have said anything I need I can get on the internet very very very easily, and quickly given the fact well, I'm a nerd. =)

I do think it's irrational to get rid of your TV, I mean, you could at least use it for watching movies.

I hope you gave it to someone in need of a TV. =\

This IS something I've thought of, but I'd have to get rid of my computer too...especially my computer...spend way to much time on it, and it's killing me between Alex Jones, ATS, Marsanomaliesresearch.com and Bill Cooper, I'm losing sleep.

OP - I am with you 1OO percent - I no longer own a TV and it makes such a difference - I actually can hear myself think - I get my news from the radio and the internet - pick and choose programs that I want to watch - almost everything is available on the internet - without the incessant babbling of adverts - and have not missed anything that was important for me to know about...I undrstand that not everyone needs or wants to be so drastic as to remove the evil box from their home but for me it's one of the best things I ever did...it just makes me calmer -
for example - to day I spent the whole day [except for when I ran errands] in blissful silence - no radio - nada - mm-mm-mm- sooo nice...

I did the same awhile back...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
wasn't long before I saw my error...
good Luck to you!