Comments on: No TV for our family of five for 1 year and counting

By: Steve M

Steve M — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:45:58 +0000

I still would. You should at least take a look at this from a different perspective. I raised around all this technology and entire belief system was based on how new gadgets and technology always make my life better. Then I came across this life shattering idea, like your no tv. I bet that you have seen a tremendous difference in your life. Yet consider this perspective. If you were able to watch yourself play video games what would you see? You would see yourself staring into a box. Inside that box are images of a make-believe world where you pretend to do real world things. If you play guitar hero, you did not really play a guitar. If you play madden 08, did you really throw a football or win a super bowl? No. Did you really kill someone and jack their car in Grand Theft auto? No. So it is ALL imitations. Now in rebuttal to playing with someone across the country, it is still not a real experience. You did not really play a game of football against each other. You imitated a game of football. What you did do was star at a box together. How is that interacting with one another. It’s different if you are in the same room- father and son and staring into a box together if you are actually talking to one another. Sitting there entranced in your own world, whether next to someone or across the country, is NOT interacting with other people or experiencing real events for yourself. Feel free to disagree. This is more about the conversation than necessarily proving you wrong-as I believe that you are a good person, like me, trying to live our short lives to the fullest.

By: TDavid

TDavid — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:54:26 +0000

Steve M - so you don’t see anything “real” about playing a game across the country with somebody else? I wouldn’t categorize all videogames as “imitations.”

By: Steve M

Steve M — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:15:26 +0000

I agree with Josh’s last statement that you wasted your year, but I don’t think Josh did a good job explaining why. Dvds, video games, and tv are all imitations. They aren’t real life. We sit here and stare into a box and watch these various images that make us laugh, cry, and feel intimate with the characters on the screen. But the characters aren’t real, even if they are real, they aren’t apart of our real lives. Your life is the things that you do in the REAL world that impact the REAL world. Video games are getting so good at imitating physics and what it would be like to do a number of different thing,s but at the end of the day, all they are, are imitations. Your interactions with other real people in your real life should be what makes you laugh and cry and feel intimate. In response to you saying that video games create hand-eye coordination, so does bouncing a basketball around yourself or tossing a football. The only difference is that those are real things that happened in a real world with real people why video games aren’t real. So most, if not all, video games, tv and movies are a waste of time if you want to look at life from a holistic approach.

By: Rob O.

Rob O. — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:31:43 +0000

No argument on the Wii stuff, David. Those (and the Guitar Hero & Rock Band stuff) are just about the only videogames I really get behind. My biggest issues with modern video games is that they are not now what they once were - the bad guys are no longer little green, squiggly, pixelated alien invaders. Instead, the bad guys who you’re out to gun down, beat up, or in some way kill, are ultra-realistic, breathing, bleeding human-like characters. They limp if you only graze ‘em. They yell out in pain. For all intents, they’re… people.

We have no tolerance for the idea of some terrorist gunning down people in the street - and rightly so - yet we’re perfectly fine with (often very young) children doing very similar horrific, mindless violent acts to video game characters? Sure, there’s some difference, but is there enough?

Now, if you as an adult want to play these gratiutously graphic games, well, sure go ahead. But far, far too many young children are getting wrapped up in these games and most often with nary a stitch of parental supervision, guidance, or discussion. Maybe young children can understand the difference between video game violence and the real thing, but that’s probably not nearly so likely if their parents never engage them in any discussion on the topic. There are guys at work who are quite proud of how well their pre-teen children are able to so effectively kill opponents in FPS PC games. I find that quite disturbing - and I find it odd that few if any of these dads encourage their little girls to participate in these bloodthirsty ventures…

Anyway, didn’t mean to Bogart this post and get it so far off-topic… Sorry!

By: TDavid

TDavid — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:18:41 +0000

Videogames test your hand-eye coordination. And there are exercise games like Wii Fit. I’ll agree with you somewhat on the DVD front, although you are going commercial free there so it reduces your time spent, but videogames aren’t passive.

By: Rob O.

Rob O. — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 16:12:20 +0000

Seems like Josh was a bit harsh, but on a certain level I kinda agree. Now sure, you’ve sidestepped some big issues by not exposing your family to so much of the media crap & advertising that people who do watch broadcast television shows are subject to. But there’s a small kernel of truth to Josh’s comment that, regardless of what’s on the screen, TV time is still TV time. I dunno that I’d agree that any TV time over 2 hours is bad, but certainly even if you’re doing other things with the screen than watching broadcast shows, moderation is still key. Something tells me that you’re already on top of that though…

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:11:48 +0000

If you play video games and watch dvds, you are completely defeating the purpose. Doing any of those three things- tv, video games, or dvds are bad after 2 hrs. Way to waste your year accomplishing nothing.

By: TV comes back after 605 days » Make You Go Hmm

TV comes back after 605 days » Make You Go Hmm — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:59:54 +0000

[…] 20, 2006: No TV for our family of five for 1 year and counting January 15, 2006: Review: Bye bye TV, hello […]

By: Rob O.

Rob O. — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 11:54:00 +0000

TD, sounds pretty successful! I’m a little too hooked on Survivor, CSI, The Shield, & The Closer to swear off TV, but we do typically watch more DVDs than straight broadcast stuff.

Re: your next “going without” conquest, rather than nixing your credit cards alltogether, why not try using them just like an AmEx - that is, charge all you want/need to, but never allow a balance to carry over into the next month. Dede & I have done this for years. We use our Citi Mastercard constantly because we rack up dividends points. They’ll cut you a check anytime you have more than $50 built up, for a max of $300 annually. We gleefully collect that max every year. BUT, we never, ever carry a balance, so we’re not charging anything we couldn’t just as well buy with a check or cash. Gotta give Dede the lion’s share of credit on this, however… she’s the financial whiz in our family.

By: Canceling all credit cards » Make You Go Hmm

Canceling all credit cards » Make You Go Hmm — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:36:23 +0000

[…] a 30 day waiting period with zero balances and no TV for a year we are starting a new conquest in our household: life without credit cards. How long this […]