The joy of not being sold anything July 11, 2011

In 2005, after having Comcast crap out YET AGAIN during the season finale of Six Feet Under (I still actually never worked myself up to finding out what happened), we put our entertainment trust into BitTorrent. I had a PC with a TV out, and a fat hard drive, and we quickly fell in love with watching our TV shows when we wanted and how we wanted. We’d often watch an entire season’s worth of episodes for a given show during a single week or a few nights. And the best part?

No more commercials.

It was amazing how much of an impact it had on us… when we’d go somewhere where a TV was on, we’d find ourselves both fascinated and repulsed by ads. Our exposure to blurbs about new shows or upcoming movies was restricted to whatever we saw on the internet, and whatever ads we saw on the train or newspaper during commute. We happily stuck with this arrangement (despite a cease and desist letter from showtime, but hey, that was right when we changed ISP’s and it went away) up until 2009 when we got free cable with our new apartment. And I honestly almost wish we didn’t get the free cable, for the simple existence of the blithering idiocy of the ads.

As a kid, I’d hear certain adults rail about the mindlessness of TV, and how we should all go without it (of course, I never considered ditching the TV because hello, where would I play the video games? Riddle me THAT, batman!). I immediately disregarded this as countercultural hippie blather… but honestly? Just a life without television commercials showed me just how fucking much the shit-hideous noise of advertisement does crowd into our consciousness from every possible angle of attack.

And with all apologies to my wife, I just might, one of these days, stuff the cable box in the garbage disposal in the not too distant future.