My social surplus, let me show it you...

[yakalskovich]

However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

That article is something to thrust into everybody's faces when they claim we're wasting our time with pretendy funtime online games: at least we're not drinking gin or watching TV!

Comments

[bigfluffball.livejournal.com]

Hee. Weirdly I now find it almost impossible to just watch TV without doing anything else at the same time. If I don't multitask whilst watching I just get bored.

[yakalskovich]

Hehh! I tried to say something similar in a comment at that site...

[nazgulwears.livejournal.com]

I nearly always watch TV while I work. Well, I don't really watch unless there is something really fascinating on. I use it rather as an audio book.
I have been doing this since school (always did my homework with the TV on).
I guess I have to do it so my ears don't get bored.
So, what's wrong with watching TV? :-D

[yakalskovich]

Nothing at all is wrong with watching TV. The only thing that's wrong/memetically on the way out is doing NOTHING BUT watching TV.

The bloke who wrote the article is right but is -- a bloke! Multitasking, which was the obvious reaction for me, and you, and Charlotte as well, seems not to enter his mind.

However, for me, it's not a question of 'pretending to be an elf vs. cute chicks on TV', it's a question of 'pretending to be a dead Goth and AT THE SAME TIME watching cute blokes on TV'. Or, most of the time, watching jackass archaeology on TV...

[nazgulwears.livejournal.com]

Ahh, now I get it. It's a bloke!
Blokes have serial brains. Or cerial, depends on the bloke.
Anyway, they can't do multitasking and therefore can't understand people who can.

[yakalskovich]

'Xactly. Even clever blokes that write clever and fascinating essays are still blokes.

So he makes that brilliant analogy with gin and TV, then goes on to say that the many billion hours of TV watched around the world today are an enormous potential for grassroots participation, and then fails to realise that this is not an either/or situation.-

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

TV is background chatter for when you're reading lj. Unless it's Mad Men or Code Geass.

[yakalskovich]

Reading it -- or writing in it. Yes. We all agree on that here. Blokes tend to underestimate the energies set free by multitasking.-

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Lord knows that someone I know in RL cannot multitask for toffee. He's fine for one on one convos as long as there is NOTHING else he needs to deal with. I'll leave it to you to guess how often that's actually the case. ; )

(This is not my husband BTW, who's actually very good at multitasking.)

[yakalskovich]

But a bloke -- huh?

Goes to show...

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

The person I'm referring to is a Bloke's Bloke. Very sweet guy, and definitely, unapologetically, a Bloke. : )

[yakalskovich]

Well, that sort of bloke comes in handy at times, too...

[anghara13.livejournal.com]

I find the background noise of the TV can be irritating up to a certain point of the evening, usually about when the cartoons go off it gets more interesting!

I've also found that more evenings than not, I fail to turn the TV on unless there is something I actually want to listen to/watch while being online. Or it gets really really quiet and I start to hear things....

Tonight for example, it's off, because I've been too busy emailing and pottering about with the tidying up to worry about it. Last night it was on, Tuesday it was off and I missed a programme i like to watch because I was again engrossed in doing something else! Multitasking is not the only thing he missed out on, I find reality TV (big brother, survivor, pop idol, whatever!) almost nauseatingly awful, and since there seems to be a surfeit of this rubbish on the TV right now, I TURN IT OFF!

[yakalskovich]

Yep, I never watch that sort of stuff, unless it's 'Changing Rooms' or something like that -- I have a stange liking for home renovation TV. I love watching people lay parquet, tear off wallpaper, or install a new kitchen. But I like watching the Metropolitans do that in RL as well, so maybe I'm just odd. Also, I've done that sort of thing myself, with my sister.

Otherwise -- either good shows like 'Supernatural', 'Eureka' or 'CSI', or endless hours of jackass!archaeology, the Barbarian Migration, or Scythian archery on my favourite documentary channel.