
Television and Loneliness - arthurk
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/07/television_and_loneliness.php
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ShabbyDoo
As an introvert, I find it stressful to watch TV shows about relationships
after spending a day around people. Watching some sort of
documentary/news/etc. is ok though. However, I hadn't thought consciously
about this until reading the link.

Conversely, my extroverted wife enjoys watching shows about relationships,
even when she's tired.

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barrkel
I am reminded of an episode tagline from Futurama - "Not a Substitute for
Human Interaction" (S2E19).

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nazgulnarsil
i know this position often comes off as smug, but I make an appeal to fellow
hackers: try not watching TV for a few months as an experiment and see how
_creepy_ TV watching becomes.

~~~
jgrahamc
See also: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=707647>

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dan_the_welder
I watch TV shows on DVD and I can relax and enjoy them. It is is nothing like
the constant blaring "You Suck...Buy This" rancor that is TV.

Life is just not that dramatic and a little escapism is fun. It just sucks
when life starts imitating art and people start acting out all the time.

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GeneralMaximus
I think the same can be said for books or, in fact, any form of storytelling
(for lack of a better word).

I, for one, was devastated when the Harry Potter series ended. Ditto for the
Hitchhiker's Guide.

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gaius
Tell me about it! When BSG ended I didn't know what to do with myself (other
than watch it again from the beginning)

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michael_dorfman
From the headline, I was expecting the correlation to be that more TV watching
equals more loneliness. At least, that's been my experience. The years I spent
without a TV were the most productive, and least lonely, of my life. (Of
course, those years were also before the advent of the web, so there was a lot
less time online, as well, which may be a factor.)

As David Mamet put it, "Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it
yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment."

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pasbesoin
My TV just died, an hour ago.

I'm not sure how I feel about it. Predominantly, yet another thing that has
failed while I'm between jobs. And it was a rather nice, if CRT, model.

I have been using it to lessen the loneliness of so much time alone.

(Maybe it tired of the codependency?)

~~~
onreact-com
Try to use the time you watched TV to meet real people. It's very difficult at
the beginning but after a few weeks or months you'll have a social life you
never had before.

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polos
Back when I still used to watch TV, the only channel that I really liked
simply brought either very early TV programs (from the days where TV was new
to everybody), or documentaries/interviews from 20-30 years back in time.

Maybe nobody would believe it nowadays, but TV people (on both sides) were
very different then (more attention to details, more patience, more regard to
each other).

Every year coming, the whole scene is freezing a little more, they even take
away both colors and light nowadays (in current movies), this whole artificial
spectacle will finish in the dark...

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onreact-com
I added the original source as this here is just a comment saying "there's a
cool post": <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=736181>

