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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

You do realize that what you just said comes across as very smug?

Why? I geniunely cannot stand television. I cannot force myself to watch. That goes for most films. It's smug to assert a preference and act on it?

Of course not. I have a similar philosophy. I think cable television is sham: tightly-packaged crap surrounding the few things I want to watch. Who cares if it's only $10 dollars more a month. It's the principal of the damn thing. With the Internet, I get far more freedom about the media I choose to consume versus the crap put down my throat with prepackaged cable television plans.

Right. There is the principle--and then there is the question of controlling your environment, of cognitive self-defense. TV and the associated paraphenalia introduces clutter and extraneous cognitive load. And it does this out of proportion to exposure--for me, at least.

I can explain the why. You're turning your nose up at something that the vast majority regard as a value culturally, but you regard as worthless (worse actually), and you elaborated it in several different ways in the same short post (and you elaborated your disdain again in the subsequent reply). I'd argue that would come across as being culturally smug across most of the TV loving country.

You weren't just asserting a preference, you were putting down that which you don't like repeatedly. Whether one chooses to spend their time crocheting or watching TV is a strictly subjective value judgement. Is it better to laugh at a Seinfeld re-run, or Louis CK live? Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice.

Are you trying to be smug? I have no idea if that's your character type, my point was that what you said comes across as smug. It sounds culturally elitist, as though TV is for the little stupid people (I know you didn't say those words).

> Better to watch Game of Thrones or read the books? Purely subjective, there is no superior choice.

I think it can be argued that one is a more intellectually stimulating option, while also being entertaining. The fact that people prefer the more easily digested option might be partially due to the effect of advertising and what makes the wheels of capitalism spin.

Putdown of others is a hallucination. For me there is the opportunity cost of dealing with unnecessary clutter or deciding what to watch and making time for it. I simply do not have the time. For me, TV has an irritating hypnotic effect I would prefer to avoid, and one way of doing this is to remove the possibility of exposure. I have said nothing about the quality of programming--that would be like reviewing a book I haven't read. But I suspect there must be something about the medium that leads to defensiveness just in case a nonviewer might be critcal of viewers generally.

define smug

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