People That I Don’t Trust, Part I

People who say that they “don’t like TV.”

First off—you don’t like TV? What’s wrong with you? I can see saying that you’re not obsessed with TV, but not liking TV? You don’t even like it?

I’m not necessarily saying that you have to like bad TV. You don’t! I’m fully aware that there’s a lot of bad TV out there. Last night, for example, my non-cable hotel TV made me choose between Britain’s version of Sixteen and Pregnant (the slightly more scandalous-sounding Underage and Pregnant) or Top Five Boy Bands of the Nineties: N*SYNC. TV can be horrible drivel! I get it.

But when someone says they don’t like any TV, what they’re really saying is that they don’t like Six Feet Under. They don’t like Mad Men, or Breaking Bad. It means they didn’t go batshit crazy with ecstasy over the first two seasons of Dexter or Weeds, and that they didn’t weep like children at Pam and Jim’s wedding on The Office. And that makes them horrible terrorist robots who need to be stopped.

Serialized narratives have been popular since Dickens’ time, and have always been primarily about storytelling. You don’t like storytelling? You don’t like being entertained, or thinking? Or feeling, robot person? YOU DON’T LIKE FEELING THINGS?

So, to me, when people say that they don’t like TV, or make some phlegmy little squiggly face when you mention that you like TV, or instead give you a wide-eyed innocent Bambi blink and say “I’m soooo jealous, I with I had time to watch TV!”, what they’re really saying is that they think they’re way fancier than you, and spend their time doing things that are Much More Important.

And that’s the big breach in trust. Because nothing, nothing, is more important than getting caught up on the latest Grey’s Anatomy. And if you don’t understand that… you are definitely not to be trusted.