It does for modern society what opium did for the Chinese under the British. Makes them easy to control. TV is pretty much a free thought eraser. It has replaced actual discussion and artistic activity with mindless absorption of mostly bad ideas and behaviors.
The same could be said for the internet I agree, tv is 99.9999% mindless corporate dribble. Which is a shame because it could be a really useful medium. I lived 6 months once without a tv in sight and that was probably the most productive time of my life!
I feel the need to rebuke your argument, but the since the TV told me to go out, buy Nike shoes, drink Pepsi, and listen to commercialized hip-hop, Ill go do that first.
TV is bad because all you do is sit there and listen to whatever they want to tell you, the internet has probably saved alot of people from being sucked into all that. The TV shows today are all the same too, all reality shows, or the ones where they fix cars up and motorcycles, you can only watch crap like that so many times until you just turn it off and go do something else. For being able to control everyone they sure do a shitty job of it.
If you ask me, motorcycles were much more fun when the general public hated them, and the people who road them. Now everybody has one.
I don't agree with that. I watch TV (though seldom), but it's mostly the news channels or the History or Discovery Channel. And yes, like a person above said, you can say the same thing about the internet, too. But with both, it's the content that matters most.
It depends on what you watch. I rarely watch but when I do I love Worlds Apart, Doctors Without Borders (both on the National Geographic Channel) and National Geographic Explorer on MSNBC. I also occasionally watch the news. Anything can be bad if you use it in excess. I control what I watch and I've actually learned alot from tv. I usually just mute it during commercials. -Kate
