The Opiate of the Masses
By: Roya Brehl
Tags: Spare Time, Screens, Millenials, Life, TV

My mate Brett used to say ‘That’s dead seventies’ about anything he thought of as grim or old fashioned. ‘I think TV is dead seventies’ I said to him one day. ‘Like things still being on at particular times and just that people watch it at all.’

I’ve always found the notion of watching TV bizarre. A lot of things are if you really consider them, which unfortunately most people don’t.

I mean, what a lot of people do is get up in the morning, go to a job they dislike, go home, eat some pre-packaged junk and then watch other peoples’ fake lives on TV until they go to bed. Then the next day they do the whole thing over. And over and over ad infinitum. Grim.

I’ve listened to people complaining that they’re fat and bored while scrolling through the channels and eating crisps.

Now that religion is unfashionable, screens, ahead even of the consumer culture, are the opiate of the masses.

My mate posted yesterday that ‘social scrolling is the new channel surfing’ and kind of yeah. Social media is better to an exent (I am always slightly scathing towards people who don’t understand its usefulness or power), because it is interactive. But it is true that a lot of people just mindlessly scroll, and that they spend far too much time on it. Using social media to promote things you’ve DONE or are DOING, or to catch up on events, or just to have a quick browse in case you see something informative or inspiring — this is completely different to gazing like a zombie at an endless stream of things that don’t actually even interest you. Bored now. How about you DO something instead?

I have a letter from TV licensing promising that they won’t bother me for three years. They kept coming round to our house and pestering us, and I kept telling then that we don’t watch TV. Eventually, one guy turned up and he looked at me with such mistrust and disbelief when I repeated this to him that I said ‘Ok mate, come in. I’ll show you what I mean.’

It takes quite a lot to cause me any sort of personal offence, but this guy looking at me with extreme skepticism, as if to say ‘come on, it’s not possible that anyone doesn’t watch TV’, he did my nut in.

So I led him around the house. ‘This is the front room’ I said. ‘All these paintings, me and my housemate Lee did them. And the candle holders — my other housemate Joe made those. I’ll take you to the kitchen now. See all the veg and all these spices? Me and Joe both like to cook. We all cook for each other and I generally make all my meals from scratch. And that painting on the table. I was halfway through finishing that bit there when you knocked. I’ll take you upstairs now and show you all our music gear.’ He nodded and followed me upstairs. I would have felt a little bit sorry for him if he wasn’t such a cunt in the first place.

I opened the door to my room. ‘Here!’ I said ‘Look, there are my decks. I play records on them, there’s all my records look. And cds too. Those are my cdjs. I do an internet radio show from here and generally record everything. I also make music on this computer. See the keyboard and drum machine in front of it. Here, I’ll show you…’

He nodded again. He looked a little shellshocked. It was all very funny.

‘By the way’ I said. I do watch films and documentaries occasionally. On the internet. But that’s like maybe once every two or three weeks. I just have too much other stuff to do. I read quite a lot too. See all these books.’

I wondered if I should let him go yet, but I wasn’t quite done.

‘Anyway’ I said, ‘That’s me. The rest of them are all the same. I can’t really take you in Joe and Lee’s rooms when they’re not in, but I promise they don’t have TVs either. Cozza’s in though. He is a band. His room is full of guitars and stuff and he’s been teaching himself to play keyboard these past few weeks…’

As we knocked, I could hear Cozza playing Bohemian Rhapsody, which he’d been practising repeatedly for most of that day.

The guy got my point. They left us alone after that.

Amusingly, I posted about the incident on Facebook and one of my mum’s friends took massive offence to it and commented ‘Well I watch TV and there’s nothing wrong with me! And last time I saw your mum she had the TV on when I went round. Are you trying to say we’re both thick?’ And then he deleted me. Touche.

It wasn’t what I meant at all of course.

A while back me and two mates came up with some ‘rules’ and one of these was ‘Absently gazing at screens shall not be regarded as a worthy use of one’s time.’

I wish we’d found a better way of putting it, because the rest of the rules were quite succinct and that one is like swallowing fish bones. But yeah, that.

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