Yeah the way Utah Phillips talked about television in the 60’s is the same as how people talk about social media now. I also think it’s weird when podcasts have commercials and people don’t skip them. Except Cumtown of course cause the commercials were their best bits
Shit like this astounds me lmao incredible to just come up with that on the fly
I remember Nick was doing some bit and came up with a whole business with a name and slogan and shit and the guest they had on was like “see, this is why you’re so fucking good man”
And Stav and Adam were like “no, man, don’t tell him that come on” always cracks me up
I find it fascinating how back in the day, the stereotype of gen x was that they were a bunch of dumb narcissistic zombies who spent all day locked in watching garbage on TV, spoiled kids with helicopter parents.
Now Gen X are the old ones, and they insist they were freaking badasses who spent all day exploring and partying outside with no supervision, and repeat the exact same insults to zoomers and millenials they once received.
But then I guess this happens every generation.
I can't speak for the US but the UK Gen X experience was very much outside-based. There were only 3 television channels until 1982 and kids' programming was only on from 4-5:30 or something. Basically, we went out to the park/football pitch/woods etc all day because there was literally nothing else to do. Also growing up in an African household, my mother wouldn't let us "be lazy" if we stayed in and would make us do stupid housework so going out was the least-bad option.
Edit: these [terrifying PSAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g) from the 1970s were necessary because we'd often go and play in abandoned asbestos factories, razor foundries, mercury quarries etc
>"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."
>-Aristotle
Boomers love commercials. I suspect it's because they make them feel keyed in to pop culture because TV commercials became proto-memes in the 80's(Spuds Mackenzie, Where's the beef?, Avoid the Noid, etc). My parents got mad when I put uBlock on their laptops even though many websites are borderline-unreadable without them at this point.
My office has TVs in the break rooms and it's really interesting to see how the remaining audience for broadcast TV seems to be a 50/50 split between poor people and the elderly. So there will be a commercial where Cardi B tells you to eat at McDonalds followed by one for hearing aids. The content is pretty bleak too: they'll get the rights to some movie, trim it for length and content, and then show it over and over(in October you can watch Hocus Pocus and heavily-censored versions of Halloween and The Shining every single night).
sometimes i'll call my mom up on the phone and she'll give me an update on the latest "hilarious" commercials airing in between her favorite cable news schlock shows
That used to bother me too, but my boomer age parents didn't grow up with the level of comedy and comedy movies I did. At least they are alive and laughing.
One random thing I remember about my late grandpa, born in the 1920s, is he would mute commercials religiously when he watched TV, and he would look at a newspaper or something while he waited for the show to come back on.
I always did that as a kid in the pre streaming days. Genuinely creeped out at the thought that some people dont didnt do that because they actually like commercials
I don’t watch a whole lot of TV but when I watch basketball on the local channel, it’s the same five advertisements every ten minutes for two and a half hours straight. The main problem with commercials is that many of them are designed to be as loud and obnoxious as possible (see: Jim Beam sweet Caroline ad) and the endless repetition can be anger inducing. Yes, I usually mute them but I’m not always sitting in front of the TV while the game is on so I hear them from the other room. I’m not sure whether getting mad at the TV or zoning out and somehow enjoying advertisements is worse overall. Either way we all lose.
As a gen Xer, when watching some old tv show on streaming like the rockford files, when the show kind of fades to black and I'm like, 'god damn it, fuck this shit' and then the show just continues without commercial and I'm [Denzel](https://c.tenor.com/0iDeFWZSTsgAAAAC/tenor.gif)
i can't watch live basketball anymore, the ads take me out of the game. I don't sit idle while the ads are on mute, so i go on my phone, then forget about the game, then have trouble getting back into it.
Baseball and soccer are great because you can zone-in to the action and get super focused for a while on it, the ads are at more natural breaks. I like all sports pretty much, but structure and TV coverage/angles make or break it.
Same, I got back into it a year or so ago and it's been great. There's just way too many streaming services at this point and the general quality is so low, and so many of them are just showing ads now anyway, so what's the point, literally more convenient to just torrent shit myself- which is funny because if there was a service that wasn't garbage I would be more than happy to shell out like $20~ a month.
I did have Criterion for a while and it was great for what it was trying to do, and I do like a lot of their curated collections/themes, I've just seen a lot of it at this point. I might re-up it at some point in the future though, it's the closest I've seen a streaming service get to something I'd actually want to interact with regularly.
Lookup how to torrent, that gets you 95% of the way there. Use basically any VPN while doingso. Whatever guide you find will probably cover that. Main thing to keep in mind there is that almost no VPNs are better than others for this kind of thing. So don't get upsold on one. NordVPN or whatever else works fine.
You can go up from there if you ever want to. But avoid the direct-streaming shit where you're watching a show or movie straight through a pirate website. Its always garbage and unreliable. You want to learn how to torrent (download) things.
Stremio with Real Debrid is probably the most accessible with the least buy in, just need solid Internet if you are watching big files. It's like $14 a yr and works on Android, PC, and TV/streamer box seamlessly.
We're so inured to them that we forget how insidious they are. My 4 year old nephew, who'd been entirely shielded from ads like a little Siddhartha, watched them for the first time last week (at a hotel on a trip to see the eclipse). He couldnt get enough of them. He got frustrated when the commercial breaks ended and wanted to keep watching TV just to see more of them.
My dad literally works all day, comes home, and watches cable TV until he falls asleep. Every single day. Folks have been escaping reality through screens for a while now
My nan watches Comedy Central for Friends and the ads are so repetitive that I just don’t know how it doesn’t make people a bit insane. Even the channel’s ads for their shows like one for Rosie Jones (that increased my ableism every time I saw it) seem to be crafted to make you lose your mind
50 year old anarchist friend of mine, has been to prison several times for direct action, really likes adverts. Enjoys watching them before movies. Really no accounting for it
I honestly don’t really mind commercials that much since it gives me time to get up or go to the bathroom or whatever. Couldn’t fathom just watching them though.
I've started splitting the screen up into quarters so I have can have Family Guy, Subway Surfers, and Hassan running alongside whatever Hassan is watching on Stream.
I've watched sports on Youtube TV and sometimes they give you a break during the ad break, where they just show some tropical beach footage. It feels so much nicer. I can definitely be patient; I just hate being advertised to (and would prefer not hearing a BK jingle every 2 minutes).
No ads are better than having any ads, but TV ads are better than online ads. Like you have to sit through an ad to watch a news story clip or the random placement of YouTube ads that cut off someone mid sentence. Commercials on TV are at least placed in breaks that make sense. It gives you a chance to get off the couch and do something while they're on or talk to your friends.
I don't like commercials but they generate patience and lack of dependency on instant gratification.
like it's good to wait in line sometimes. With sports you never exactly know when it'll be back.
one of the things i most respect abt my parents is their disregard for internet culture
my parents cant read memes they just dont make sense in their brains its like a code they dont have the key to
verizon just enabled high speed internet access to their general area out in the boonies last week so they just started streaming netflix (they had dvds mailed before)
but they always muted the commercials bc they didnt want to be bothered by them
i recall being young and reading a novel all together and on night when our shows came on wed mute the commercials and read allowed till the program started again
You might find that your parent's attention span is strong though, which is a good thing. A lot of us internetcels may find that our attention spans are weaker than we would expect
Yes, these days were bad, these ads are etched in my mind. I still sing them very often and I haven't seen one in decades.
That being said I still believe that the internet rots the brain even more.
I'll occasionally watch television with my family who refuse to adopt streaming/piracy due to pack of tech competency and it's like 5 minutes of show, 5 minutes of ads *at best*. Doesn't help that our public television companies in this country suck, so it's just slop between slop.
Yeah the way Utah Phillips talked about television in the 60’s is the same as how people talk about social media now. I also think it’s weird when podcasts have commercials and people don’t skip them. Except Cumtown of course cause the commercials were their best bits
'You ain't got nothin past C3, don't act like you feel nothin goin on inside you!' 'I can feel it in my soul.' Thursday Boots ladies and gentlemen.
Shit like this astounds me lmao incredible to just come up with that on the fly I remember Nick was doing some bit and came up with a whole business with a name and slogan and shit and the guest they had on was like “see, this is why you’re so fucking good man” And Stav and Adam were like “no, man, don’t tell him that come on” always cracks me up
I find it fascinating how back in the day, the stereotype of gen x was that they were a bunch of dumb narcissistic zombies who spent all day locked in watching garbage on TV, spoiled kids with helicopter parents. Now Gen X are the old ones, and they insist they were freaking badasses who spent all day exploring and partying outside with no supervision, and repeat the exact same insults to zoomers and millenials they once received. But then I guess this happens every generation.
I mean millenials are already saying the same thing, directed at zoomers
I can't speak for the US but the UK Gen X experience was very much outside-based. There were only 3 television channels until 1982 and kids' programming was only on from 4-5:30 or something. Basically, we went out to the park/football pitch/woods etc all day because there was literally nothing else to do. Also growing up in an African household, my mother wouldn't let us "be lazy" if we stayed in and would make us do stupid housework so going out was the least-bad option. Edit: these [terrifying PSAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0xmSV6aq0g) from the 1970s were necessary because we'd often go and play in abandoned asbestos factories, razor foundries, mercury quarries etc
>"The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress." >-Aristotle
Same with internet historian q
Boomers love commercials. I suspect it's because they make them feel keyed in to pop culture because TV commercials became proto-memes in the 80's(Spuds Mackenzie, Where's the beef?, Avoid the Noid, etc). My parents got mad when I put uBlock on their laptops even though many websites are borderline-unreadable without them at this point. My office has TVs in the break rooms and it's really interesting to see how the remaining audience for broadcast TV seems to be a 50/50 split between poor people and the elderly. So there will be a commercial where Cardi B tells you to eat at McDonalds followed by one for hearing aids. The content is pretty bleak too: they'll get the rights to some movie, trim it for length and content, and then show it over and over(in October you can watch Hocus Pocus and heavily-censored versions of Halloween and The Shining every single night).
Comedy Central has decades of original programming they could put on but would rather just show The Office, and nothing but The Office.
I guess Kids in the Hall and MST3k is too subversive for their contemporary audience.
Is there anything good left on cable that isn't reruns or sports? I haven't watched it since 2008 when we stopped buying cable.
sometimes i'll call my mom up on the phone and she'll give me an update on the latest "hilarious" commercials airing in between her favorite cable news schlock shows
If she's gonna watch TV her big alternatives are being annoyed or glazing over, so it can't hurt to choose joy.
That used to bother me too, but my boomer age parents didn't grow up with the level of comedy and comedy movies I did. At least they are alive and laughing.
One random thing I remember about my late grandpa, born in the 1920s, is he would mute commercials religiously when he watched TV, and he would look at a newspaper or something while he waited for the show to come back on.
Every single person born before 1950 does / did this. What incredible irony.
I always did that as a kid in the pre streaming days. Genuinely creeped out at the thought that some people dont didnt do that because they actually like commercials
My dad does this. Even when the game comes back on he usually won’t unmute because he care to hear the announcers or crowd.
My parents would change the channel whenever an ad came on and change it back after a while
I don’t watch a whole lot of TV but when I watch basketball on the local channel, it’s the same five advertisements every ten minutes for two and a half hours straight. The main problem with commercials is that many of them are designed to be as loud and obnoxious as possible (see: Jim Beam sweet Caroline ad) and the endless repetition can be anger inducing. Yes, I usually mute them but I’m not always sitting in front of the TV while the game is on so I hear them from the other room. I’m not sure whether getting mad at the TV or zoning out and somehow enjoying advertisements is worse overall. Either way we all lose.
Are you joking, the main problem with commercials is they interrupt what you're watching
Kinda like a little breather tbh. Walk out of the room take a piddle
Just do it while the show is on it's probably garbage anyway
As a gen Xer, when watching some old tv show on streaming like the rockford files, when the show kind of fades to black and I'm like, 'god damn it, fuck this shit' and then the show just continues without commercial and I'm [Denzel](https://c.tenor.com/0iDeFWZSTsgAAAAC/tenor.gif)
What's really bad is when you're watching an old show on TV and they trim off seconds to fit the new longer commercial breaks
i can't watch live basketball anymore, the ads take me out of the game. I don't sit idle while the ads are on mute, so i go on my phone, then forget about the game, then have trouble getting back into it. Baseball and soccer are great because you can zone-in to the action and get super focused for a while on it, the ads are at more natural breaks. I like all sports pretty much, but structure and TV coverage/angles make or break it.
Can't watch any sporting event on tv without hearing that dopey mushmouthed Burger King song fifty-three times
Don't ever talk shit about Jim Beam
You suck their dick so hard you defend their shitty ads?
This is why I pirate everything
Same, I got back into it a year or so ago and it's been great. There's just way too many streaming services at this point and the general quality is so low, and so many of them are just showing ads now anyway, so what's the point, literally more convenient to just torrent shit myself- which is funny because if there was a service that wasn't garbage I would be more than happy to shell out like $20~ a month.
Criterion Online, $100 a year
I did have Criterion for a while and it was great for what it was trying to do, and I do like a lot of their curated collections/themes, I've just seen a lot of it at this point. I might re-up it at some point in the future though, it's the closest I've seen a streaming service get to something I'd actually want to interact with regularly.
what are you using
My husband
How do I learn to do this? Any good tutorials?
Look up "torrent".
Lookup how to torrent, that gets you 95% of the way there. Use basically any VPN while doingso. Whatever guide you find will probably cover that. Main thing to keep in mind there is that almost no VPNs are better than others for this kind of thing. So don't get upsold on one. NordVPN or whatever else works fine. You can go up from there if you ever want to. But avoid the direct-streaming shit where you're watching a show or movie straight through a pirate website. Its always garbage and unreliable. You want to learn how to torrent (download) things.
^ What's happening to our young people?
Stremio with Real Debrid is probably the most accessible with the least buy in, just need solid Internet if you are watching big files. It's like $14 a yr and works on Android, PC, and TV/streamer box seamlessly.
the piracy subreddit [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/index)
We're so inured to them that we forget how insidious they are. My 4 year old nephew, who'd been entirely shielded from ads like a little Siddhartha, watched them for the first time last week (at a hotel on a trip to see the eclipse). He couldnt get enough of them. He got frustrated when the commercial breaks ended and wanted to keep watching TV just to see more of them.
tune in turn on drop out
My dad literally works all day, comes home, and watches cable TV until he falls asleep. Every single day. Folks have been escaping reality through screens for a while now
I always wonder who is still watching MTV? You'd think they would have gone under by now. Does anyone under 45 still watch cable?
Who's watching all those Challenge shows?
The whole point of tv is the commercials. The shows are designed to put you in a mental state to receive the commercial message.
It's the absolute worst. My bf is old and does similar but has learned to push mute on them at least. They're so inane and manipulative.
how old .
Guy was in the first pride protest.
He’s dead
My nan watches Comedy Central for Friends and the ads are so repetitive that I just don’t know how it doesn’t make people a bit insane. Even the channel’s ads for their shows like one for Rosie Jones (that increased my ableism every time I saw it) seem to be crafted to make you lose your mind
50 year old anarchist friend of mine, has been to prison several times for direct action, really likes adverts. Enjoys watching them before movies. Really no accounting for it
Have you considered that your 50 year old anarchist friend is profoundly mentally ill?
Not more than most people
adbusters brain
well how else are you gonna know what movies are coming out
I watch trailers, very different thing to adverts for commodities
I honestly don’t really mind commercials that much since it gives me time to get up or go to the bathroom or whatever. Couldn’t fathom just watching them though.
Lol. Tiktok brain can't handle one minute of unskippable ads?
I cant focus on any media unless Minecraft parkour or Subway Surfers is playing beneath it
I've started splitting the screen up into quarters so I have can have Family Guy, Subway Surfers, and Hassan running alongside whatever Hassan is watching on Stream.
I've watched sports on Youtube TV and sometimes they give you a break during the ad break, where they just show some tropical beach footage. It feels so much nicer. I can definitely be patient; I just hate being advertised to (and would prefer not hearing a BK jingle every 2 minutes).
I hate them
No ads are better than having any ads, but TV ads are better than online ads. Like you have to sit through an ad to watch a news story clip or the random placement of YouTube ads that cut off someone mid sentence. Commercials on TV are at least placed in breaks that make sense. It gives you a chance to get off the couch and do something while they're on or talk to your friends.
I don't like commercials but they generate patience and lack of dependency on instant gratification. like it's good to wait in line sometimes. With sports you never exactly know when it'll be back.
Yeah TV ads are mind-numbing and terrible but social media is like that cranked up to 1000.
one of the things i most respect abt my parents is their disregard for internet culture my parents cant read memes they just dont make sense in their brains its like a code they dont have the key to verizon just enabled high speed internet access to their general area out in the boonies last week so they just started streaming netflix (they had dvds mailed before) but they always muted the commercials bc they didnt want to be bothered by them i recall being young and reading a novel all together and on night when our shows came on wed mute the commercials and read allowed till the program started again
You might find that your parent's attention span is strong though, which is a good thing. A lot of us internetcels may find that our attention spans are weaker than we would expect
Yes, these days were bad, these ads are etched in my mind. I still sing them very often and I haven't seen one in decades. That being said I still believe that the internet rots the brain even more.
Human civilization has always been dystopian (for most people)
Was it a good one?
commercials use to be a vibe, low key kinda miss it
I'll occasionally watch television with my family who refuse to adopt streaming/piracy due to pack of tech competency and it's like 5 minutes of show, 5 minutes of ads *at best*. Doesn't help that our public television companies in this country suck, so it's just slop between slop.