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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4345 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 4, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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You can still "not watch TV" in the sense that you don't keep up with the mainstream news channels and TV shows, and instead prefer to consume obscure political blogs and manga.

Yes but just not owning a tv doesn't represent the same kind of pre commitment to not watching tv it would have pre streaming. So not having a tv in your house just seems inconvenient rather than high status.

So not having a tv in your house just seems inconvenient rather than high status.

Or simply a sign that there's little of worth watching on TV, you're not a console gamer and any shows / movies you might watch at home is done on a laptop / tablet. Like many of my friends, I gave up TV when we moved to digital era and simply never bothered to buy one as I see so little personal benefit to having one.

Which is what I'm saying, it's normal to not own a TV now, it's not a status flex.

Circa the mid 90s to the iphone era, it was a big status flex to say "I don't own a TV." See, for an in-TV example, the episode of Frasier early on when his dad moves in with him. Frasier doesn't want a TV, because he's a pretentious twat; his dad does because he's a salt of the earth retired cop. It's framed, like much of Frasier as a class conflict, Frasier and Niles are ivy educated psychiatrists who are obsessed with status signaling to their wine club friends, neither choose to have TVs in their homes on their own (though they do watch things like Antiques Roadshow in some episodes).

In fact, @RococoBasilica , you want your answer: go watch Frasier that will give you all the status symbols you could want. Foreign and abstract artwork, furniture choices, music, opera, tv, wine, food, coffee, travel.

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