No Television?

Post Reply New Topic

It just occurred to me to ask this, but I will ask it because the first time I (knowingly) met someone with an ASD one of the things we we bonded over was the fact that neither of us owned a television. Both of us were far too engrossed in our other hobbies to be interested in it. I do have a computer, so if there is anything I am really interested in, I can watch it if I want to, but that pretty much never happens. It's just not on my radar.

When people discover this, especially people my own age or younger, they often look at me with their mouths hanging open, as if they cannot imagine how a human being can possibly function without a TV. Sometimes they even get upset about it and demand explanations of what I do with my time, as if this deviant behaviour is unnatural and highly suspicious.

I wonder if low or nonexistent engagement with TV is more common among ASD people because I have noticed that people on the spectrum seem to have more of a tendency to live inside their head, spend time with their own thoughts and thoughtfully seek out forms of entertainment tailored to themselves and their interests, whereas most NT people I come across seem to require external stimuli in order to feel engaged with the world and not get bored (e.g. social and physical activities, their job, and watching films and TV). Perhaps this is because we have quite enough external stimuli to be getting along with!

Of course, an exception might be if a film or TV show is the person's special interest, and I'm sure it isn't the case across the board, but I'm interested to know if there is a higher incidence. Any thoughts?

I don't own a tv and I never did since Iive on my own and maybe I never will, but I have to say that I sometimes watch movies with my computer.

I voted "don't own one" but I do have a TV that I watch movies on but I assume you're talking about broadcast/cable/dish. I do watch the series House that I rent at the vid store.

I watch television at night to wind down, and can get wrapped up in a good series.

I have a T.V., but I barely use it. When I move out I will still have a T.V. but it will be for visitors who like T.V., and I may use it as my computer monitor. I lost interest in T.V. for the most part. The shows are the problem, most of them do not interest me. I can find the same shows, movies, videos, documentaries and more that actually interest me by the hundreds just by doing some searches on the internet, it's all cheaper than cable, I don't have to be right there on a schedule to see the content, I don't need to buy a Tivo to record the show if I'm not there, and there is simply way more content on the internet... I really believe that someday the internet is going to trump television if it hasn't already. I think it has in many ways.

I don't own a TV, but I watch TV shows on Netflix sometimes, so I clicked "minimal viewing" because I felt like that counted as TV, even if it's being viewed on my computer.

I don't watch TV, but my job involves looking at an LCD monitor all day, so I don't want to look at an LCD TV when I'm not working. I can only take so much staring at a screen.

I used to watch college basketball games. Over the past few years, more and more games from the teams I watched moved to the squeeze-blood-from-turnip overpriced cable HD tiers, and then they took my favorite team off the radio, so I kind of had to give that up. My favorite team had been preempted by another local team which got preference for the radio station, so when they took them off the air, I thought at least that was over - then the next season, the local team started preempting another team I listened to on another station. After that I gave up and just read the game writeups online.

Since my computer monitor/television I play games on broke a few days ago, I decided to watch some TV again. Wow, it sucks. About 1.5-2 years ago, the TV in my room broke, and I was just lazy and didn't wanna find another, so I just lived without it.

Anyway, the only shows I found enjoyable to watch again are:
Anthony Bourdain on Travel
Andrew Zimmern on Travel Channel
Top Gear on BBC
Various shows about fixing up cars

What was one of the final nails in the coffin if you would for me and TV was when the AZN Channel died. I loved that channel. It had all kinds of great Asian shows, including the dramas Mars and My Lovely Sam Soon.Mars was the only show I would actually like, set aside time to watch, like I'd specifically try to get home early to watch it. Also had a bunch of anime, even my favorite, Patlabor. I really liked this anime, World of Narue, too. But the channel died, and part of me died with it (lol.)

But now whenever I watch TV, I feel like when I see the people on it, again, besides like car shows or something, it's always like the people on TV are taunting me almost. "Hey look, we got so many friends and you don't." Odd feeling. That and ads talking about Facebook and Twitter and iPads make me wanna pull my hair out.

The Crime Investigation Channel at night when in bed, and Benny Hill in Comedy Central on Wednesday's at 8PM, that's it really.

I've always loved TV. Most of my free time is spent watching TV. My biggest special interest (I Love Lucy) and lots of other less intense special interests (Degrassi: The Next Generation, Full House, and many more) are TV shows. I don't watch NETWORK TV, though. 99% of the time I watch shows on cable channels. Lots of the shows I watch are educational/science shows. I watch a lot of Nickelodeon shows and TLC shows. I also like A&E (for Storage Wars and Beyond Scared Straight), the History Channel (for Pawn Stars), National Geographic Channel (for Drugs, Inc. and miscellaneous science documentaries), and the Science Channel (mainly for Through the Wormhole). I also regularly watch Nick-at-Nite and TV Land for my love of old sitcoms.

I found a lot of my favorite medical shows on the Discovery Health Channel, which I sadly no longer have. (Dish Network stopped providing Discovery Health a few years back. I am still saddened.) Thankfully, though, my two favorites (Monsters Inside Me and I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant) are really shows on Animal Planet and TLC, respectively, and they just air reruns on Discovery Health. So, I still can watch these.

I'm super psyched right now, because a long-awaited season 3 of Monsters Inside Me debuts tomorrow night! I can't wait! This show is amazing. It sparked a minor special interest in parasitic disease. I've always had a special interest in infectious diseases, and Monsters Inside Me opened the door to me learning about many tropical diseases that I had never heard of before. I also love the sound of the long, complex names of the parasitic diseases (I think the word "schistosomiasis" may be my favorite). There's a great deal of information on the show, too. I read an immunology/medical microbiology text last year, and the parasite section was far inferior to the knowledge that Monsters Inside Me provides.

And I've had a special interest in obstetrics/pregnancy since I was 3, so shows like I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant and the great Discovery Health show Babies: Special Delivery were great ways for me to learn more about high-risk obstetrics. So, TV-watching doesn't have to be mindless and mindnumbing. I've learned a great deal from educational TV shows. I also have learned a lot about social skills and social cues from analyzing situations on my favorite TV shows.

I watch very, very little TV these days. I have multiple TV tuner cards though and there are several TVs in my house. It just doesn't interest me any more. I'd rather watch videos on YouTube and the like. Perhaps I should go and do that? Yeah.

I only use it for movies and video games since we don't have cable at our house. I honestly don't even miss it.

I don't own a TV and don't plan to buy one either.

I never watch something on the television by choice, but sometimes I watch things on the computer.


And by "things", I really just mean Star Trek.

TV is terrible nowadays. Anything I really want to watch, I just find on the internet.

As I have mentioned before (in another post), I do not own a television (or radio for that matter). I would never utilize it enough to recoup the money spent on it and there are far too few interesting programs on the air. The few times I do watch television, I just go to a friend's house, buy food and sometimes booze for them and sit down and watch a show based on my interests while building or modding and painting models for 40K. Aside from that, if I missed something, I'll just YT it.