I was asked in a comment the other day if not having a TV is some kind of posh test of will power. Frankly, the answer to this gets a little too personal for this blog, but what the hell. Here's my timeline.

Seven years ago life was inconceivable without a TV. I watched it all and sucked in every bit of CRT data, in the same manner some of you guys are probably doing right now.

In Asia I happened to stumble across a whole bunch of interviews with Asian designers. To my dismay, a few of them specifically mentioned the fact that they don't own a TV and don't watch television shows. It intrigued me at the time and it all sunk into my head and stayed there.

I returned to Romania and got back into advertising. All day, all days, I was into writing, shooting, art-directing campaigns, immersed into my job up to my eyeballs. Many TVCs—not one, not two, but a serious load of them. Fast forward: late at night, finally home, same commercials on TV and the overwhelming feeling that it's too much and I'm just too tired to be plugged in all the time. At first I used to mute the sound to make it less invasive. Then I found that almost any show is far more enjoyable if you don't hear what they're actually talking and many music videos were suddenly fake and full of mistakes without the help of an engaging soundtrack, so it stayed on mute for a few months.



Then four years ago the whole thing suddenly lost its fun so I pulled the plug and killed it for good.

Then I left advertising and I forgot there's an invention called television. Well, I didn't really forgot, but it was something it didn't concern me more than getting a full-body tattoo or inventing teleportation.

Years passed. Life was good without a TV. More books, more music, more playing with the cat, tons of DVDs, games, blogs and whatnot. I remembered the Asian guys. A designer doesn't really need a TV the way an advertising professional does in order to stay in touch with the market. A designer's market is not on TV (well, except if you're a motion graphics designer—but you know what?—a couple of the crazy teeveeless Asian guys were motion graphics designers) and has a different shelf life than most things on TV.

Nowadays, whenever there's a TV around showing a dull talk-show, a music video that tries too hard or a movie that's a total waste of time, I feel the urge to pull my hair, get on my knees and dramatically shout: "—Switch it off, dear people, switch it off immediately! Don't you see you're stuck here while the devious machine is turning your brains into mush one boy-band video and b-movie re-re-re-run at a time? There's a conspiracy to turn you into slaves, haven't you seen that Batman movie?"

This is the story. End of timeline, for now. Beginning of a dotted timeline, into the future.

Now really. What's your story? If you don't own the bloody machine, why not? How did you get rid of it? If you have one but it just gathering dust, why is that? And if you're so addicted you plan to get it plugged straight into your eye socket, why would you do that?