I posted this, today, in a Facebook thread which had taken one of those uber-smarmy, hipster inspired turns down “let me impress you with how underground I am” lane…

I am perpetually amused by folks that cut off an entire segment of culture and genuinely believe that they are losing nothing. Worse still, they make their willful ignorance a point of pride. "I don't even own a TV and have not watched any television in a decade!" as if it were a praiseworthy event to deem an entire category of information as 'unworthy.'

Most television is crap, as is most radio, most art, most magazines, most books, and most inputs in general. If you cannot separate the wheat from the chaff, you are defective, not the media. When you decry an entire segment of culture, you announce to the world that you are too lazy, apathetic, and ignorant to do that separation.

(And as a member of the thinking world, I appreciate you putting up a flag to help us recognize you.)

The most common defense for this is that of time, and it is a disingenuous defense at best.

“But I only have a limited amount of time, why should I take it up with trashy pop culture?”

You shouldn't, but when you say “I don't have a TV because all TV is trash” you aren't making the potentially defensible claim that because you haven't found anything useful among its offerings you are choosing to spend you capital (in the form of money, time, etc) elsewhere; you are making the erroneous claim that the medium itself is inherently flawed and incapable of producing viable, substantive product, and therefore it can be ignored as a medium.

The thing is, the foolishness of this attitude would be painfully obvious were one to replace our favorite pop culture whipping boy, television, with more ‘high brow’ forms of entertainment. Try, instead, “I don't read books. I haven't purchased or looked at a book in a decade, because books are trash culture.“

Ouch.

So, I appreciate you announcing to the rest of the thinking world, in no uncertain terms, that you are willfully ignorant and consider it a point of pride. I, however, will happily continue judging the messages by their merits, not their mode of conveyance.