In 2004 I returned to Austria from France, and with that homecoming came another decision: to exile television from my life. It was not a protest, not an ascetic gesture—just a quiet realization that I could do without the glowing rectangle that had long been the household altar of the dull. I have never once regretted the decision.
Yes, there is a television in my house. I am not so deranged as to deny my wife and children their diversions, nor so tyrannical as to foist my own conclusions upon them. But for me, the thing is dead. My screen-time sins are committed before the computer, where the hydra-headed Internet offers its endless buffet of nonsense—but also, if one curates it with the discipline of a monk, a handful of tolerable channels and some music that hasn’t been sterilized by committee.
The ability to say no remains the last meaningful power an individual has. The more we surrender it, the more decisions we allow others to make for us. Every “yes” to their algorithmic swamp is another small abdication of agency.
I can’t impose my abstinence upon the rest of society, and I don’t wish to. But there’s a market out there—vast, unclaimed—for those willing to reject the mainstream goo that passes for entertainment. Anyone brave enough to build the alternative? A true alternative that is – not what we are being served under the moniker.