deerallen:

Orb Ism

Dear Orb, Where do I begin? You started your Dear Allen question so well. “Should I believe everything I see on TV?” Perfectly stated, poignant, and completely worthy of a well thought out answer. “Somebody once told me that all my generation knows, it learned from TV,” again excellent statement to support your question. Oh, but if only you had stopped here. “but I don’t even own one.”

**SCREECH** (The music stops and everyone looks in your direction) FYI, so that your generation understands the screech noise reference, that would be sound of needle being pulled sideways across a record. “What’s a record and why is a needle involved?” Seriously are you that young? Records, you know, those big black discs that contain music. “Laser discs?” Yeah sure laser discs. Geez you kids these days!

Anyway, back to my point. You don’t own a TV? I call bullshit. You sir are playing the shell game of semantics. Granted you skinny jean wearing Justin Beaver lookalikes may have lost your masculinity over the last decade, but believe me you haven’t given up your televisions. Show me a house with a TV antenna and I’ll show you a twenty something “man” that doesn’t wet himself because the new episode of Glee hasn’t shown up on Hulu yet. Granted your generation may not remember what it was like to get home on time to watch your favorite show, but I guarantee this magic screen at which you are presently staring has hosted many a program filled with mindless entertainment.

“Oh but I only watch movies on Netflix.” **BUZZ SOUND** Sorry wrong answer. Ever heard the term straight to TV? No? Seriously? God you kids annoy me. Back in the day when we sat around our wondrous black and white cathode ray tubes, enjoying the films of our time, or talkies as we called them. If we were lucky, these moving pictures would bypass the silver screen altogether and jump straight to our televisions. Oh it was a glorious time. Craptastic movies, altered to protect our innocence. Granted you users of the interwebs may not have to deal with the level of censorship we once did, but you are still watching the boob tube whether it’s on your flat screen “TV” or your equally flat screen “TV” you call a computer.

So Orbi dear, should you believe everything you see on TV? It’s actually a moot point. Your generation has already lost the battle. You’ve been force fed products, fashion, and politics for years. You’ve been lulled into complacency by your own personal TV that’s been prepackaged for your new and improved sense of entertainment. When I was kid our recreational time was spent riding our bikes and climbing trees. Your generation is trying to reinvent video games with motion sensors that make “you part of the action.” Did someone say childhood obesity? Tyler Durden said it best, “We’ve all been raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars.” The difference between your generation and mine is that when I hear the word winning, I think about succeeding in life. Yours thinks of Charlie Sheen.