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Television aired 1/wk and its programmers knew an audience would be done and another would log on; creators are incentivized to make works that engender satiety and viewing habits Compare to modern mediums where the creator's moral hazard is to encourage an endless orgy of "binge content"

It being slightly ahead of its time also means everyone looks over their shoulder before criticizing it. “Am I just old and out of touch”

The total ubiquity of both production and consumption, cooking brains.

I know. It's horrible.

Calvin wouldn't see through Tate. We'd get a good 16/24 panel arc of him treating Susie like shit getting that turned on him over and over and then realizing he's a grifrer imbecile. And Hobbes would make him feel real stupid about every watching him from the jump.

Don’t have to imagine! He wrote a new book recently called “the mysteries” that’s short and very good and particularly subtle

I would imagine he's far, far more disdainful of generative AI than even its biggest critics

Waterson's essays at the front of the 10th anniversary books were huge influences on young me

Did you check out the very short graphic book he did the background art for a few years ago called THE MYSTERIES? It's just a small thing, very simple but predictably great, mixing optimism and pessimism about the state of things.

and yes I shouldn’t have said everyone needs to be a TV host, since there are still plenty industries and sectors where a social media presence isn’t an advantage one way or another, but folks, we have only so many characters on here for Infinite Hedging of Statements to Reflect All Realities

Every household has 8+ screens and every screen is full of advertisements and information, devoid of knowledge and culture. Content made to make money and further content to make even more money.

Watterson made bank and then backed the fuck away from it all. Wish I could do the same. Sadly, I didn't create one of the greatest comic strips of all time.

I was genuinely impressed with his ability to draw beautifully accurate fighter aircraft Oh and Tracer Bullet, Private Eye

Yes! I’ve also reflected recently on the gripes against TV that I vaguely remember from the 80s and 90s from Cranky Old People and realized, ooop! They knew what was up. TV show hosts running the country. People streaming their lives for 12 hours a day, everything is a “take” etc

Hopefully at least in part satisfied with his legacy of a mix of insight and whimsey being part of multiple generations of culture.

Oh, he always seemed like a profound humanist and fierce art purist. He spends his days chewing through concrete in a blind rage, I imagine.

Butlerian Jihad with Calvin & Hobbes as sacred texts when?

I mean, I’m speaking about the social anxieties around TV during that era, not the content of the TV shows themselves

I know a lot of problematic stuff about him came out subsequently but David Foster Wallace’s essays on media and TV really left an impression on me when I first read them.

Don't miss @rubenbolling.bsky.social's Flowers for Trinitron:

People known for simply being known are a plague

It did a good job not losing sight of the fundamental absurdities, plus she spends a lot of time dunking on Naomi Wolf, which breaks up the depressing bits

This frame in particular feels very influencer like.

The question is though if we're on an endless slope of things getting worse and worse or now we've reached the age of going, "Kids these days?" I'm thinking... both?

Turns out a small(ish) minority of people will sit down & watch enough TV to rot their brains. Just about everyone will rot their brains given the opportunity to *be* TV.

I am slowly making my way through Amusing Ourselves to Death and find it’s still relevant and enlightening. It’s more than a bit sad that we’ve gone from “there’s nothing on” to algos feeding you exactly what you’re interested in as content creators scramble to fit into the correct shaped holes.

same, but "The Machine Stops" and now I shall deliver my lecture on Music of the Australian Period to several thousand people acikders.ankara.edu.tr/pluginfile.p...

You do realize, of course, that this could be read as "the freakout over the brain-destroying slop I grew up with was overblown, the freakout over the brain-destroying slop today's kids get is totally justified", right?