Re: What ME Disturbing? (was Personal langs et al...)

Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
> Well, you all know what watching the stuff does. Unless a group is
> extremely motivated otherwise, turning on the TV will kill all
> conversation and reduce them to empty-eyed staring within 15 minutes.
Depends.  :-)  A friend of mine, when we watch TV together, she always
has comments to make about what's on the TV, which can be fun, usually,
unless it's a show that I really like, in which case it can be
irritating.  :-)

> Her theory is that
> talking about soaps has taken over the function that village gossip
> used to have.
I think that holds true for most, if not all, TV, not just soaps.  I've
had a number of conversations that have started out "Hey, did you see
the Simpsons last night?" or "Did you see the X-Files last Sunday?"

> And that function is the honing of social skills --- learning to learn
> about how other people work by observing their reactions to and
> opinions about the characters in the soaps.
Interesting notion.

> So unless you have other ways of learning those skills, or getting
> people to reveal what you need to know about them, it seems it can
> actually be worthwhile to follow the most popular entertainment.
Interesting.  Reminds me of something from "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (by
John Irving), where one character, talking about TV, says something to
the effect of "Even crap is worth watching if you can elaborate on
exactly what kind of crap it is".  :-)

--
Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon
A nation without a language is a nation without a heart - Welsh proverb
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