The importance of watching soap operas (Was "A DISTURBING ...")

>
>On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>
> > Funny you should mention it. I just (yesterday or so) watched a
> > program (on TV!) about how it affects people to watch TV, soaps in
> > particular.
> >
> > 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.
>
>Really?  Turning on the TV, unless it's something I actually want to
>watch (Jeopardy...?), is prone to make me go off and do something else.
>But then, I've never liked TV much, being a not-very-visual person.
Hm, if it's my little group of geeky friends (they're kind of people who get
their physical activity from frenetically typing C++) putting on a movie or
show that's anything less than stunningly fantastic tends to lead to an
animated discussions of the movie/show's failings. Typical remarks include
"NOBODY could survie that", "Obviously she got the job for her looks rather
than her acting skills", "You'dn't be able see straight after a hit like
that!", "Why are the evil guys always worthless shots?" and "Why can't they
have realistic violence"? (This probably also says something about what we
use to see ...)
>
> > But what surprised the sociologist, and me, was how much time people
> > then used the next day to discuss what happened. Her theory is that
> > talking about soaps has taken over the function that village gossip
> > used to have.
>
>Really?  I could have told you that from listening to my friends.  =^)
>Mainly because of all the conversations I couldn't follow.
Well, one of my classmates reguarly skips lessons just to not miss
"Friends". He's fully capable of going berserk if he thinks on or another of
the characters acts immorally ...
>
> > 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. With the ultimate goal of
> > finding out who in your family/class/workplace you can put your trust
> > in when push comes to shove, and who you should avoid.
> >
> > 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.
>
>Or worthwhile to learn *some* form of social skills.  <rueful look>  God
>only knows I *suck* at social situations.  It's a form of intelligence I
>wish I had!
>
>YHL
You're not alone. I'm pretty low on EG too, and it doesn't help one bit that
there seem to be no such thing as a girl that share my interest in natural
science, math, history and linguistics (for some possibly good reason, I
know alot of techy/nerdy/downright weird guys who're at least as badly
affected as I) ...

                                                Andreas
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