I've stayed away from television for many years now. It was a conscious decision on my part and it was handily supported by my coming-of-age environment, being a student abroad, not affording many luxuries, falling in love with the PC, the advent of the internet and the once insanely slow download times which amped anticipation levels, engorging my imagination, energising it in engaging into wildly vile fantasies while I cranked another one in slow motion, perennially waiting for the pixelated cunt of another faceless sexual role model to appear on a monitor big enough to act as a makeshift shelf for tissue boxes, lube bottles and coiled up leather belts (auto-erotic asphyxiation ftw).
I played video games and watched picture films on that very same machine. Occasionally I would use it, as the contemporary incarnation of a typewriter that it really was to type letters to the MTV while blowing up my tiny desktop speakers with metal, the Music of the Demon.
Many random midsummer nights found me sweating my last boxers on a dilapidated faux-leather bargain sale office chair, my face painted bright white by the mouth of infinity outpouring out of my burning birdcage monitor while I raced on simulated wheels, shotgun-blasting one coded menace after the other, flying through diode-crafted galaxies small enough to fit on a laminated A4 piece of inkjet printed paper.
The same trend continued well into my early adulthood. Having a steady job (in various trades, disciplines and locales), renting beat-up apartments all over a whole continent, evidently settling back to a hereditary home, keeping up the endless battle along the other servants constituting the private sector working class, still not owning a TV, not caring to subscribe in any pay-per-view service. Increased download speeds, torrenting without precautions, acquiring larger sized flat monitors, figuring out how to effectively utilise my non-dominant arm in acquiring new masturbatory accolades took me well past the noughties to somewhere around today.
Despite the ubiquity of offers coming in from the “Internet Of Things” and multiplicity of entertainment avenues available to everyone at an easy mouse-click, I mostly stayed true in enjoying gaming, music, obscure and thought-provoking comedy and engaged a fair amount of my time in sustaining the global interconnectedness phenomena that is social networking sites. Occasionally I would pick up a good book and permit myself to be thoroughly engaged in it. Occasionally I would still download a good film and watch it, alone or in company but I never really allowed myself the luxury of being fully engaged in any of these practices. I was especially adamant in avoiding the modern trendsetter and trend killer – contemporary TV series.
If we accept the proposition that “video killed the radio” as true we must also admit the proposition that “Internet killed Hollywood” to possess an equal stake in truth. If you take into account the latest trends coming out of (what's left of) big Hollywood studios you will notice an endless stream of fantasy book or comic strip adaptations which usually end up developing half a dozen of sequels each effectively creating large screen format series.
The medium being indeed the message, it is highly evident that modern engineered entertainment values prefer to engage their audiences in a constant appreciation and expectation cycle, essentially creating a “supply and demand” effect in the minds of haplessly hooked (addicted) couch-bound viewers/consumers.
If you are even moderately adept in perusing the fathomless wonders of the Internet it shouldn't take you long to find out how to keep yourself constantly entertained by the myriad of TV series (or more aptly put Internet series) tacitly and readily on offer.
I would not be surprised if in a short amount of time from now we get to experience the total downfall of big single-film budgeting and witness a complete engagement in producing everything pertaining to the serial format. Production values in modern TV series just keep going up, abandoning the largely DIY ethics of sitcoms and boxed-dramas dominating the plated circuitry of our domestic one-eyed monsters for the past thirty years. An equal amount of money, as spent on big-budget films, is allocated in producing a holistically engaging medium that is guaranteed to capture the viewing public's imagination for more than just a single passing passive evening – primly conducted right in the safety of our urban, extra-urban, rural, middle-of-the-frickin' ocean, dangling right up into space dwellings.
Despite the general availability of everything I personally managed to keep myself away from fully engaging with any of the many TV series on offer. During later years I have also limited my film consumption to the bare minimum and there is a fairly simple reason for that.
As a developing creator of literary content myself I find it detrimental to personally question the fidelity in which the average viewer-consumer engages themselves into behaviourally supporting their favourite series (and films) of choice, at the same time exclude myself from said pool in order to sustain objectivity (or if you are into Oriental spiritual practices – detachment) in order to effectively transform into a true content evaluator, one which will independently utilise case study findings into perfecting their own creative output and work.
Obviously, everything is being done in the name of personal preference and good wholesome fun, but at the same time my approach comes into stark contrast with the establishment of “fanboy-ism” or “side-taking-ism”. You will rarely find me sitting around a table, fervently engaged in a heated discussion pertaining to the values of elitism (in this instance attempting to prove which series is better, and why). Each one to its own, I say and with that, I avoid being drawn into mass media proselytism, escapism and the desperate engagement in sustaining the evasion of the notion of youth gone past (where obviously everything was better).
I'm not a fan and I'm not a user inasmuch I am not an amuser and an entertainer. I consider myself to be a social critic (position occupied, as we all have been informed, by people possessing much less talent than those they chose to criticise) and an objective one to boot. I'm also hell-bent in insulting whatever everyone else mindlessly appreciates and I consider such actions of mine to be part of a larger scale revolution and evolution which should be constantly happening in the perceiving mind of everyone.
Deconstruction not for the sake of obstruction but for the sake of constructive improvement is what my late grandfather would be saying if he was speaking through my holy mouth. Also, for the sake of MY entertainment which is (not surprisingly and quite logically) what I know to do best.
What I will be doing through this textual internet series hereby inaugurated is perform an objectively humorous analysis of a much loved, much anticipated, much discussed, often hyped contemporary TV series, Game Of Thrones attempting in my way to understand what the fuss is all about.
For the recently uninitiated (i.e. skim-readers) I feel obliged to state and clarify that:
• I have never previously seen a single episode of that series (or any other contemporary series)
• I have never previously read a single book out of George R.R. Martin's once-ample production run.
• I have previously never given a single flying fuck about kings, queens, dragons, demons, warriors, evil lords and dim-witted saviours (and don't intend to do so now)
• I consider the psyche involving itself with past fantasy worlds to be firmly restrained in maturity limbo. (consider yourselves free to debate in the comments whether this is applicable and in extend good or bad)
• Every information I have at my disposal pertaining the GoT series comes as second-hand knowledge (i.e. the tendency of other people to advertise their preferences online and offline)
• Engaging in good-natured pretence exaggeration while in discourse about every exaggerated aspect of conditioned human behaviour is hella-fun (and is what comedy is all about)
This new series will run for exactly one week and will produce a daily article analysing the particulars of each episode aired through Game of Thrones Season 7 televised (or interneticised) run.
Postscript:
I'm particularly looking forward into pissing off as many die-hard GoT fan-animal-people as possible. What's the use of words if they are incapable of inciting sincere ire?
Relevantly off-beat disclaimer postscript:
I did mention that I did indeed download torrented films. I am fully aware that if the modern incarnation of the once alleged discussion monitoring ECHELON system is indeed active in operation, or if some random pair amongst the many or few eyes that shall witness what is thusly written and what shall be, delivers this revelation of mine to an “appropriate authority” I will be prosecuted, tried, convicted, jailed, branded as an outcast and probably be mind-raped by endless “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” series reruns.
Early-bird analytical resolution (spoiler for that series) postscript:
Every character presented to me (the receiver) during my evaluative viewing of that series shares one apparently intra-universal trait: The persistent fixated perseveringly resolute inclination of being terminally and universally insulting.
In layman's terms, EVERYBODY in that series is hell-bent in prize-competing about who's going to be the biggest asshole towards every other - ever.
And that's indeed what I'm looking into becoming (for my writing pleasure) right here, right now.