TiVo is Destroying Society!

TiVo is the worst thing to ever happen to me, everyone I know, and America in general. Probably Europe too but…they’ve got a lot of other problems too so let’s leave them out of this.

Remember the good old days when people gathered at work in the morning. What did people talk about? Work? No! They talked about Bonanza and Mary Tyler Moore. They would talk about how Little Joe fooled Hoss into riding the wild horse or that great funny line from Ted Knight. And people laughed and bonded. Catchphrases were born and people said them to each other as they passed and they laughed.

But now, sadly, those days are gone. Because of TiVo. Case in point; last night I got done watching Lost and my brother called me right as it ended. So I start talking about what had just happened to my favorite character John Locke. Well my brother acts like he’s having some kind of episode. He starts screaming “Wahahahahonoeeeyah!”

“Are you OK?” I ask. (Because I’m a nice guy) But he answers that he hadn’t seen “Lost” yet. “But it was just on,” I said. It turns out he’s going to watch it sometime this week with his wife.

When did television shows start being “saved” for the wife? It’s bad enough that it happened with movies. But now television? But my little problems aren’t really the focus here.

The long term TiVo’er is the real problem. At workplaces across America, conversation invariably falls to the big shows of our time. But there’s always someone who starts yelling, running in place, and holding their ears until everyone stops talking about a certain show. “Don’t talk about it,” they screech. “I have it on TiVo.” But then you find out that they’re not just one episode behind. They’re six months behind. You see, they saw Season One and they loved it but Season two was on against their other favorite show so they’re just getting around to watching it now. So even though we’re in Season 3 now we can’t even talk about Season Two now. And we won’t be able to talk about last night’s episode until next July.

And then these people don’t even leave to allow the three of us who saw the show to talk about it with each other. So we sit silently. We can’t share. No catchphrases. We pass each other in the hallways silently. All because of TiVo. Society is falling apart because of this awful invention. Anyone remember the whole “Who Shot J.R.?” thing. It was a national craze. There were t-shirts. Imagine wearing that shirt and someone running around screaming, “Wahahahahonoeeeyah! Someone shot J.R.? Well thanks a lot. YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!”

I knew a guy who was six months behind on “The Sopranos” all the time and got really really angry when he overheard that a main character got chopped up in a bathtub. So, according to him, nobody was allowed to talk about “The Sopranos” because he worked there. Talk about a hostile work environment. It’s getting to the point that when we interview people for jobs we should ask them what their favorite shows are, which shows they’re all up to date on, and which shows are not allowed to be discussed. If their shows match up with current workers they will likely be hired. It’s like affirmative action but for couch potatoes.

The whole thing makes me a little angry. Oh. And this is for my brother who didn’t watch “Lost” last night. John Locke got chopped up in a bathtub in last night’s episode. (Not really)