Mass Media is Dead (to me)

It has been a long time since I’ve had a television. Apart from perhaps the odd occasion at other people’s houses, I haven’t really watched television since I lived at home 6 years ago.

Partly this is because a lot of my attention has been consumed by the internet, either bouncing from blog-post to blog-post on Hacker News, or building bits of the web for fun. The other reason is that the majority of the shows trotted out are utter trite.

Sure, there are a few gems from across the pond which I can’t get enough of; and the BBC has a few gems. But they also have crap like: Snog Marry Avoid, of which the title alone makes me feel physically ill.

I am not a big fan of the phrase “the democratization of the internet”, but it’s certainly true. I have recently come across a few videos that could almost certainly not have existed in “traditional” television; yet have felt more human, and evoked more emotion in me than most of the junk on the magic box ever has.

Where the hell is Matt?

Guy called Matt travels the world, dancing. Sounds simple, but holy crap is it powerful. Watch it, then try and tell me Big Brother has a place in this world.

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Chat Roulette Piano Improv

On the one hand Chat Roulette is probably my mother’s worst nightmare - unmoderated, seemingly pointless, probably full of genitalia. On the other, it’s connecting total strangers in the rawest sense, and enabling cracking videos:

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Douglas Adams: Parrots, the universe and everything

An intensely interesting, and rather amusing, lecture by Douglas Adams about his adventures finding endangered species. This may not quite be as “user generated” as the other two, but I can’t imagine it seeing the light of day, in full, on TV.

Well, maybe at 4am on a Sunday morning, but that doesn’t really count.

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