Hockey and commercials and bonding

[jedusor]

I hate commercials. I'm aware that most people claim to hate them too, but I think my hate falls somewhere near the right end of the bell curve. I grew up without television (one of the best parenting decisions Mom ever made, in my opinion) and didn't spend any significant amount of time around it until I moved in with my grandparents when I was seventeen, at which point I began to understand the extent of my inability to deal with it. I can't talk or pay attention to what other people are saying if there are commercials in the background. I start feeling frustration and antsiness in my gut if I have to be in the same room as them. I could not live with my first college roommate because she had her TV on all the time.

I watch several TV shows regularly on Hulu now. I've gotten a really good sense of exactly how long half a minute is from lots and lots of practice muting and switching tabs during ads. I still dislike them, but I've worked out a system I can handle that I'd rather deal with than illegal streaming or the hassle of trying to find an entity willing to take my money.

When I started watching hockey regularly, I thought the commercials were going to be the worst part of it. And when I'm watching by myself, they are. I can still click away to a different tab if I'm streaming, or look at the games going on the other screens if I'm at the sports bar, but I still run the risk of missing something if I'm not paying close attention.

But lately I've started watching with other people, and I discovered that when you're watching a game as a social activity, commercials are the best thing ever. Because you don't want to look away from the game while interesting things are happening! But if you don't look away, then you never interact with the people you're hanging out with. So commercials are a perfect time to chat about how the game is going, get another beer, or (if you're me) e-mail your Eastern European bff who's watching the game at four in the morning about how that announcer clearly just implied that the Hawks' D-men are banging, four double entendres in a row could not have been accidental, and holy shit did you see what Seabs just did fourteen seconds from the end of the third, HOLY SHIT.

So: commercials. Under certain circumstances, I seem to be coming around on the subject.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

I hate advertisements, too. In all their many forms.

Fortunately, the steady democratisation of information by the Internet seems to be messing with advertising as a business model. Increasingly, the way to get sales is through word of mouth and good reviews rather than through advertising.

Unfortunately, advertising execs are fighting for their lives, telling their clients they can manipulate word of mouth through "viral marketing" and reviews through "building sentiment". They probably can, but not necessarily as successfully as they'd like to pretend. Equally unfortunately, many people's critical faculties have atrophied, but perhaps the generation that grows up with free exchange of information will learn to assess the merits of any and all information put before them.

On the other hand, the fight that moved from the web towards the search engine is now reaching the appliance. Amazon sells a discounted Kindle that advertises at you, which I find a little sinister. Apparently they've even sold some. The utopian dream of a world in which products succeed or fail according to their merits seems a little more distant again.

[wesleyjenn.livejournal.com]

If I am watching hockey and someone tries to change the channel during commercials we are over. I don't' care if it is a commercial and you just want to check the score or blah blah or whatever stupid other thing but if you time that shit wrong and I miss a goal I will end you.

[jedusor.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm not quite that fierce about it yet, but then I haven't missed any goals due to channel-switching yet. I'm generally watching on my computer, where I control the streaming, or at Teddy's, where you just have to look across the room to find out what's happening in the other game.

[elainetyger.livejournal.com]

I also do not channel-flip at all. In fact, my lack of TV watching in general and my hatred of channel flipping once I decide to turn on a particular show are probably minor factors in my inability to convert casual hangings-out into long-term relationships.

[ertchin.livejournal.com]

I have just tried, and failed, to find a story that was linked on Twitter a month or two ago, written by a father about his daughter's first encounter with commercials during a hotel stay. She kept wanting to know why the movie she was watching was broken.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Oh sweetie, I feel much of your pain. I was raised by television (not a bad parent, given the alternatives), yet never inured myself to the frustrating interruption of BORING commercials. Oh sure, today I'm tickled to watch a DVD my dad made of a videotaped we kids loved -- the commercials are nostalgic, and my brother and I instinctively rub the memory of bruised arms from playing along with the Hawaiian punch commercials.

But we played along because we were fighting off the annoyance of having been interrupted for something boring.

These days, I have the miracle of a DVR and cable, which the household uses exclusively to watch hockey, American football, soccer, and the occasional rugby match. Netflix streaming and Amazon Instant keep me in as much episodic television as we want, though we're perpetually a season behind the rest of the world due to the release timing of licensing.

As a result, Paul and I have a rather inflated view of the quality of television. We watch only things our friends recommend. As a result, to us non-sports television is exclusively made up of How I Met Your Mother, the first three seasons of Big Bang Theory (they switched from being about quirky, nerdy friends to being about hopeless nerds getting it on with impossibly hawt chix), et al.

We know nothing of this Jersey Shore we see referenced in sidebar ads on websites.

Life's pretty good this way.

And yeah, watching sports with friends is a lot of fun. I'm so glad that most of my friends don't make fun of me for the geek betrayal that others seem to think I'm doing when I eat guacamole and yell at the receiver for butter fingers.