Spectral Expansion

People are having less and less things in common to talk about nowadays. It's not that because people are becoming asocial, no, it's really just because people are having more and more choices in their entertainment. Say, if you lived during the Spanish Occupation, there was no TV, the newspapers probably came out about like once a month, and the news are like fucking three weeks old, so when there's a show/play in town, everybody would see it, and while it's the only thing you can talk about, it's probably something everybody can talk about.

Fast forward to my childhood, late 80s to the early 90s. We did have television, but nobody really had cable, and there were like 4 and a half channels that didn't broadcast retarded shows (most of the time anyway), so even though people were glued to the TV, they were still watching the same thing. There were like a grand total of ten cartoons on TV, probably five or so TV series, and about four movies a week, most of them occurring in varying timeslots. You could watch almost everything (specially as a kid because you had the time), or even if not, you at least know what each show was about. At school, everybody was pretty much watching everything, and you always had something in common to relate to. Sure the shows sucked by today's standard, but back then, what would you have compared it to? Even now, whenever people go nostalgic on that sort of era, everybody can almost say "o yeah, I remember that", because of the sole reason that we didn't really have that much of a choice.

Fast forward again to today. There's probably at least 15 different weekly TV series' that are available on the net or through your (not-so)friendly bootlet trader. And that's just for american shows. Movies come out in clear DVD form as soon as the cinemas stop rolling them. I wont even begin to discuss how much Japanese, Korean and Chinese shows are added to the list thanks to the Asian revival.

Now what? Half of the time you'd get questions like "Hey do you watch blah blah blah" and most of the time, you'd just be able to say "I think I've heard of it". And it's perfectly normal, because if you are going to watch each and every "weekly" show mentioned above, 24 hours a day will not suffice.

The only real way to have more people follow what you're following is to shove the shows down other people's throats. A less palatable alternative is to just go online and find strangers there who have the same interests as you, leaving you even more isolated from your local peers. How will the kids of today start reminiscing tomorrow when their childhood's scattered across so much that just knowing each and every one of them is already a daunting task?

Well there's not much use in saying I know how that's gonna turn out. For now, we'll talk about the news. Everybody at least knows about the news right?

"Well, I think I've heard of it"

Screw it. I have an obscure TV show to watch.