Frazz by Jef Mallett for September 15, 2024

Yes, but no GoComics, either, so you’d both be unemployed.

Vermin would include lords of the manor born.

But churches kept the hours and the days for many.

I grew up in a TV-free house (there WERE people with TVs in the neighborhood starting in the early 50s, but my parents saw no need to spend money on bringing EXTREMELY blurry black-and-grey moving near-pictures into our home… and having visited friends who did have a (FIFTEEN INCH!) TV, I actually agreed.

In face we have the TV turned on right now. Tuned to the jazz music channel. Quite pleasant and I don’t even have to look up to enjoy it!

I remember watching tv in 1956 and it wasn’t blurry at all. WCCO TV in Minneapolis was a power-house station and we lived on Girard N. pre-interstate.

The dark ages were great. You could sleep in and the roosters didn’t crow.

“No time,” as though time didn’t exist before clocks and calendars.

It seems so many of our modern conveniences have evolved way past the their intended use. The laws of unintended consequences prevail.

No deadlines? Winter is coming. Bring the crops in before the frost, or you might starve.

All TV is not bad. Like sugar, alcohol, and much more, it requires good choices and careful moderation.

Meh. I enjoy streaming a lot of TV and I avoid most social media. We’re living in the age of miracles. In modern civilization, not-rich-at-all people like me can enjoy blessings that would have seemed wonderful to kings and emperors of the past — hot and cold running water, flush toilet, several easy means of cooking including the miraculous microwave (but pop things into the oven or on the stove and just turn a knob or push some buttons to get things deliciously browned), refrigeration to keep food fresh as well as pasteurized canning, stores full of … well, you get the idea.

As I sit here, all too many hours, I am often thinking like Frazz about teevee and social media. Sigh . . .

I threw my TV out over a decade ago, the only social media I am on is here. You have all the time in the world, it is up to you how you use it.

You only have to participate in TV and social media as much as you would like to. These things only grip our minds because we let them. Or would like them to.

We can thank the ad agencies for that. They have made any tv watching not worth the bother. Example, when I turn to a movie I have saved, I first hit pause to see if the screen shows how many commercial breaks there will be. More than 3 – cancel. For online movie sites, I’ll accept a couple of commercials, but when the ad counts show 4 or more in the next break, I delete it.

Same for buying an online movie. If the movie is one of the classics I favor [I began movie going in the 40’s] then I pass, especially when I see the price regularly rising. Putting more money into the profits of a channel to which I already pay a subscription fee is just not happening. They may claim ‘royalties’ but not likely.

Which means my viewing has reduced to about 2 movies a week, plus anything that might be worth seeing on a vpn channel. Returning to reading is happening more frequently.

Ah, the days when you could sneak up on an unsuspecting village with a fleet of ships.

Frazz is in the position that he can disappear for a while and visit Eden if he wants to, no? He’s a successful song writer so he shouldn’t have any financial issues to find a remote cabin and disappear for a while. I assume he has some extended time off in the summer when the school closes for a couple of months. I’m not sure if Miss Plainwell shares his vision of Eden, though.

Every age has been, is, and will be, about survival. We have beaten all the odds, now unfortunately, the universe has designed the ultimate test for human survival — humanity.

Things were better back then; people had to talk face-to-face. Also, there was a lot of murder and looting and burning. Surely those two things are entirely unrelated.

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Complain about social media and the like if you want, but if you can’t turn off your phone or your TV, they’re not the problem- your lack of willpower is.

Maybe people were out sacking and pillaging because there was no social media to keep them occupied. No FOMO if there are no status updates or new bulletins.

Depends which part of the Dark Ages. Middle Ages lasted around a thousand years, time to sample a bit of everything including nice peaceful stretches of time.

Forgot famine.

“Pillage, THEN Burn!” (One of the Schlock Mercenary maxims.)

A demonstration of a kid’s intelligence and naivety.

Think songwriters could make a lot of money then?

You don’t wanna get a cavity back then.

TV and social media are great. Up yours, Frazz.

Eden was OK until the first “Influencer” showed up touting the benefits of eating the forbidden fruit.

“There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as the Dark Ages.” —Ruth Hurmence Green, The Born Again Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible, 1980

“No calendars”?!

“No clocks“?! "No calendars”?!

…sez the guy whose art in on social media. Also, the “dark ages” were an age of elightenment in the Middle East.

I’m in Eden then… haven’t watched television since the late 90s and have no social media accounts. I do live stream music and read ebooks.

People did live differently. Actually, in some parts of the world they still live like that — ruled by the sun and the moon and the seasons, and not by time-synchronized digital calendars and clocks. That said, they did still keep time and monitor the calendar; the reckoning of time has been important since antiquity, since you need to know when to plant and when to harvest, and selling your crops and your products works out a lot better if everybody shows up for market on the same day. But only recently has time management mattered down to the microsecond, and our bodies are not really equipped for this. It’s been a huge change in our behaviors, and it will take time for us to adapt biologically to it.