I live in a western suburb of a major city. I’m not sure what the economic makeup is — it used to be working class, now it’s probably closer to middle class. I think it used to be more conservative, but as younger families move in, might be a little more liberal.
The houses are pretty close together. At night you can walk down the street and see the glow of a television from a fair number of houses. We have a television but it’s down in our basement, which is not really warm and inviting. This is mostly because we don’t have lot of room in our house, and we have some big things taking up what would be our TV room.
I never watch the television. We canceled our cable a couple years ago. We had this span of time (probably years) where we paid for cable but didn’t watch it. We did a similar thing for our telephone landline. After a couple years of receiving only calls from telemarketers, we finally canceled it. My wife would have canceled it sooner, but for some reason I hesitated.
There’s wiring that every house in our town has to allow for a telephone line. It seemed like a big deal to turn that off. Disconnecting cable didn’t seem to have that kind of weight. I don’t know why — maybe because telephones go outbound and inbound and television is only inbound? One thing connects to other people, and one thing doesn’t really do anything meaningfully social.
I do still watch some television shows. I watched The Bear on my computer, also have been watching Venture Brothers with my son, also on my computer.
I imagine what it will be like to walk my block in 10, 20, 30 years. Is the glow going to be gone from all these windows? I’m honestly surprised there are still so many televisions glowing at night. That’s possibly a sign of the state of my suburb — old customs still being followed, but gradually fading as the old people leave/die, and the new people arrive.
