It comes as a surprise to many people when they find out that we don’t have a TV, like it somehow makes us this odd anachronistic hipster family—which I suppose is partly true.
Truth is though, we didn’t make much of an effort to become free of the shackles of television in the first place.
We simply stopped making an effort to keep up with the steady onslaught of technological development.
We never saw a reason to get a new TV—the old one I had was only capable of receiving an analogue signal—once Finland ceased their analogue broadcasts back in 2007.
So without the broadcasts, our TV only served as the screen for our XBMC-powered media station. Which we enjoyed until 2012 when I retired it in correlation to our move to the UK.
And it’s not like we’re completely cut of from the world, we just get to choose everything we absorb, instead of having it forced down our Nielsen rated throats.
I still remember the shock of having a TV again, after a 5 year hiatus.
For the brief time when we first moved to the UK, both our self-catering accommodations we stayed in had a Digibox and TV and both Rebecka and I was quite shocked by the whole experience.
We hadn’t actually thought that living without a TV would make such a difference but as it turned out, we had simply repressed any notion of the ridiculous amount of advertisement that we, as viewers, are subjected to.
Ad after ad, violently brain-washing us to think we want shit that we don’t need.
Curiously, studies show that having a TV on in the background is more harmful then actively watching it.
As you can probably imagine, we were pretty happy to get our own place and not have a TV again.
And as we’re entering our ninth year of being TV free I can’t say that I miss it.
Do you think you could handle a life without TV?