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Television Has Made Me an Outcast

How many of our conversations revolve around what we watch on TV?

John Egelkrout
6 min readMar 19, 2022
Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

If you ever saw me at work with my co-workers, you would quickly discover I have no idea what is on television. I cut off my cable TV about a year ago, and it has probably been 10 years or more since I watched television even semi-regularly. I have never seen Seinfeld. I didn’t watch the Superbowl. I couldn’t tell you what is on tonight either. Watching television is something I simply don’t do anymore, and I have paid a price via the social awkwardness when conversations turn in that direction.

The Good Old Days

I never realized how much our conversations with other people revolve around what we see on TV until I stopped watching it. Oh, I’m not one of those anti-tech, back-to-the-landers, or anything like that. As a matter of fact, I grew up watching plenty of television, and I am the first to admit that over the years there have been many television shows I loved to watch. Growing up, we only had black and white TV, and CBS was the only station on the air where I lived. Still, Captain Kangaroo and a variety of game shows like Password and To Tell The Truth were fun. My mom entertained herself by watching soap operas like The Edge of Night and The Secret Storm. She called them “her stories.” Sometimes I watched…

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John Egelkrout
John Egelkrout

Written by John Egelkrout

I am a sanity-curious former teacher who writes about politics, social issues, memoirs, and a variety of other topics. You can also follow me on Substack.

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