I usually don’t watch television. I mostly swore it off after going completely without it for a summer and enjoying not having to plan my schedule around it. It really is addictive. (But, I still surf the web, so maybe I just replaced one vice with another.)

But yesterday I decided to make an exception — driven mostly by procrastination, as I really didn’t want to study for my Perception midterm which was to be the next morning — so I hopped downstairs to join a large crowd that was watching the season premiere of The Simpsons. Being a sometime Simpsons fan — my friend Peter and I quote it regularly, especially Mr. Burns’ “Eeexcellent” — I appreciated the premiere and found it funny and satisfying.

What was disturbing, though, was sitting there watching everyone else watch it. We were all sitting, staring at a screen, laughing at the prescribed moments, responding as if it were somehow real. The pull was so strong that people even kept watching the screen when the show went to commercial. I managed to pull away to look at my class notes, but the effect the boob tube had on people was fascinating. They were just sitting there, not talking to each other or anything.

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