I’ve sat here for approximately fifteen minutes contemplating the sheer magnitude of my last seventeen years of troublingly prolific television consumption; a vast and contemptible catalogue of visual dross, that I have unashamedly consumed with wanton abandon under the sometimes rather tenuous banner of ‘entertainment’.
In amongst the gems, those relatively rare programmes that one could argue are worthy of burning significant hours of valuable existence (like The Sopranos), have been some utter travesties. Line of Duty for example, is an oft eyebrow-lifting, monumentally risible, scriptwriter fuckfest, delivering just enough to ensure you remain in your seat, yet disproportionately sullying and putrefying your mind to an extent that it leaves you feeling kind of grubby. A perfect example of a brazen embezzlement of one’s time, that indubitable shit-shambles of a show robbed me of approximately thirty six hours; time wasted witnessing a miscellany of superficial relationships, farcical policing scenarios and comically overblown dramatics…time never to be returned. And Line of Duty is not the only offender.
Since Netflix’s inaugural year in 2007, I suspect that I have spent an average of approximately one hundred evenings per year transfixed by the creativity of other peoples’ imaginations represented on screen (assuming less than fifty percent of my weekday evenings, to be conservative). Statistically, this tragic squandering of an ordinarily furtive mind equates to the following…
Roughly five thousand, four hundred hours of missed opportunities (I could have been doing something constructive), one thousand, eight hundred bags of crisps (around two hundred and forty thousand calories), one thousand, eight hundred chocolate bars (one hundred and sixty thousand calories), three thousand, six hundred cups of tea and one thousand, eight hundred late nights. People have become proficient in languages in less time; worse, they have become Olympic medal contenders, doctors, lawyers and accountants (honourable, commendable, lamentable and unfathomable; in that order).
Considering my own Olympic aspirations, if I were to attempt to shake off those additional calories in an attempt to garner glory for my home nation (whichever nation that might be due to me being of confusingly diverse descent), I would need to run for approximately twenty five days straight averaging constant ten minute miles. I’m not going to do that. Sitting on your arse for prolonged periods has the effect of quashing any desire to exercise, and I am at the point where being sedentary is complimentary to my incredible aptitude for doing fuck all. It also means I don’t have to learn the lyrics to God Save the King.
I am therefore, wedded to this existence. I am stuck trawling the unending thumbnails of idleness relentlessly proffered by the streaming service content cowboys who have, to their credit, offered me the white horse of banality (charged on credit) to ride into the sunset, to the credits.
