Thursday, July 28, 2016
Figured out what this resembles
Since I tossed out the TV in 2010, I've retained a leftover habitual desire for the Evening Local News. Two of the local TV stations NOMINALLY have 5PM webcasts.
Watching these webcasts is a totally different experience from turning on the TV. You wait until the Watch link appears, click on it, and then a wide variety of different events happens, with no obvious pattern or consistency. Sometimes an error message, sometimes a Flash Crash. Most of the time you get a few ads and then nothing. Sometimes you get the ads and then five minutes of the news before it just blanks out.
Once in a GREAT while you get the whole 30 minutes without a break, without needing to restart 30 times.
This has been reminding me of something which I just now figured out.
Same experience as a phone call to a busy bureaucracy. You try 20 or 30 times, always running through the repetitive Hold Music, and once in a GREAT while you make it through the gate to a conversation with an actual human.
Later thought: Maybe I should learn something from this. The webcasts show the purpose of all modern "entertainment" and "news". You are not a customer or even a product. You are a peculiar form of employee. You work hard and pay lots of money for the privilege of seeing advertisements.
¶ 5:25 PM 
