The Peculiar Superiority of "I Don't Watch TV" People

There's a specific breed of person you've definitely encountered at dinner parties, in the friend group or awkward work lunches. They're waiting for their moment. You mention something—anything—about a popular show, and their eyes light up. Not with interest, but with opportunity.

"Oh, I don't watch TV," they announce, with a self-satisfied air. Despite my best efforts, I immediately judge those people and put them in a special box in my head. I LOVE TV. However, that’s not why I am judging them. It’s because they're lying. 

The Semantic Gymnastics

What most people mean when they say "I don't watch TV" is that they don't have cable or don't watch traditional broadcast television. They're not sitting down at 8 PM to catch their favorite show as it airs. In that literal sense, they're telling the truth.

But the reality is that they're still consuming enormous amounts of video content. They're watching the same shows everyone else watches, just through streaming apps. They're spending hours on YouTube (a play on "tube," the old slang for television). They're scrolling through Instagram Reels and TikTok, which are really just short-form television delivered in an endless, algorithm-driven feed.

The Hierarchy of Screens

Somewhere along the way, we created this bizarre cultural hierarchy where the delivery mechanism matters more than the content itself. A two-hour video essay about the history of breadmaking watched on a phone? Intellectual pursuit. A nature documentary on a 65-inch screen? Mindless drivel, apparently.

The absurdity becomes even clearer with streaming services. These people are watching the exact same shows as everyone else: produced by television studios, featuring television actors, released on weekly television schedules—but because they're doing it through an app instead of a cable box, they've somehow retained their cultural sophistication.

It's like saying you don't eat food, you just consume nutrients that happen to be arranged in meal-shaped configurations.

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The Snobbery

What's truly at the heart of this phenomenon isn't actually about television at all. It's about class signaling and cultural capital. "I don't watch TV" is just a shorthand way of saying "I'm not like those people"—those mindless masses who come home and zone out to whatever's on.

These declarers want you to know they're intentional about their media consumption. Discerning. Curated. Better. Smarter. The irony is that plenty of people who watch actual television are just as thoughtful and selective about what they consume. And plenty of people who smugly announce they don't watch TV are scrolling through TikTok for three hours every night, which is just television that's been processed through a blender. I for one am just as much of an avid reader as I am a TV watcher. 

Why This Matters (Or Doesn't)

Look, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor annoyance. There are worse forms of pretension in the world. But there's something revealing about the need to assert superiority over such a mundane activity.

It speaks to our desperate desire to believe we're different, more conscious, more in control than everyone else.

We need our media consumption choices to mean something profound about who we are as people.

But here's a radical thought: maybe they don't. Maybe what you watch and how you watch it is just not that deep. Maybe someone who unwinds with reality TV after a long day is living just as examined a life as someone who watches three-hour film analyses on YouTube.

Finding Peace 

So, can we please retire the "I don't watch TV" badge of honor? We're all watching something on some kind of screen. In many ways, we're more devoted to "the tube" than any generation before us—we've just rebranded the experience.

Instead of drawing arbitrary lines between television and streaming, between YouTube and TV shows, between TikTok and traditional media, we could simply be honest about our habits. Some of what we watch is enriching, some is just fun, some is background noise, and that's all perfectly fine. And there’s nothing to apologize for, regardless of which screen we're staring at—or which version of "the tube" we're watching.