I didn’t get a chance to input during the class when we were surveyed on our television watching habits but I’m more than glad to utilize this blog platform to share my tendencies because I believe it represents an interesting cross-section of old media and new media.

I’m avid about setting aside time out of my week to watch a television program when it comes on live; what we would call a traditional approach.  Barring any pressing outside circumstances, I will without fail be in front of my television every Sunday night from 9 to 11 p.m. for this season’s episode of Game of Thrones, followed by Mad Men.  And it’s the same deal with every other season.  This is such a part of my routine that I shudder to think about what would happen if it was taken away from me, so I scour for new shows to fall in love with every time there’s a turnover of programming.

Undeniably, I’m drawn to the allure of the “premiere showing” aspect at work here.  However, that’s not all there is.  Whenever I watch a television program live, be it a sporting event or a television show, I usually do it in tandem with being on Twitter.  It’s difficult to do so for something like Game of Thrones, which has no breaks, but GoT is more of an exception when compared to the rest of the landscape.  When the commercials hit, I either go to the bathroom or I check Twitter, no inbetween.  I may post one or two tweets for a show and a few more for sports events.  But moreover, I’ll search for tweets to see what others have to say.  There are two Twitter comic personalities that I follow, @desusnice and @THEKIDMERO, that are guaranteed to chip in their two cents every time something happens in a New York area (I’m from New Jersey) sports game or a major nationally televised one and I peruse my timeline with glee for what they have to say when I’m also watching the same match as them.

Prior to my starting college and Twitter’s ascendance to ubiquity, I was far less interested in watching regularly scheduled television programming; I consumed visual media in typical millennial fashion: online streaming.  I was, however, still a major sports fan and often when I was not sitting down with friends or family to watch a game, I frequented an internet discussion board where live-watch threads occurred.  It was here that I experienced firsthand the joy of having a virtual crowd that reacts in unison with me.

I don’t think of myself as hyper-social.  It isn’t so much that I want to be heard and be part of a herd; I’m much more interested in hearing the breadth of what there is to be said.  And even if it’s banal, even it’s nonsensical, following along with someone’s thoughts as they engage with media is a wonderful learning experience.  The only thing that concerns me about virtual conversations is that I spend too much examining them, but that can be fixed with self-control via maturation.