Tromag at 19:31, 1 June 2023

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 This comic is [[:Category:Charts|yet another graph]], describing how people who don't own a television feel throughout several time periods. While televisions have existed since 1928, regular scheduled broadcasts of television programs did not begin until the late 1940s. So before the 1950s, it was common not to own a television and therefore most people's feelings about it would be fairly neutral. This changed as televisions became cheaper and more people started owning them, meaning that if someone didn't own a television, it was generally because they couldn't afford one. This might lead to someone feeling embarrassment when admitting they don't have a television.
-Gradually, television ownership increased until eventually, nearly every household had at least one television, and those that did not were more and more likely to do so by choice rather than due to poverty. The graph therefore peaks at around the year 2000, when many people would be proud to say that they did not own a television. [[Randall]] suggests that these people would feel smug because they are resisting a popular trend (owning a television) which the rest of the public take part in. The graph tails downwards at the end, suggesting that Randall believes that people are becoming less smug. This could be because of the abundance of video content and other forms of entertainment on the internet and mobile devices. So, according to Randall, people are returning to not owning a television simply because it's not necessary and these people therefore feel neutral towards their lack of a television.
+Gradually, this attitude began to change. The graph puts the low point of embarrassment some time around the late 1960's or early 1970's. At this point, television ownership was becoming common enough that the medium was increasingly seen as primarily consisting of low-brow entertainment, with little to recommend it (FCC chair Newton N. Minow famously described television content as "a vast wasteland"). At the same time, televisions became increasingly inexpensive, until they were considered a standard feature in nearly every household.  As a result, not owning a television increasingly became seen as a deliberate choice rather than evidence of poverty.  Sometime around 1980, Randall sees perception shifting to where choosing to avoid television is seen as a decision that people are smug about, rather than a source of embarrassment. The implication became that the only reason not to own a television is because you have better things to do than watch TV.
-Another point of view is that, with the advent of the Internet for news and weather along with video-on-demand services such as Netflix, televisions have become obsolete for some households and thus not owning one can be seen as moving with the times, or those that don't own one see those that still have one as old-fashioned, hence the smug. However in recent times television has become imbued with new technologies such as Internet access (known as smart TVs) and thus owning a television is seen as trendy again, thus the level of smugness drops.
+This point of view is seen as peaking around 2000, and then declining, to where people nowadays are more likely to be smug about lack of TV ownership than embarrassed, but less so than in the past. There are a number of possible reasons for this, but the biggest is probably the rise of multiple devices and streaming services, meaning that shows and movies can be consumed on on tablets, phones, and computers, making televisions less ubiquitous. Not owning a television no longer indicates that you don't consume shows and films, but simply that you consume them in different ways. As a result, the trend is back toward neutrality: whether you own a television or not just isn't much of a statement anymore.
 The title text suggests that whether people feel embarrassed or smug doesn't depend directly on what percentage of the population owns TVs (TV ownership rate) or even on how quickly this percentage is growing (derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time); instead it depends on how the change in this percentage is speeding up or slowing down (second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time). Specifically, as the rate at which people adopt TV ownership accelerates (positive second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time), people who don't own one feel embarrassed (negative smugness); and as the market is saturated and the rate at which people adopt TV ownership slows down (negative second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time), people who don't own one feel smug (positive smugness). If people feel twice as embarrassed/smug when this rate of acceleration/deceleration doubles, then we have Randall's formulation: "smugness is proportional to the negative second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time".

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 :"I don't own a TV"
 :<small>by year</small>
-:[The x-axis is labled: 1950, 2000, today.]
+:[The x-axis is labeled: 1950, 2000, today.]
-:[The y-axis is labled ''neutral'' at zero, ''smug'' at top, and ''embarrassed'' to the bottom.]
+:[The y-axis is labeled ''neutral'' at zero, ''smug'' at top, and ''embarrassed'' to the bottom.]
 :[A plot, similar to a negative sine curve between approximately 1960 and 2000, is shown in red, starting at 1950, moving into negative values, reaching the zero level again at the beginning of the 1980s, reaching its maximum shortly after 2000, and decreasing again until today. An arrow shows the current direction.]

1299: I Don't Own a TV - Revision history

Tromag at 19:31, 1 June 2023

JLZ0kTC5 at 17:29, 23 November 2022

172.70.230.53: Undo revision 272290 by Explain xkcd server admin (talk)

Explain xkcd server admin at 00:06, 21 May 2022

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