Everyone would like to be more interesting. While this seems like a broad statement which can’t possibly be true for all people, I am confident that it is true for most. Even if you aren’t a person who is driven by social interaction, if asked “would you like to lead a more interesting life?” most people would answer with a yes (ninjas and pirates need not apply, I think).

There are very easy ways to make your life more interesting - you can volunteer somewhere, change your habits, or go out and party all the time. Unfortunately, some of these things aren’t interesting to you, and they may be downright boring. So an ideal way to make your life more interesting would catch not only other people’s interests, but yours as well, raising the whole world’s interest level.

The device today which garners the most attention is, arguably, the TV. It sits ensconced in the middle of almost every living room in America. We watch TV so much that there’s a considerable market for devices which make it easier to watch, either by time shifting or space shifting . If we’re guaging the interest of people just by what gets the most eyeballs, the TV wins hands down.

So if you want to be more interesting, and whatever’s on the TV is the most interesting thing around, it stands to reason that you should emulate what you’re watching. I’m not saying you bust into a hospital and start performing surgery just because you like ER, or start having saucy affairs with the other families on your own personal wysteria lane, but people can make small decisions which make things more interesting.

This is all a long-winded and round-about way of coming to my point, however. In most TV shows, the TV plays a very small role, if any at all. How many times do you ever see a TV screen on a sitcom? Almost never. They are always off screen, obviously not interesting enough to put on camera. There’s no “watching the tube” show, in which everyone watches the TV. It’s because that’s boring. This suggests that if people want to be more interesting, they should just reduce the amount of TV watching they do. In most shows on the tube, the only reason they watch TV is because of some specific purpose relating to the other, non-TV-watching. things which they are doing. Also there are very few if any big screen TVs on TV - I would bet someone that I’ve never seen even a 35 inch screen ever on TV. Smaller TVs and a minimal amount of TV watching make for more interesting lives.