Grinds My Gears: Turn down that racket!

jesse

@ May 4, 2009

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You know what really grinds my gears? When a television show I'm watching goes to commercial, and all of a sudden IT SOUNDS LIKE THE VOLUME HAS BEEN TURNED UP FIVE NOTCHES AND THE ANNOUNCER IS SCREAMING AT ME ABOUT THE NEW HYUNDAI ASSURANCE PLAN. What the fuck, television? Haven't you been around for, like, 70 years now? Work this shit out! I'm looking at you, FOX, because you. are. the. worst. turn. it. the. fuck. down.

Do you think that having the volume louder on the commercials is going to make me think, "Hey, this is really loud, I should go buy this product because their commercials ARE THE LOUDEST!!!!" No, here's what it actually does: "I'm so goddamn lazy, I'd rather sit here and watch these commercials than lean forward to pick up the remote off the coffee table to fast forward through them, but, shit, if its gonna be all loud, and I need to lean forward for the sound remote, I might as well grab the cable remote and zip through this shit."

I'm the only person still watching commercials in the entire world, and you just ruined it. CONGRATULATIONS. ENJOY THE DEMISE OF YOUR INDUSTRY, BROADCAST TELEVISION.

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grinds my gears

sam @ May 4, 2009 10:43 PM

I only read the parts that were capitalized.

joem @ May 5, 2009 2:22 AM

Jesse, I'm going to let you in on a secret tactic of mine. It makes life amazing:
MUTE BUTTON.
(Especially if you have your TV set to go into closed-captioning when it's muted.)

Then again, Ben Sadoski and I would watch TV on mute with CC on just for fun.

joem @ May 5, 2009 2:24 AM

BTW, I want to state for the record that I approve of this "Sam" character.

High-five, Sam, high-five.

jesse @ May 5, 2009 10:50 AM

Yes, joe, the mute button would work, but the whole point is that once I've leaned forward to access the sound remote, I might as well just grab the cable remote and be done with the whole thing.

kevin @ May 5, 2009 12:05 PM

I can't even use the mute button, because my old ass speakers take almost five seconds to pump sound again after I hit unmute. So I end up trying to turn the sound down, then the show is unwatchable so I have to rewind it which I invariably miss so it goes from dead silence to EARFUCKINGLY LOUD, then I realize that if I just waited 30 minutes I could watch the damn thing off my DVR or bittorrent with way less hassle.

joem @ May 5, 2009 4:36 PM

"Earfuckingly" is my new favorite adverb.

FatTony @ May 5, 2009 9:47 PM

Besides being annoying, I am pretty sure that it's also illegal. You could, I believe, file a complaint with the FCC if you were so inclined.