Television and mass media have often been the whipping boy of leftists, the intelligentsia, and the paranoid. The social critic Theodo Adorno groused, even prior to television’s rise, that “The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.” Later, T.S. Eliot famously quipped that “Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

It’s difficult to parse such claims in the new era of television, because the new era of television isn’t really “television” at all. Too much has changed. Better to use the catch-all “screen-based entertainment”. And while television offered freedom (which of our 300 channels shall we enjoy?), choice has become the central identity of our new screen-based amusement. It seems that consumers might finally be close to enjoying Adorno’s illusory desert. And given advances it virtual-reality, they may also become less lonesome as they listen to the same joke at the same time, all while remaining (physically) isolated. In the new era, the creators create and the choosers choose. And, so it goes, more choice is never a bad thing. All but the paranoids seem to agree.

The old model of television was bad besides: an ongoing attempt to scrub the mind with advertiser’s curations, a glorification of everything there is consensus to disdain: narcissism, rabid materialism, image curation, attention seeking, sensationalized nothing, ignored injustice, money grubbing, conspicuous displays of money grubbed. Doctors don’t recommend television, we lift our eyebrows when parents place their children permanently in front of a screen, you don’t get babysitter of the year by tucking the kids in on the couch as they doze away to the oddly comforting overtures of George Forman. Apologies to all lovers of the medium.