Editing 1299: I Don't Own a TV

{{comic
| number    = 1299
| date      = December 4, 2013
| title     = I Don't Own a TV
| image     = i_dont_own_a_tv.png
| titletext = Theory: Smugness is proportional to the negative second derivative of TV ownership rate with respect to time.
}}

==Explanation==
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, 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.  

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".

As evidence for this, the adoption of TV ownership should theoretically follow a {{w|Sigmoid function|sigmoid curve}}, which is the graph of something that starts small, grows in a spurt, and then approaches a maximum capacity (in this case 100%). The negative second derivative of a sigmoid curve looks very much like Randall's graph.

==Transcript==
:[A graph is shown with an x- and y-axis.]
:How people feel when they say
:"I don't own a TV"
:<small>by year</small>
:[The x-axis is labeled: 1950, 2000, today.]
:[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.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Math]]