DirecTV Scholarship Blog Entry

Exploring My World Through Television and the Internet

By Jonathan Marable

A large part of growing up is about exploring the world to find out who you are and what you want. Though I profess not to watch television much or participate much in social media, television and the Internet have played roles in helping me explore my world by allowing me to explore other worlds, share worlds with others, and even create my own worlds.

When I was much younger, TV time consisted of shows like Sesame Street, Square One, and “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” LeVar Burton showed me worlds within books, and Fred Rogers personally invited me into his Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Stacks of games ranging from Reader Rabbit to Math Blaster cluttered the computer table where we enshrined our word processing machine, the Tandy 1000. Television and computers were introduced to me early on as tools for exploration rather than entertainment.

A little later, The Cosby Show, Family Matters, A Different World, and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are some shows I would occasionally sneak in against my parents’ wishes. I do not believe it is a coincidence that the shows I chose to watch reflected lifestyles, situations and worlds rather similar to what I was familiar with in real life. It is my belief that shows attract viewers because viewers secretly want to escape into the world they are watching, even if just for twenty minutes.

Shows such as Seinfeld, Friends and The Simpsons were popular among my classmates, but they simply could not grab me like other shows did. The world reflected in these shows was one to which I simply could not relate. Maybe the shows just were not as funny or interesting to me as shows I preferred to watch. Maybe I subconsciously I realized that people like me were mostly absent from these shows. In my peers’ version of a perfect world, would I simply be absent? Regardless of our differences in taste, one thing remained common: television provided all of us opportunities to be transported to and live in other people’s worlds, even if just for twenty minutes.

Within my household in the early to mid-90s, the Internet became synonymous with America Online, Netscape and Internet Explorer for email and research. However, when LiveJournal and Fantasy Sports were introduced to me in middle school, a shift happened in my understanding of the Internet. I came to realize that it could be used for more than exploring and communicating in the real world. I could create my own world, generate a new persona within this alternate reality, and share this alternate reality with others. It became a platform for people like me to invent and reinvent themselves.

I developed a habit of not sharing much about myself in this alternate universe. Perhaps it was because by that time I spent much of real life already not sharing much about myself with others. Could I really be blamed though? My peers never really shared too much of themselves with me either. Even our choices of television shows reflected how different our worlds were. The act of putting your life on display carries a certain degree of vulnerability, and it was a risk neither sets of parties were willing to take. What if people did not find your life interesting? In life, it is already hard enough crafting the persona to wear and share with others in real life.

To this day, television on the small screen or the computer screen, and the Internet primarily serve as portals through which I can peer into the worlds of others. Whether shows are animated or live action, whether pages consist of generated words and images or of pictures and recordings, I know that what I see on television and the Internet has been filtered and fabricated to match what others wish me to see. Meanwhile I stay hidden and protected behind my own carefully crafted screen, whether it be made of glass, LCDs, plasma, or the contents of my profile or blog. Honestly, that sits quite well with me.