At the very end of Thanksgiving weekend, I caught a nasty case of the flu. I will avoid any specific details in case any of you are eating while reading, but it was in a word… messy. Basically, on Sunday from six in the morning until five in the afternoon I was unable to eat, drink, or stop shivering from underneath my three blankets. All I was able to do was mourn for myself and watch TV.

At first I was ready to get my mind off things, happy that my mom set the controller in my hand before she fell asleep beside me. I soon realized, however, that a decent show would be harder to find than I had anticipated. Not only did I notice that every single show was a drama or very poorly acted drama, but that there was at least one scene in the show which had to do with eating a large amount of food or some kind of unusually disgusting food.

On a normal day, I might skim over these details or forget them entirely as the show continued, but as my mood and health grew increasingly worse I realized two things about the quality of modern television. First, I noticed that television has not only gotten less and less interesting, but has become more and more disgusting. If every single show I tried had at least one scene referring to obscene amounts of food, which believe me, I noticed, there is something wrong with the extraneous themes we see as normal.

Secondly, I realized that the modern translation of “humor” is “teenagers making obvious fools of themselves in public” which, in essence, is nothing more than painting dunce hats on every star on TV and making an enjoyable show the equivalent to a dumb show. There need be no amount of thought when one is watching an episode of Jessie or Kicking It. The entireties of the shows are step by step, cradling the audience through the scenes and showing life as if it were some sort of hilarious game.

None of these shows are those that my father had practically forced upon me when I was little. There is no more Courage the Cowardly Dog, Looney Toons or Scooby Doo, only a bunch of modern rip-offs which hold the same names as the brilliant originals. And they aren’t coming out with movies like Hocus Pocus or the original Air Bud, those which are truly fearsome or thematic. Dozens of sequels and Girl vs. Monster, a pathetic excuse for a Halloween movie, have taken their place. Needless to say I spent the rest of my horrible Sunday watching my own movies.

But even after I was revived nearly exactly 24 hours later, I was still bent on what I had endured during my delicate hours. I realized yesterday why I don’t watch TV anymore, and that is because I am secretly disgusted by its contents. Unfortunately, this is the kind of humor our little siblings and cousins are growing up in. But thank goodness we didn’t; what with the practical worshipping of food and bodily humiliation, as well as a few instances of the main character being praised as a oppressor to other “less good looking” characters, just imagine what kind of messed up teens we’d be today.