By Josh Gardner, who believes he has whatever that condition is that you can get cannabis prescribed for
IN OUR age of content, I operate a three-screen minimum: TV, laptop and phone. How else can I keep up with the YouTubers, TV shows and podcasts I’m broadly indifferent to?
It’s normal for my generation to have a laptop on their knees, a phone in their hands and the television on in the background. In this climate crisis world it’s the only way we can keep our dopamine levels from dipping.
The only downside is that I can’t remember a single detail about anything I’ve ever watched. So, in the spirit of experimentation, I’m rawdogging a TV show. No WhatsApp, no Instagram Reels. If I don’t know an actor’s age I’ll have to remain ignorant.
How hard could it be? In the olden days of a decade ago, primitives like my parents regularly watched one screen at a time. It’s no wonder they’re able to hyperfocus on stuff like my not having a job.
After falling down a Reddit rabbit hole for three hours on my way to tell my Twitter friends I’d be offline for a bit, I took a deep breath and settled down to concentrate on BBC One.
Two minutes into watching Pointless, the shakes kicked in. My hand kept grasping reflexively and uncontrollably for my phone. Memes were going unseen. A Hinge match could rightly accuse me of ghosting her.
Round after punishing round crawled by, each more interminable than the last. Not even Alexander Armstrong’s quick-witted presenting could distract from the fact that I was missing out on viral tweets. Even my Facebook account was singing to me like a siren of old.
At the ten minute mark all I could think of were loopholes. Surely I could take my phone to the loo? Googling an answer was just keeping the show honest?
No, I told myself. Boomers fought World War Two so I could watch teatime TV. I could get through 45 minutes of undivided attention. All I had to do was find the Head-To-Head round entertaining and I’d be on the home straight.
Yeah, spoiler alert? I didn’t. The final round was about obscure golfers and I thought ‘F**k this.’ I’ll never know if Tom and Mary from Wiltshire won £800 because I was firing up my PornHub tabs and frankly I was too busy gooning to care.
