Comment by bbarnett
6 hours ago
No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors.
People loved stories because they were bored.
6 hours ago
No TV, no books. Lightly populated rural communities, without a lot of visitors.
People loved stories because they were bored.
It's not boredom. Humans have always told stories and we still tell them today. How often does the 500 mile email come up on HN, or The Story of Mel? What about the SR-71 speed check? It's an innate human characteristic to love stories and most social media is lightly disguised storytelling.
It's not boredom.
Says someone who didn't listen to an old timers 70th rendition of the same old story.
There are stories, and then there are stories. I grew up pre-Internet with limited books, no way to get more, 3 fuzzy TV channels on a good day, and nothing else.
People today don't even know what boredom is. You don't know what boredom is, until you've watched the same episode of The Andy Griffith Show 15 times, and still think it is entertaining.
Now go to pre-literate times. No TV. Yes, stories are fun.
But hearing the same story over and over 1000 times is only fun if you're so bored, any external stimulus is a blessing.
Let's not assume things about age. I'm old enough to remember holding the stupid rabbit ears. Never liked the Andy Griffith show though. I've also spent plenty of nights sitting a fire with a bunch of nomads in the middle of nowhere.
It's not fundamentally different from media today. Audiobooks, Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, Disney movies, true crime media, etc. People don't choose these for lack of alternatives. They're activities people like (excepting the parents forced to watch Frozen for the thousandth time).
Strong oral storytelling cultures also have many, many stories available to them. It's not as tedious as syndicated TV was. Two examples of collections that survive to the modern day are the Jewish bible (old testament) and the Christian New Testament, each of which has dozens of stories you're likely familiar with no matter your religious background. They're not communicated solely through everyone sitting down around a campfire, and not every recitation is in the formal verbiage of the source material. Often recitation is associated with a calendar (e.g. the sermon schedules ministers follow in modern churches, or performed only at particular seasonal festivals). Different recitations are often performed in new ways to adjust things to the audience (e.g. referencing recent events) or with slight changes to keep things fresh. So on and so forth. It's a much richer world than you may be aware of.