A Cord Cutter’s Life is a series of guest posts by Greg Baker, featuring stories on the motivations, challenges, and benefits to cutting cable. If you’ve considered cutting the cord, let our visiting Cord Cutting Guru show you how in this fun, helpful series.
In this day and age, with the divisive nature of discourse in this country, despite everything—despite what your beliefs are—there is one single, unifying, timeless factor bringing us all together: we like to watch TV. Since the advent of television, people have been flocking around their TV sets to watch the greatest moments of human history unfold, live. The moon landing. The Olympics. Royal Weddings and Family Feuds. The series finale of House Hunters. All of these events, all of this history, has been accessible only through the invention of television.
However, as we know, times change, technology evolves, and cable gets expensive. The very landscape of what brings us together is changing by the second, and I’m here today to tell you—it’s awesome. Who would’ve thought you could watch last night’s episode of The Good Place and then watch any episode of Seinfeld you want from the same app? Who would’ve thought that there would be a Netflix button on your remote? How could those who came before us even dream of all the content we are able to watch but choose not to? This is what dreams are made of. This is change we can believe in. This is cord cutting.
I can pinpoint the exact second that I decided to cut the cord. Freshman year of college. It was the series finale of Breaking Bad, and at the time I didn’t own a TV to put in my dorm room, so I was subject to watching on the TV they had in the dorm lobby. Aside from the "look at the nerds watching TV" stares from the third-floor girls passing by to go to parties, it wasn’t going too bad. And then the boys came. From one end of the hall came, "HEY TOMMYYYYY", to which the other end shouted back "FRANKIE, WHAT’S GOOOOOOD?", and while I assume Frankie and Tommy’s greetings were meant without malice, it just so happens that Breaking Bad is one of those shows where the characters will often talk quietly during important moments (which is honestly the worst, but not the point). This was the series finale. It was all important moments. I’m sitting there watching this complex, dark, emotional scene where a character is trying to explain a lifetime of his own of undoing, but all I can hear is, "HEY, DO YOU WHERE BIG MIKE’S AT?"
"WHO?"
"BIG MIKE, YOU KNOW, MIKE?"
"OH YEAH, MIKE"
"WELL DO YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS?"
"WHY IN THE HELL WOULD I KNOW WHERE HE’S AT?"
Listen folks, I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I’m generally level-headed and flexible. I don’t tend to fly off the handle about the whereabouts of any size of Mike. But this, this was different. This was during TV. I take my television programming very seriously, and when I couldn’t take it anymore I stood up and yelled back, "HEY, PICK A FRIENDLY SIDE OF THE HALL AND TALK QUIETER, MY-FRIENDS!" Now I may have used a different F word than friendly, but I was pissed. Why should I suffer because these clowns can’t find Big Mike? Why do I have to sit in the lobby like a nerd? I never used that lobby for TV again, and thus began my journey as a cord cutter.
Since that point, I’ve gone from an amateur cord cutter to something of a pro. I’ve been through it all—if there’s a device, I’ve watched TV on it. If there’s an app, I’ve downloaded it. I’ve been through free trials and paid trials, free services and monthly charges. I’ve had times where there’s nothing more than a phone to watch on, and I’ve done it. I have transitioned away from cable, and can honestly say it’s one of the perks in my life right now. I get to watch what I want, when I want to. I can stream an out of market sports event or change the channel at the bar using only my phone. Through my trials and tribulations, through the times of watching nothing but Netflix on my dorm bed to watching the football game on TV, the baseball game on my laptop, and the Emmy’s on my phone, I’ve done it all. And I’m here to teach you.
Let me be your cord cutting guru, and pass my knowledge along so that you too can make your TV watching dreams a reality. Check in with this blog and learn some helpful tips and tricks to kicking that cable habit for good. I’ll pass along my secrets—and who knows—one day you might be an expert at watching this one, unifying thing that we can all agree on: TV is pretty good.
share