My TiVo thinks I’m an idiot

I finally got around to replacing my old TiVo that broke about a year ago. For the last week, I’ve been reabsorbed into the world of TiVo, which promises to raise the number of hours I watch TV every week from, well, one to…probably about two-and-a-half. Even when I had TiVo before, I didn’t use it so often. I’m just not a big TV watcher. For some reason, it’s never been a zone-out activity for me—if I want to vegetate, I just play spider solitaire until I’m bleary-eyed and stumble off to bed. (Secret tip: if you really want to sleep like the dead, play Text Twister for 10 minutes. It’s like taking 18 fucking Valium). But TV? I am awake, I listen for content, I even attend to the commercials.

Nevertheless, I want to make sure my 2 ½ hours is well spent, and I still miss it even though it’s too-too-2001, and I’m a big fan of collaborative filtering technologies—the applications that sift through your choices on Amazon or Netflix to recommend options that similar-minded people have found appealing. I dig it so much, I even used to write about it at my former job. So I fell into the same trap that I did last time, by allowing TiVo to record its recommendations for me. And boy, does it think I am retarded.

For the past few days, I’ve been fighting off an onslaught of televised crap, all dutifully recorded for me by my faithful TiVo. The shows range from merely bad (Murder, She Wrote, Gearhead TV), to bewildering (Kim Possible? The Fairly Odd Parents?), to downright terrifying (“Brandy and Mr. Whiskers”). Seriously, Brandy and Mr. Whiskers. Icy shivers went down my spine when I saw that. My TiVo thinks I’d like something with “Mr. Whiskers” in the title.

I know, I know, everyone has had this experience already and wrote it up and moved on…but wasn’t that like three years ago? Hasn’t the technology improved since then? I would have let it go, but Mr. Whiskers! I mean, WTF?

This is probably the last thing you see before you die.