Category: GEDANKEN

A few years ago, I pitched a TV show format together with a friend of mine at a festival in Barcelona. That means we were allowed to present our idea to television producers from all over Europe. The event was set up like a competition with a stage, audience and everything. Our idea was one of four. I think we came last. Afterwards, a few people from the audience came up to us and said that the project had been the best …(*)

I have to say, I didn’t understand for a long time why our idea wasn’t accepted, I think it really had the potential to move the world forward through television (and the internet).

A TV producer I hung out with a few months later at another festival explained it to me:
No matter what show is produced on TV, it always has an element, like a spice that must not be missing from any dish, a spice that every TV show tastes like. Anything without this element doesn’t stand a chance. Audience research has found beyond doubt that no show can succeed that doesn’t have this element. As beautiful as your project is, it lacks this element.

What is that element? I think it’s important that every time you watch a show on TV, or hear a conversation about a TV show, or read about a TV show, you should recite the following to yourself:

The viewer in front of the TV should always feel superior to those who are being paraded in the show.

I think everyone should know that, because it explains a lot. Not only in terms of television.

(*) …and way ahead of its time. I’ve been hearing that at regular intervals for twenty years. There’s probably some truth to it, but if that’s the case, then I can say from my experience that those who are too far ahead of their time don’t change anything 😉

 

Our neighbor has ranted terribly because of the the virus. That there would be no vaccines everywhere, or at least far too few, and now they had spilled 2,000 doses somewhere, those idiots! They only care about money, he said. He used to work in the chemical industry, he said, and he knows exactly how it works and how much money you earn there.

Well, I said, if you think back just one year, we hoped and said that it would be a miracle if we would even manage to have a vaccine in one year. This has never, never, never been achieved in the entire short time that mankind has been able to produce vaccines. Ten years had been the best so far. And a year ago, we didn’t even know if we would be able to find a vaccine against the virus. Now, a little over a year later, there are how many different vaccines against the virus? The whole world has made a decision and incredible resources have been thrown in one direction. Yes, money too. And then mankind made it and now all of a sudden it’s not supposed to be a miracle to be happy about, but a failure all along the line because everything didn’t always just work out fine?

I would say that mankind is obviously on a new level. We should celebrate!

I know you can always look at a thing this way or that way, and I very often get to hear how incredibly positive I am (and what is meant is naive). But if you can look at one thing either way, why do the vast majority of people tend to focus on the negative, no matter how small it may be?

It must be incredibly fun to be in a bad mood.

It’s because of the mobile phone that she’s so stressed, says my friend in a small group. Because it terrorizes her, she says. It beeps all the time and wants her attention because some company is making a lot of money with it – with her attention. And then she tells us what a clever system she has devised to set her mobile phone so that certain messages are only allowed to arrive at certain times and not at others. And her watch, which she has tied to her wrist and which is also connected to the mobile phone, she has also set so that only very specific messages are displayed and the vast majority are not.

I wonder how much energy she has invested in figuring out how to do all this, with turning off certain messages and not others. And how much energy it takes to maintain this sophisticated system.

How would I handle that problem, she asks me.

I don’t do anything. When the phone beeps because a message has arrived, I leave it when I don’t feel like it and when I do feel like it, I look to see what the message was. Most of the time I don’t feel like it.

“I can’t do that,” she says, “I always have to look at it.” She doesn’t say that, she doesn’t say anything but her look reveals that she thinks I’m a fool.

But the silly ape I am I say what I think anyway, because I think it might be a clever tip that could improve my friend’s life. But instead of accomplishing that, I only earn more stupid looks that chill my zest for life by a quarter of a degree even days later when I think about it.

That’s why I’ve written it down made a story out of it. From now on, I can enjoy the memories of the stupid looks because they have born a story, and I like stories.

And if anyone ever wants to know how I do my little trick of letting phones beep, just ask.