CNN had an amusing fluff piece on TiVo today – well, I found it amusing anyway. It was about ‘TiVo guilt’ – which is the feeling some users apparently suffer from when they have a backlog of recordings on their TiVo. Guilt over being behind, feeling like they have to watch everything they’ve recorded.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a story along these lines, several others have touched on this and given in various labels in the past. It seems to be a fairly simple ‘human interest’ or ‘impact of technology’ story for slow news days. The article itself even mentions there are past articles about the topic.

They also managed to make actress Amanda Peet sound ditzy:

“I do have weird OCD where I need to clean out my TiVo,” she said. “Like we’ve had Ken Burns’ ‘The War’ on there forever and we’re not gonna watch it, like I’m not gonna watch it cause I’m too scared. Or we’ll have back episodes of um, ‘Meet The Press’ — I’m obsessed with my Sunday shows like ‘Meet The Press’ and ‘Face The Nation.’ … They’re like from before the election, I’m like ‘I can’t [delete them], I have to watch them’ and [my husband says], ‘It’s already happened, you’ve already read everything you’re going to read about this stuff.’ “

Like, um, really? (I know many people talk like that, but that’s why you don’t do literal quoting of verbal pauses and ticks. It makes the subject sound bad.)

I find the whole thing kind of silly, if you’re recording too much content to keep up with it without feeling stressed out – drop something. It is just TV, no one is going to die if you don’t watch it all. It isn’t like you promised TiVo you’d watch if it recorded for you. I think the issue is really a loss of perspective about what’s involved. TV is entertainment, even the educational shows, and shouldn’t be stressing you out. If it is – you’re doing it wrong. The TiVo works for you, you shouldn’t feel like you work for it. Just remember that.