No more TV as a contact sport for me

Once upon a time, a princess lived in a house that had a premium DStv subscription. She would spend her weekends on the couch, catching up on all the television she had missed out on during the week. But Sunday evenings were her best nights because, as many avid TV watchers knew, those belonged to Mzansi Magic.

The princess would enthusiastically watch two of the channel’s most popular shows: Date My Family and Our Perfect Wedding.

Until, one day, something terrible happened: she moved out of home and reluctantly had to adult. No more free meals, no more DStv premium, no more uncapped internet. Those were replaced by more urgent things, like rent and food and petrol.

The princess was banished to live a life devoid of live-tweeting reality shows alongside the rest of the Twitterati.

I am the princess in the story, and while moving out of home a few years ago is a decision I have no regrets about, I miss DStv. I miss being on my mom’s couch, fully charged phone in hand, ready to live tweet using the hashtags #DateMyFamily and #OurPerfectWedding (or #DMF and #OPW, depending on which hashtag was trending more).

I miss pausing the TV to take a pic of an outfit/comment/facial expression that I just had to share.

Live tweeting television is the social media version of Gogglebox, the BBC reality show where we watch people while they watch TV. It’s more entertaining than it sounds.

It’s a chance to be part of the peanut gallery, poke fun at people you’ll most probably never meet (while walking the fine line between fun and mean-spiritedness) and LMAO (complete with laughing-while-crying emoji) with strangers on the internet.

Now I avoid Twitter on Sunday evenings, because I’ll repeatedly encounter the kind of tweets I used to tweet. It feels like going from VIP at the club to not even being able to get in.

I know some people have real problems, but I miss my Sunday evenings. Adulting sucks.

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L