For the decades of the VCR the blinking of the 12:00 was used socially to signal ignorance (because being ignorant used to be cool) or signal "only kids are cap

For the decades of the VCR the blinking of the 12:00 was used socially to signal ignorance (because being ignorant used to be cool) or signal "only kids are capable of learning technology like programming VCRs and I'm a respectable adult so I don't program VCRs" or general complaints about American laziness. Also it was a poster child for bad UI, with the assumption that everyone wanted to use it (false) and users were only stopped by the UI not having enough flair or whatever was trendy at that time (also false) therefore look how important UI design is. What it really meant was the product was multipurpose and sold to two markets, the enormously numerous pre-recorded viewers, and the tiny little subset of timeshifters who would program clocks and start and stop and channel and rewind the tape (or not) and day of week and various other settings so as to watch a broadcast program later. A large mythology sprung up around why Americans didn't timeshift blaming everyone but the content not being worth it and the viewer not being interesting, neither of which was culturally acceptable to express, especially on TV itself perhaps on a sitcom, so it turned into a weird trope. For my MiL she wanted/needed a certain size and she really liked the bezel (and the stand, too) and that's how she selected her TV. It happened to be a smart TV but she was uninterested in that feature. She has no interest in wifi. At that time there was no choice or freedom in the market, its smart TV or no TV. Likewise 95% of the countries VCRs blinked 12:00 because the market at that time was fancy time shifting capable VCR or no VCR at all.