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"Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I've been p

• gumby 3y ago
  I'm not sure this is really sofa-related, but... > I've been pretty stunned during my travels to find that it's really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk. It's a slight exaggeration, but yeah. I've really started noticing it on HN and some news-ish sites too, over the past couple of years: where a book would normally be used as a reference point, now a film is more commonly used instead.
  • vundercind 3y ago
    Adult Americans read so few books per year, on average, that it’s barely an exaggeration to assert that we don’t read books at all. And most of what we do read is romance novels or juvenile fiction. Been like that for a while.
    • gumby 3y ago
      I tried to look this up but the numbers on different sites were all over the place.
  • tomrod 3y ago
    Weird, I saw similar conversations in SE Asia many years ago, especially around popular soap operas. Maybe it's hindsight bias on one of our parts.
• saurik 3y ago
  > The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. You make it sound like this is not merely a rare thing for you, but that it should be rare... I don't just passively sit and watch much television and yet I have spent an incredible amount of time in my life sitting on either my couch or the couch of a friend -- or even one of many couches at an office -- talking and laughing and having fun with other human beings. If I had to choose only one: a couch or a dining table, I'd go with a couch. Now... bed? That's harder for me, but I can totally see people deciding couch (as you can sleep on the couch but it is awkward as hell to invite people over and only have a bed to use).
  • uoaei 3y ago
    No, it's just that most activities in my home are not amenable to sitting. For instance, people come by all the time to play pool. Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home?
    • maximinus_thrax 3y ago
      > Does that mean I should advocate that pool tables are important things to have in the home? Yes. Write your own Dwell magazine and advocate for whatever you wish.
    • OkayPhysicist 3y ago
      And while 2-4 people are playing pool, where's everybody else? On various sitting furniture. I think we need to go one step further, and revive the conversation pit. (aka, the supercouch)
      • IggleSniggle 3y ago
        Fully agree! The sectional is a cop-out. Commit!
• AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Telenovelas would seem to be a strong counterpoint to the idea that it's only Americans who talk about TV. If anything, TV has become dramatically less of a shared cultural experience for Americans since the post-network era began.
• pdabbadabba 3y ago
  > "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. I think you may be engaging in a bit of axe grinding here! I agree that the sofa is one of the post important pieces of furniture in my home [1], but for reasons that have nothing to do with television. There is no TV in the room! But it is still where I spend the most time sitting during downtime, reading books, talking to my family, etc. And when I have friends over, we're either there or at the dining room table. [1] For the title of the most important, I might have picked my bed. But that's a quibble.
• barbazoo 3y ago
  > "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. That's quite a leap. Did you consider that dwell.com might not have actually done a study on what Americans consider the "most important piece of furniture" but just used that phrase to justify the very existence of their article?
  • uoaei 3y ago
    I'm not making any claims about the preferences of Americans but about the default assumptions of the authors. It is as good a reflection of cultural attitudes as any.
• ed_blackburn 3y ago
  I'm not American. But I feel seen(!) :)
• tqi 3y ago
  > really only Americans who obsessively talk about or reference TV shows and movies in their small talk For one, it doesnt seem like americans are significant outliers in tv consumption[1] or smartphone usage[2]. For another, yeah if you're a foreign traveller people probably aren't going to make small talk with you about TV or other pop culture... [1]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-the-most-tv.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-country-watches-th... [2] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smartphone-usage-by-region https://explodingtopics.com/blog/smartphone-usage-stats#smar...
  • uoaei 3y ago
    I'm not speaking to consumption, I'm speaking to small talk. There's no good reason to believe there's a tight correlation there. Americans constantly shove TV into the conversation even if they don't know that the other person or people are familiar with it. Though many are aware of American media output by virtue of the cultural colonialism enacted since brute force fell out of fashion. Even if they're not explicitly speaking about TV they're still doing the IRL version of posting reaction GIFs by quoting memes in response to earnest conversation.
    • tqi 3y ago
      > There's no good reason to believe there's a tight correlation there. You don't think there is a strong correlation between how people spend their time and what they talk about?
• swatcoder 3y ago
  Not to interrupt your principled tirade against lazy Americans or whatever, but it's not a "claim", let alone an ideological one. It's just a bog standard literary device for framing a puff piece.
• com2kid 3y ago
  > "Most important piece of furniture" is a heavily loaded ideological claim. It points to the rampant American culture surrounding media consumption. My family doesn't watch TV. I purchased my sofa when I didn't even have a TV. The most important aspect of my living room arrangement is how well it facilitates long, deep, conversations with friends who come over for visits. I have 3 pieces of seating in my living room, a chair for reading placed next to a book case (large enough that a couple small kids can sit in the lap of an adult who is reading with them if so desired), a smaller 2 person sofa, and a larger 6ft long sofa. I know plenty of other families who have similar arrangements with sofas so placed as to emphasize socialization with friends. Now if we are talking about the 90s and early 2000s, yeah, it was all about amazing TV watching experiences. > The only time I'm on my couch is when I have a few people over. And even then we're usually doing other things than just lazing about. The couch is where you retire to after dinner has been finished and everything cleaned away. Board games may occur in other rooms (depending on one's coffee table situation) the of course a room that is laid out for conversation is going to see the most use when there are people over to have a conversation with. FWIW now that I have a kid, I am hosting social events more often than ever before (watching children has a negative co-efficient for small values of n > 1, 3 kids are easier to watch than 1!), but even in my DINK life (at which point I didn't even own a TV), my couch got plenty of use.
• zachmu 3y ago
  https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-televisi-1819565469 https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d...
• nonameiguess 3y ago
  Are you sure it's "Americans" or is it the Internet? Our experience of Americans may not be identical. Even just my co-workers and family seem to rarely if ever be aware of the same things on television I care about, granting I watch far more nature documentaries than anything else and had no access to broadcast networks until they launched streaming services in the last couple years since I cord cut around 2011 or so. The only thing from the past 15 years I can think of that seemed widely at least known about to most people I talked to was Game of Thrones, but even that was far from universal. My HVAC guy commented that I looked different because I had long hair and a ponytail the last time he saw me a few years ago and I said it was because I grew my hair out for Khal Drogo cosplay and he had no clue what I was talking about. He'd never even seen Game of Thrones or probably any other television. I actually remember that about two of my ex-girlfriend's dads from when I was in my early 20s. They were both small business owners and had no knowledge whatsoever about pop culture. They were so focused on their businesses that they never watched any television or saw any films. In any case, even though there is nothing on television I watch with any regularity currently, I would still rate my sofa as a fairly important piece of furniture. Not as important as my bed, but it is the largest piece of furniture and the centerpiece of my largest room. My kitchen/living room is open floor plan townhouse and I cook quite a bit, and I can't just stand all day, so that's where I rest, even though I'm just listening to music when I do so and not watching television. When I lay down to read a book, that's also usually where I do it. If I take a nap during the day, it's typically on the sofa. We usually eat dinner there, too, even though we're not watching television, just because it's more comfortable than any other place we have to sit. I even work from my sofa pretty frequently. But I've got no complaints, personally. I paid $300 or so at the PX when I joined the Army almost 20 years ago and bought my first house and still have the same sofa. It certainly didn't fall apart on me. It's moved with me four times. My wife and I debate getting a nice one but always decide not to because our cats are going to tear it up and puke on it all the time anyway.
• IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Does media consumption include "conversing with guests?" The sofa is the place everybody goes to chat unless we're having a meal. Frankly, we'd probably use it a little less if our dining chairs were more comfortable, and I do think there's a very good case to be made that dining room chairs are more important than the sofa, but nonetheless, I really don't think a sofa is especially tied to TV culture in any way. If we're going to be doing something rather than lazing around or eating, we're not going to be in the house at all.