Everything is Television.

So, it's Super Bowl Sunday. I know who's playing but I don't actually care who wins.

I was a Pats fan when they were bad, but that was 1975 and I was young and I lived in New England and you rooted for them anyway.

I'm in Walmart this morning and I see a young kid with his father, probably as young as I was when I was really aware of television. As they're walking towards me on the same aisle and the dad and I acknowledge each other, the kid points to a television and says "That's a television. We don't have a television!"

His father is pretty quick to remind him that yes, they did have a television. I look down at the kid and tell him "Dude, if you're America, your house is littered with televisions."

The kid is quizzical and I couldn't gauge the dad's reaction as they walked off. It was probably something like "That's a weird thing to say to a kid" or "Oh, wait, he's totally right".

American households have an average of 7 screens. If you figure the suburban scenario of:

• TV in the living room
• TV in the master bedroom
• Computers
• Mobile phones
• Kindle/Nook/iPad

It wouldn't take long to get to 7 screens.

So, most of those screens aren't connected to what old people traditionally think of as "television", but that's no longer relevant. With the rise of YouTube TV, PSVue, NetFlix, Hulu, AmazonTV, lots of traditional TV content has made it to regular TV screens. I even got ads for the first two from my game consoles trying to get me to watch the Super Bowl via a free trial of their service.

The Nintendo Switch now even has a YouTube app.  Facebook has original shows now.

That is only part of the story. We're at a point now where this is only a fraction of the video content that's out there. People on their own generate lots of their own video content. That's what YouTube was built on (an average of 300 hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute), and that's what streaming services like Twitch are built for. Facebook and YouTube also allow for streaming. Twitter got in on this action by acquiring Periscope.

So, if you're not up for the Super Bowl but the couch is too comfortable today, just remember there's lots of other things out there to watch. (Including my channel, SuperMonkeyCube, and my dog's channel, Kal and Friends.)

Choice is not a purely objective experience.

So, I start this post off with a pretentious title, and we're already wondering "What the heck is he talking about?" Well, let me explain

Tonight, my mission was some rudimentary domestic supplies. Some protein, some vegetables, and some new bed coverings of some sort. Not the sexy kind of bed coverings that you get to see and roll around in, but the rather plain looking ones that you can't see because they're underneath the sexy ones that people with allergies want to enclose their mattress in. Knowing that where I was going put me on a path from the middle of the store to the grocery side of the store at some point meant that I was going to take a pretty close pass past electronics. So, why wouldn't I have a look?

The store clearly seemed full of people shopping for Christmas stuff, even more so than on Black Friday. I was overjoyed to see that a tall, fit, youngish man (but clearly old enough to be a parent) was buying a Nintendo Switch. I presumed it was for his kids. When they were fetching it out of the case, I thought I heard him say "The Mario one". Presumably, that's a system with Super Mario Odyssey included. Then, he went over to the case opposite to pick out another game and he asked for Arms - another Nintendo exclusive title. It's an arcade-style fighting game with motion controls where the characters have giant springs for arms. I was starting to think that he was getting the system for himself, and then he changed his mind and got Just Dance 2018.

At that moment, I was super disappointed. I mean, why bother to get a Switch if you're going to buy a title that's on six* other game systems? I did show enough restraint to not comment.

But, after getting some perspective, I realized that maybe having the dance game is the only way that the whole family is going to welcome a new game system in the house. Maybe they're already really into that game. Maybe the reason that dude was in really good shape was that he dances a lot.

Then, I realized that had he picked Arms, there were probably a greater number of potential bystanders right there in that store that would have been disappointed that he didn't pick a more mainstream, proven game title like Just Dance 2018.

It was a pleasant reminder that even the most inconsequential choices that people make could be a vehicle for criticism by others, regardless of which choice is made, and that lots of forces unseen to others go into every choice.

*PS4, PS3, XBox One, XBox 360, WiiU, and Wii. Yes, original Wii. I had to check two places because I had been under the impression that the newer WiiU was already mostly dead, so it wouldn't have occurred to me that anyone was still making Wii games.