TiVo Guilt: Are You Guilty?

If you have a whole lot of magazine at home that you haven’t read, at some point you will feel bad about the waste of money and paper. If you have a lot of unseen videos at home you will rue the fact that you don’t have time to entertain yourself. If you have a lot of TiVo‘d programs that you haven’t watched, you probably have TiVo guilt.

TiVo guilt is what you feel when you are thinking – “I’ve taken the time to record all these shows, now shouldn’t I be watching them?” DVR’s let television viewers break free from the confines of time and space. By letting you record your favorite television shows TiVo liberates you, in a sense.

A CNN story talks about a sense of guilt as well – the feeling that you should watch what you have recorded. This guilt is analogous to other forms of guilt, related to media that you would like to consume but just can’t.

Another TiVo condition is TiVo catharsis. This happens when you have watched all your recorded shows and exhausted them. When you delete the shows you have watched and have the ability to record more, there is a strange feeling of accomplishment.