Why for Gen VCR, video is time-waste

Anyone born in the 60s or 70s - especially in 1962 - can be forgiven for thinking that watching videos is a massive waste of time. Ingrained in a mindset that watching TV and videos takes away valuable time and energy from more important things like studies and being respectful to elders, this boomer-Gen X cusp generation was marinated in the VHS-VCR era, when they were conditioned by their elders to treat video-watching as a frivolous activity, a pastime for slackers who couldn't be bothered with judiciously mugging up the syllabus like good boys and girls.

In 1980s India, when this cohort was in what can be anachronistically deemed as 'NEET' age, the family VCR was a guilty indulgence, covered in plastic covers, its blinking clock a reminder of wasted hours. Parents warned that 'video culture' would rot the brain even faster than reading comic books. To watch a film at home was to radiate idleness; to rewind a tape was to rehearse shame. Radio and print were acceptable, but moving images were fodder for laziness, a slippery slope to cockroach-like delinquency. That old reflex lingers. For the VHS generation, 'watching videos' is still, at best, time-pass; at worst, time-waste. Never mind video evidence in circa 2026 being the new affidavit, pixels the new parchment. The RWA uncle's suspicion of 'video' has become institutional habit.