Larry Elder and persuasive argumentation

Television, social media, and other forms of entertainment can often exhibit additive properties. These mediums are often structured in a manner that engages consumers on both a psychological and social level. Televisions shows such as “Game of Thrones” or “House of Cards,” have a cult like following and fandom that ultimately reinforces the need to watch the shows. This can eventually allow cable, television, and media provides to advertise still further shows to entice consumers to continue watching on their platforms. Although addicting, I agree with the others perspective related to the consumers ability to simply stop watching.

First, it is within the consumers power to simply cancel the subscription and engage in other activities that provide much more fulfilling benefit. The accuser, for example, blames the cable company for making his wife overweight and his children lazy. If this is indeed the case, the accuser can simply cancel the subscription and use the time to engage his family in more productive endeavors. As the leader of his household, it is his person responsibility to run his household in a productive manner. Through this lawsuit, Tim Dumouchel is attempted to absolve himself from personal responsibility. In the same way he engages with the cable company, Dumouchel should engage his family through various fitness and family outings. Not only will this lower his wife’s weight, it can often be much more engaging than the televisions show he claims his wife is addicted to (Mallett, 2004).

Next, the company themselves did Dumouchel a favor by discontinuing the cable services provided to his family. In response, Dumouchel purchase an antenna so that he could watch the Green Bay Packers came. The action of looking for, purchasing, installing the antenna is not the cable company’s fault. Again, this is the personal responsibility from Dumouchel to reframe from such behaviors and activities. Its ironic that he did not sue the NFL as their product is “addicting” as well. It appears that not only is Dumouchel looking attempting to absolve himself form personal responsibility, but it appears he is engaging in a frivolous lawsuit simply to obtain a settlement of some sort. He is blaming a content provider that he can easily disconnect, avoid, or reframe from using. In addition, providers often have parental controls that can limit the amount of television his family consumers on a given day. Instead of exercising these options, he instead engaged in more counterproductive behavior by purchasing another antenna so that he can continue to consume media content.