Madam, - I am 69 years of age and have never owned a television set. Last week on a relative's television I saw a horror: "reality TV".
Throughout my life I have been an avid science fiction reader. In science fiction there have been many terrifying descriptions of humans losing their identity under the power of totalitarian states.
In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 401, people are no longer allowed to read books. There is interactive television in which people play silly games. In the film, in a touching final scene in a forest we see rebels who have memorised books to defeat the totalitarian state, which will take away their identity.
But nothing in Bradbury's books or the film approaches the silliness of the reality programme which I saw last week. People watch other people doing all sorts of normal, intimate things like going to the toilet. Have people so little sense of identity that they watch this dull, boring nonsense?
Life is a wonderful adventure. An English girl recently broke the world record for lone sailing around the world. Why watch such horrible nonsense as reality television? - Yours, etc.,
NICHOLAS EMMETT, Rathcoffey North, Donadea, Co Kildare.