Tele Tubbies

(Converted into canonical form. Original text follows this one.)

Problem

You had or are having a bad experience and you don't know how to recover.

Context

You have a television that shows PBS and it is some time in the morning, usually around 10:00am.

Forces

You don't have any willpower and you can't help but stare at nothing.

Solution

Watch the Teletubbies. The use of primary colors and very little dialog/narration is useful for developing your mental faculties and expunging all of that bad stuff floating around in your head and body.

Known Uses

Drug-related: Hangovers, Bad Trips, Heroin Withdrawal

Experience-Related: Breakups, Fights, Near-Death Accidents

Work-Related: 23 hours of continued brainless hacking because your "manager" thinks you ought to "give it your all".

-- JohnDuncan

For an extra hit, take your favorite drug, start Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, and then watch TT with the Mute on and Closed Captioning on. -- PhlIp

Original Text:

British developed children's show, based around 4 childlike characters named Dipsy, Laa-Laa, Po, and Tinky-Winky. Any adult who watches will immediately be repulsed, perhaps recognizing the TeleTubbies as they really are - Eloi.

from CookieMonster:

Several of the SesameStreet? monsters have trouble with grammar. Elmo, particularly, seems to have an issue with pronouns.

At least they're better than Teletubbies. Teletubbies have to be the single most destructive force against the development of a child's ability to speak coherent English.

TeleTubbies are evil. -- Pete Hardie

I gather current belief (e.g. from StevenPinker) is that TeleTubbies has no ill effect on children's language. -- DaveHarris

I don't really worry so much about the TeleTubbies' effect on language, but I find it interesting that the show was created because very young children didn't have anything to watch on television. Instead, they were forced to do other things like interact with the real world, including with physical objects, the outdoors, and other human beings. Thank God they can watch television now!

On the other hand, I think the show is quite good for adults in various states of pharmacological agitation. -- francis

Just when you saw Barney (the purple dinosaur) and thought things couldn't get any worse, they did - TeleTubbies.

Now we have little kiddie couch potatoes, on the TV, with little TVs inside each one. It's recursive!!!

See also BarneyVsTeletubbies.

The most insidious aspect of the TeleTubbies is their devotional attention to that sing-songy pipe-thing and the weird wind-wheel. Whenever either of these start operating, the Tubbies go into a "consumer trance" and become almost religious in their attention. ProgrammingChildrenForConsumption?. -- C. HergerThomann

I am very thankful that my daughter skipped over Teletubbies for Blue's Clues. There's a section in TheTippingPoint that talks about the educational research that went into Sesame Street, and how Blue's Clues was created to crank the notch up on some of those ideas.

Research went into Teletubbies, too. That's why it appeals to children and not to adults. One important difference is that TeleTubbies is aimed at a much younger audience than Sesame Street. (Also, younger than the programme it replaced in the UK, which is partly why audiences were so shocked over here.)

I find those people interesting who have violent reaction to Teletubbies on the grounds that it is somehow "dumb" (even in the literal sense of that word) even though they still talk to their children in motherese. I guess it's just a luddite reaction? -- SunirShah

Complaining about Teletubbies on TV is like complaining about Christianity pages on Wiki. The more violent the reaction, the stronger the analogy.

Have you noticed that one of the TeleTubbies is shown mirror-imaged in the opening shots in every episode? -- vk

Which of the teletubbies characters are supposed to be female? This has to be deduced by listening carefully for the very rare use of words such as 'his' or 'her' which imply gender. Even a woman on the BBC general enquiries team, who claimed to be a fan of the teletubbies, insisted on the wrong answer to this question.

Time for Tubby bye bye... Time for Tubby bye bye...