The Simpsons = 11 days, 13 hours, 30 minutes. D'oh!

April 6, 2014 3:05 PM

# of seasons × # of episodes per season × runtime of episode = total for 1 TV show. Repeat for more TV shows = total time. Tiii.me lets you select the name of a tv show, the number of seasons you've watched, and tells you how much of your life you've spent watching that show. Add more shows and it will keep a running total for you.

(Luckily you can't enter the approximate number of times you've seen each episode!)

posted by Room 641-A (32 comments total)

(Luckily you can't enter the approximate number of times you've seen each episode!)


I tried estimating this figure using this tool for the number of times I've watched episodes of Classic Doctor Who (all of them at least twice, most of them more, and enough of them in my youth much more that just saying I'd watched all of them 5 times seemed accurate) which gave me a little bit over 60 days. In over 25 years of fandom, two months seemed totally reasonable and maybe a little low.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:13 PM on April 6, 2014

there are things man was not meant to know
posted by The Whelk at 3:20 PM on April 6, 2014 [12 favorites]

I don't want to know this information at all.
posted by arcticseal at 3:21 PM on April 6, 2014 [6 favorites]

But I spent less than six whole days watching the entire run of Buffy, because I skipped all the commercials!
But I spent so much more than six days, because I also read all of the recaps...
posted by ceribus peribus at 3:49 PM on April 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

I am reminded of the episode of Two Fat Ladies in which the ladies are faced with a weigh-yourself machine. Their (correct) reaction to it is, "It's best not to know."
posted by jbickers at 3:49 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

That seems a little high to me since, as we all know, The Simpsons went out on top after nine seasons of world-class comedy.
posted by drjimmy11 at 3:58 PM on April 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

Oh wow, I stopped at 25 days for like six shows. That's horrifyingly awesome.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:04 PM on April 6, 2014

ceribus peribus: "But I spent less than six whole days watching the entire run of Buffy, because I skipped all the commercials!
But I spent so much more than six days, because I also read all of the recaps..."

One of the good things to come out of my recent stint among the unemployed was that I managed to finally watch Buffy (fifteen years late).
posted by octothorpe at 4:10 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

The simpsons should really be listed as 4 days and 3 minutes, because after season 9 it's not worth watching anyways.

4everbitter
posted by emptythought at 4:48 PM on April 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

Something isn't quite working for me...

Mad Men (4 seasons): 12 days, 2 hours, 34 minutes
The West Wing (7 seasons): 16 days, 12 hours

Combined: 18 days, 12 hours, 34 minutes. I also have been getting different hour counts for the same input at times.

Scary, neat concept, but seems like it's a little broken... or I'm just using it wrong.
posted by crasiman at 4:49 PM on April 6, 2014

MST3K: 14 days, 18 hours I happily spend every 5 years.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:50 PM on April 6, 2014 [6 favorites]

I've only seen like 12 seasons of Law & Order, but the first 8ish seasons I've seen a *lot*. I'm glad it doesn't have a way to calculate that.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:51 PM on April 6, 2014

The simpsons should really be listed as 4 days and 3 minutes, because after season 9 it's not worth watching anyways.

But I've watched them on TV, then watched the dvd when it came out, and then watched all the commentary tracks (there's one for every single episode)(and honestly I've watched most of the dvd seasons more than once). I think I'm looking at something like a month.
posted by LionIndex at 5:08 PM on April 6, 2014

One thing about The Simpsons is that someone can describe the plot of an episode that I haven't seen to me and I can envision it almost perfectly in my head. Then when I randomly see it years later in reruns, it looks exactly like I thought it would.
posted by ovvl at 5:54 PM on April 6, 2014

So it assumes that if you watch a TV show, you watch each episode — exactly once.

If there's a TV show you're so into that you've seen every single episode, you've probably seen some of them more than once.
posted by John Cohen at 6:21 PM on April 6, 2014

If there's a TV show you're so into that you've seen every single episode, you've probably seen some of them more than once.

Yea, for instance it says i've spent 27 days/11 hours watching every episode of every series of star trek.

I've seen every series at least 3 times. I've seen most of TNG and TOS more like 5-8 times since at my college apartment(and the place i lived for half of high school as well) it was basically just always on in the background.

In reality i've probably watched over 100 days of star trek, not even counting the movies.

holy crap.
posted by emptythought at 6:33 PM on April 6, 2014

NOPE
posted by threeants at 6:40 PM on April 6, 2014

So it assumes that if you watch a TV show, you watch each episode — exactly once.

No, I think it assumes you've watched each episode at least once.

I don't think most people could accurately input the number of times they've watched particular episodes of most shows (especially shows that have been in syndication for decades and decades) and as many people here have expressed, knowing the minimum amount of time you've watched a show is scary enough.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:41 PM on April 6, 2014

It's kind of depressing that I'm only able to hold the producers of Dexter accountable for wasting a mere 4 days of my life with Seasons 1-8. It feels like it should be so much more, but it isn't.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:10 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

drjimmy11: "That seems a little high to me since, as we all know, The Simpsons went out on top after nine seasons of world-class comedy."

You spelled "eight" incorrectly.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:14 PM on April 6, 2014

There are 8 seasons of Dexter? Holy shit, I gave up in disgust midway into season 5.
posted by RustyBrooks at 7:22 PM on April 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

RustyBrooks: "There are 8 seasons of Dexter? Holy shit, I gave up in disgust midway into season 5."

You're a wiser man than I, RustyBrooks. In my defense, the show gets almost surreally bad by the time Season 6 rolls around, to the point that I felt like I would be derelict in my duties as a pop-culture observer by not keeping a watch over its slow-motion pratfall into awfulness.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:54 PM on April 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

As a former MMO player, I take some solace in the fact that the TV viewing community is finally discovering the horror of "/played".
posted by pahalial at 9:23 PM on April 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

So it says that I have spent at least 1 day and 7 hours watching Red Dwarf. Even assuming I triple that number, it seems low. Time to get off the internet and fix that.

p.s. it was a moose
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:59 PM on April 6, 2014

Just watching all the Star Trek series takes my total to 27 days, 11 hours.

That's 0.1% of my entire life.

So far, so good...
posted by crossoverman at 12:01 AM on April 7, 2014

DVD with subtitles 4X speed. Haha, tricked you TV gods, I've only wasted like a quarter of my life instead of a third.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:06 AM on April 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yes, I've spent too much time with inspectors Tennison and Morse, but compare that to how much time we spend commuting or eating or shitting or showering or fucking around on silly web sites.
posted by pracowity at 1:25 AM on April 7, 2014

It's interesting that we say that watching TV is a waste of time but if you spent the same amount of time reading books, it would be lauded. How much better are you for reading A Song of Ice and Fire than watching Game of Thrones? What if your reading consists of trashy romance novels? Is watching Mad Men as much of a waste of time as watching Survivor?
posted by desjardins at 7:37 AM on April 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

We've come to the agreement that watching TV is okay if you do unpaid undergraduate media study work in response.
posted by The Whelk at 7:39 AM on April 7, 2014

Nope, season 8 of The Simpsons was the beginning of the end.

You might like "The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson" and we can still be friends, but I'll occasionally give you sidelong glances for no reason.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 8:27 AM on April 7, 2014

Is watching Mad Men as much of a waste of time as watching Survivor?

Funny, my first instinct when seeing this app was to test my theory that I've spent more time watching "Survivor" than a winning contestant spends on the island (I can feel slightly better about myself - I've only spent about 2 1/2 weeks of my life watching "Survivor", not a full 39 days, yet)
posted by The Gooch at 11:07 AM on April 8, 2014

I like that you can add a TV show multiple times and it'll add to your running total. Even if my estimate is a little rough -- I know I've seen Buffy completely twice, but adding in the number of episodes I've watched ten times, I can probably add it to my list 3-5 times.
posted by Margalo Epps at 5:08 PM on April 11, 2014