I’ve heard this phrase so many times in my life I dont even think about it, but the more I dwell on it, I dont really get it
I believe it’s because watching TV dulls your mind. So it turns you into a “boob” (older term to describe someone who isn’t very smart). Tube obviously refers to the vacuum tube inside older televisions that displayed the images. So boob tube is just saying that the TV turns you into a dumb person lol.
“Boob” was/is slang for “stupid person,” so the implication was that watching too much TV would make you stupid
Oh that makes sense! Where does the tube come from though?
Cathode Ray Tubes. Its how TVs used to work
I am mildly annoyed that kids these days don’t know this. Then I get annoyed at me for getting annoyed - why would they? we haven’t had a CRT in the house since '04. It would be like getting exasperated because us 80s kids didn’t know how to tap out morse code on the telegraph.
It always makes me laugh when old people get mad that they don’t teach cursive in school anymore. Cursive as a writing form is antiquated unless you are using a quill pen or fountain pen. It just doesn’t work as well with ballpoint pens. The funniest argument I see is about how if the kids can’t write cursive, they can’t read the Magna Carta, declaration of independence, or US Constitution. Never mind that they also already can’t read all sorts of foundational documents in other languages, that those documents have been transcribed into other scripts, or that none of those three documents were ever written in cursive in the first place (they’re all calligraphic script)
