I just accidentally turned on ‘parent lock’ on my BBC iPlayer.
I’m not sure entirely how I did it, so I certainly won’t be able to undo it, but luckily, it requires a PIN, and I use the same PIN for everything ever, so I’m completely secure. This is not the first time that I’ve been restricted in what I can view- my little sister is terribly worried that watching anything sadder than ‘Modern Family’ (and even that, with it’s clear themes of divorce and blended family, could be next on her watchlist) will send me spiralling into a bleak depression, and return us to the times where I sit on the sofa, refusing to admit that I’m crying at T4’s new presenter’s bad haircut, and surreptitiously wiping my nose on the corner of the cushions.
I quite like the BBC iPlayer parental lock. It forces me to recognise when I’m watching something of an ‘adult nature’, and reminds me of the time when a 15 film rating was a challenge to be met with excessive eye-liner and a haughty insistence that I was ‘doing my GCSEs’. I know that I’m an adult, because now I don’t ever look at film ratings, something which was inconceivable a mere 15 years ago.
There are other ways I can tell I’m an adult – no-one replaces the toothpaste or the cling-film, and as much as I shake my birthday cards, no money ever falls out of them, but this film rating thing, which has now spread to the BBC, and so basically encompasses all the TV I watch, because E4 and ITV and its myriad offspring (iTV2, iTV 3, iTVI was watching before you knew about it, that’s how hip I am etc) are under the control of my little sister, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of very poorly-written and extremely successful US sitcoms, is rather helpful. For instance, there are some days when I’d really rather not have to deal with ‘scenes of violence or bad language’, and others when, arguably, that’s all I really want.
So, that’s another great part of being an adult: after years of sitting in my Mother’s car, listening to The Very Best of The Corrs, and being told firmly that ‘when you have your own car, you can choose the music’, even though other people’s parents let us listen to Capital FM and were much much better parents, BBC iPlayer parental lock has reminded me that now that it’s my TV, I can watch what I want. Well, as long as my little sister thinks it’s appropriate.
unfashionablylost 