Reposting this from here from 2023, after I stumbled across it tonight and it hits hard.
The text in the image:
I love my smart TV. I love the way it takes a long time to boot up because it’s trying to refresh the advertisements on the home screen. I delight in the way it randomly restarts because it’s downloaded an update without asking me, each of which makes the TV slower and slower with every subsequent install. I adore the way it buries the apps that I want to use, and that I use without fail every single time, below the apps that it’s being paid to promote and which I have never touched in my life and would never use without the cold metal of a glock pressed hard against my sweating temple. I am infinitely thrilled by the way the interface lags constantly, due to the need to have one thousand unnecessary animations rendered on hardware ripped wholesale from a ten year old phone. I feel myself borne aloft on wings of pure joy when I am notified that my data will be collected and analysed to determine my usage patterns. Even now I am writing this from a field of beautiful flowers and soft luscious grass as I lie and look up happily at the bright blue sky, smiling happily to know that this is the future of technology
Last I looked, we could still buy commercial displays. They're dumb TVs. They cost more, of course.
We have a Samsung "smart" TV, hooked up to an AppleTV box. The TV's original remote is in a drawer somewhere, forever unused.
I have the apps that I need, the tiny Siri Remote turns on the TV and handles volume, and, apart from the aggressively, insanely, mind-blowingly horrible on-screen "keyboard" / text input (we don't have Apple phones we can use to mitigate this, sadly. Also, what the fucking fuck, Apple?!) we're happy. For now. I trust Apple to make the experience incrementally worse as a fact of life.
Not perfect, but leagues better than dealing with Samsung's interface.