October 15, 2026 at 2:35 am

Her Mom Called Asking If the Government Was Messing With the TV. The Real Answer Was Much Simpler

Magnific

Being the designated family tech support person is… A privilege.

Sometimes you’re fixing a printer, sometimes recovering a forgotten password, and sometimes you end up investigating government interference in television programming, apparently

In this case, a woman’s mom called her to ask a very serious question: had the government introduced some new politically correct feature that made a voice describe everything happening on TV?

The answer was much simpler than she imagined. Solving the issue wasn’t so easy, though.

Check out the full story below.

Mum vs Technology: the government has apparently interfered with television

I just saw the “Mom has no Google storage post”, which reminded me of my mum.

She similarly needs me to weed through her emails to delete stuff, as she and her brother send each other memes and silly videos by email and use up all her Google storage fairly frequently.

Technology is generally a bit of a challenge for her and I’m the designated tech support person.

But he wasn’t expecting the question she was about to ask.

A while ago she called me and asked, completely seriously: “Has the government done something to television because of political correctness?”

After several seconds of trying to work out what possible answer there could be, I asked her to explain.

She said that for about three weeks, whenever she watched TV, a voice would suddenly say things like: “Steve walks into the room, looking angry.”

How do parents keep doing things like this by mistake?

She’d apparently spent THREE WEEKS listening to this before coming to the conclusion that it must be some new political-correctness thing the government had introduced.

I assured her that no, it was definitely nothing to do with the government.

She had accidentally switched on Audio Description.

There then followed the considerably harder task of trying to talk her through switching it off over the phone, while I couldn’t see her television or her remote control and she had no idea what any of the buttons were called.

It ain’t easy.

“Press the button with three lines.”

“I haven’t got one.”

“Yes you have.”

“No, I definitely haven’t.”

“What buttons HAVE you got?”

“Well, there’s a red one…”

Being the family tech support person is a joy and a privilege.
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Yup, keep telling yourself that, it will keep you sane.

What did Reddit think?

That’s a good idea.

Lol.

Yup.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a brother who is upset his parents bought his recovering sister a brand-new car but wouldn’t help him out with a used one.

Another reader chimes in.