Can someone explain this to me? Use small words because I don’t understand things.

Louie is a fantastic show, and I want to do everything I can to help it. But if I watch Louie on TV, which I can’t do because I don’t have cable but never mind, if I watch it the normal way, no one finds out, right? I’m not a Nielsen family. I’m not helping keep the show on the air.

But if I TiVo it, TiVo gets to report that fact — not to mention whether and when I watched it, and how many times — in their aggregate viewership statistics. If I Hulu it, Hulu and the network both get paid, royalties and ad revenue change hands, and I count as one more viewer on that medium. If I buy a season pass from iTunes, there’s no way that’s not getting counted somewhere because hell, I’m paying for it.

Can it really be true that none of that makes any difference? Do people who demonstrate the most affection for a show by buying it directly — or even just by recording every episode so they can’t possibly miss one — do those people’s opinions count the least, just because they aren’t tuning in live and filling out stupid mail-in surveys with dopey No. 2 pencils?

Or have I got it all wrong, and the television industry is actually not as fucked up as this tweet makes it seem?