Posted on 12/11/2025 6:29:27 PM PST by Angelino97
The trouble with nostalgia is that it appears to rewire our minds, bringing only pleasant memories to the forefront of our consciousness. It is incredibly effective at erasing the things we don’t want to think about. We remember bubblegum and video games more than malaria or third-world starvation. Our salad days are filtered through rose-tinted glasses; we assume everything was better in the past.
I was thinking about this recently after reading that MTV would be shutting down at the end of this year. As someone born in the final minutes of the 1970s, I am a member of Generation X, the so-called “MTV Generation.”
In many ways, the demise of MTV can be interpreted as part of the fading relevance of Gen X. Stuck between idealistic boomers and optimistic millennials, we’re the self-aware, Chuck Palahniuk-reading pessimists (think Fight Club) who watched every countercultural icon become just another image on t-shirts. It wasn’t that the revolution wasn’t televised; there was no revolution—just the background noise of an overpriced shopping mall and the relentless march toward middle age.
For the first half of its existence, MTV felt genuinely refreshing: It was the first channel dedicated to pumping out music videos 24 hours a day. As a hormonal teenager, I was seduced by the flashy graphics, schizo-editing, and telegenic hosts, all imbued with a youthful rebelliousness. The cable network had an anarchic energy, operating in sharp contrast to the dull, sterile world of traditional mainstream television. It felt dangerous and subversive. At least that’s what you think when you’re 13, high on testosterone and self-righteous fury. Ah, the naïveté of youth!
Upon its launch in 1981, it was a commercial disaster, accruing merely a few hundred thousand dollars in advertising revenue during its inaugural year and incurring losses exceeding $50 million. On the verge of bankruptcy, the network hired famous musicians, such as Mick Jagger, Cyndi Lauper, and David Bowie, to feature in a series of advertisements aimed at encouraging fans to contact their local cable companies with the demand, “I WANT MY MTV!”
By 1992, 60 percent of American households had access to MTV. This rapid growth led to a de facto monopoly over pop culture. The brand dictated fashion, attitudes, and musical tastes. The network employed an old radio strategy called narrowcasting to target a specific demographic within its audience to advertisers.
Mike Judge’s satirical slacker animation, Beavis and Butthead, captured the grunge-oriented aesthetic that characterized Gen X. It wasn’t so much that it had its finger on the pulse as it did on the wallets of every teenager in the Western world. Its programming was built around planned obsolescence. Every few years, a new sound or style revolution sent kids running to thrift stores in search of the latest in-group signifiers and accessories.
Success brought criticism. This was the age of moral panic. MTV, like video games, was yet another “home invader” corrupting the minds and morals of the youth. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” video enraged cultural conservatives who saw the risqué clothing and lyrics as a symptom of Western civilization’s demise, and the left denounced the network’s unfettered commercialism, which it considered a kind of Faustian bargain, in which integrity was traded for fame. Getting on MTV was part of selling out, basically. The Dead Kennedys yelled “MTV Get Off the Air!” while Beck wrote a song called “MTV makes me wanna smoke crack.”
A remarkable aspect of capitalism is its adaptability—it has evolved to profit from dissent, rather than merely contain it. MTV demonstrated this by co-opting and transforming angst into a marketable product. In a way, it was an embryonic form of woke capitalism—painting a rainbow flag on a cruise missile no more implies that Raytheon favors the lives of transgender people than it does innocent civilians in the Middle East. A new iron law emerged: the counterculture is always commodified, and rebellion is the ultimate spectacle.
The death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain in 1994 signaled the beginning of the end of MTV’s golden age. As ratings dropped and youngsters tuned out, it did what any struggling company does. To maintain its cultural hegemony, the network reinvented itself. It sidelined the broadcast of nonstop music videos, basically its USP (unique selling position), and in their place, reality shows about trivial teen drama, such as The Real World and Jersey Shore, began to dominate its schedule. If the network had any claims to be revolutionary, it died with the introduction of reality TV.
MTV’s tragic history reads like a laundry list of constant reinventions as it struggled to stay relevant. With its roots in the Walkman era and its growth in the digital age of CDs, MTV couldn’t compete with the internet’s technological innovations. Other media learned to adapt; MTV stuck to its guns. Its current lineup includes Catfish, Teen Mom: The Next Chapter, and Dating Naked. Mark Fisher, the cultural theorist, was right: neoliberalism leads to the “desacralization of culture.”
This is both a criticism and a lamentation. Regardless of its flaws, it drew us together. For a few brief moments, it defined the zeitgeist—every American over the age of 50 can recall where they were when Thriller was released, and Headbangers Ball encouraged a generation to form awful thrash metal bands in our parents’ garages. While it might have felt more like a connection to shopping at Hot Topic, it still brought us together. This connection has been severed, lost to an age of AI slop and doomscrolling as podcasters yell into the ether.
Whatever, never mind…
MTV was accused of racism in the early 1980s, because they only had white performers. MTV said it was because they were a rock channel, and blacks didn't perform rock.
Then Michael Jackson released the Thriller video, and made music history. And MTV history.
Word.
No wonder I had no idea what happened.
Never saw a MJ anything, culturally deprive old curmudgeon that I am.
And streaming killed the video star
AI killed the musician.
Whip it
One of the first videos to appear on MTV in 1980.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_QLzthSkfM&list=RDj_QLzthSkfM&start_radio=1
Ahh yes, the era of the power ballad, “Because every bad boy has his soft side.”
It was good in the early to mid 80s. By the late 80s they introduced Yo MTV Sucks (raps) and they started showing game shows. By the very early 1990s, I moved on to VH1 which was actually showing rock music videos. I was in college at the time.
“In many ways, the demise of MTV can be interpreted as part of the fading relevance of Gen X.”
No, MTV started chasing after woke BS and idiocy, left music behind, and chased a “Modern Audience”.
And “Fading relevance of Gen X” has been a talking point for a long time.
Remember Z Rock and the Metal Militia?
ABC broadcasting killed Z Rock because “they didn’t see a market in Gen X”.
And that happened in the 90’s
They filled a niche for a while... IMO they had a pretty good run.
As someone born in the final minutes of the 1970s, I am a member of Generation X, the so-called “MTV Generation.” …Sorry, Noel; you would not know what MTV was like when it started out, because you were one year old.
“optimistic millennials”
??? We don’t call them “Doomers” for nothing.
MTV owes its existence to Mike Nesmith of The Monkees. And didn’t long survive him.
The State was so far ahead of its time.
Nice. I’m a big Motörhead fan.
We just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit.
That’s all any generation wants.Pre-boomers [the “silent majority”], boomers, GenX and every other maturing age group.
We are not all that different in the end, despite ash oles trying to drive ageist wedges between everyone.
I enjoyed MTV for a few of their first years. Then it got weird. Our maybe I grew up.
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