I for one won't join in the madness, which seems mostly to be about giving a severe kicking to someone who has some pretty serious mental health issues. Mostly I won't join in because I haven't bothered to watch it, largely because of a complete disinterest in the matter. I did see a picture though. What struck me most is the fact that, oh yeah, there's that thing called MTV.
I don't have a TV, let alone cable so MTV filters into my conciousness so little. Occaisionally when round a friend's house I may see what's on, and then decide I don't care and go searching for something with Bear Grylls in it. In fact it also came up earlier today when I was going to get some lunch, and overheard some guy braying loudly "that was back in the days when MTV used to show music videos, God I feel so old." Well if you can cast you mind that far back (2002) it probably does make you feel ancient (plus the guy was obviously younger than me so just made me feel bad). Anyway, that comment is repeated so often it's became one of those "stock-things-to-say" that people shout off when a particular subject is brought up. Others include "the Labour party's not really the Labour party anymore is it" or "Big Brother is dumbing down our culture" or "you get less [insert product here] in a bag these days" (that last one is actually true of Walker's crisps, BOYCOT THEM!).
Anyway, it is true that MTV probably show's no music videos anymore. That's because by and large music videos are crap. Or the song is really bad. That's why MTV Networks Europe branched off and made all those crazy channels for every broad genre of music so if you like, say, R'n'B you can go watch MTV Base or if you like indie you can watch MTV2. So that's why the fill MTV itself with those crazy and inane programs.
In the past MTV have produced some good programs, like Beavis and Butthead. They gave Jon Stewart his first break at presenting a chat show, something he does rather better now on the Daily Show. The Tom Green Show was either genius or the most stupid thing on television.
These days they pump out crap reality shows instead. I've no particular problem with reality shows in general, I mean Panorama is technically a reality show, but seriously, have you seen My Super Sweet 16? What the fuck is up with that? And programs you might see and think are genius, like Pimp My Ride, quickly lose their appeal. There's only so many times they can put a completely useless bit of kit into a car until it just stops being... er... funny? Entertaining? What the hell emotion do you get when you watch that show?
The only MTV show in recent years I've actually liked is Laguna Beach: The Real OC. In fact I got a bit obsessed with it at one point, mostly because it was the only thing in English at the hotel I stayed in in Mexico that wasn't FOX News or some forensic crime program on Discovery (it was always the husband that killed her). Laguna Beach was my one ray on sunshine (except for all the sunshine), a little window into the semi-scripted world of rich American teenagers. The sort of central plotline was about this guy (called Stephen but should more correctly be known as Twatface) and his love triangle with two blonde girls. One of the girls was the sort of person you expect to marry a rich guy eventually and have him go off with other women in vegas whilst she does her best to hold the family together. The other one looked like the sort of person who's going to marry a rich guy, have loadds of affairs herself and get heavily into cocaine and cosmetic surgery. I can't remember who Twatface ended up with but I know by the end of series 2 he wasn't with either of them and last I heard was sleeping with the cheerleader from Heroes (probably).
Anyway, there were loads of random side plots, mostly involving other blonde girls and a various rotating cast of wierdo creepy guys, and they were always cheating on each other. I think at least 6 of the girls were called Alex. There was also a brunette girl called Jessica, who was going out with a total arsehole called Jason and when her friends would say things like "Jason is a dick" and "Jason is the most objectionable human being on the face of the planet" she would ignore it with an air of annoyance. She is almost certainly going to end up in an abusive relationship. Also I remember from one episode she had a "talk" with an ex called Dieter who talked passionately about wanting her back or something. Alas, poor Dieter is the kind of guy who thinks 3/4 length short, backwards baseball caps and chokers looks good, and he was punching well above his weight getting her in the first place. Trouble is he actually seems like a partially decent person, as opposed to practically everybody else to do with the show.
Alas by series 3 all these so-called-people had left for college so there was a new cast who were boring. So I stopped watching.
But other than repeats of Laguna Beach, nothing on MTV can keep my attention. So what the hell is it for? What does it do these days? With the actual "music" shoved off onto their expansion channels, the only purpose of the main MTV channel seems to be to make the MTV brand actually have something using that name. It seems utterly pointless to me. And if that is the case, why bother? It'd be simpler to just stop making all these filler shows to pad out the hours in a day and just shut the channel down. Save Viacom some money and I don't think anyone would miss it.
Little MTV Tidbit: One night whilst suffering from insomnia I turned on the TV in my parent's house and put MTV on. The first video to come on was "Devoured By Vermin" by Cannibal Corpse. It was the most surreal experience in my life.
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