It does have a gratuitous dwarf…like another MTV 80s classic, “Safety Dance” (I’ll link to a “literal lyrics” parody in a minute).
And, yep, that’s the right Tubes video.
“I’m insane!” “Definitely LSD.”
And this…hilarious.
My favorite literal video, and it’s about another classic MTV staple, Billie Jean.
Not available on YouTube. I’m guessing there are legal issues with this video and that platform.
Safety Dance is weird in the normal version.
MTV is not dead, and regardless of whether you thought it was or really didn’t but still made snarky comments about its “demise,” you’re part of a bigger problem.
Patrick Scott Patterson
“OMG - FAREWELLS TO MTV! Shut down forevers and stuff on New Years!”
We all saw the posts. Hell, I saw some of the posts from many of you here.
Thing is… MTV did not shut down. It was never slated to shut down.
MTV’s parent company was shutting down some of the supplemental music video sub channels in foreign markets, such as the United Kingdom and Australia.
MTV itself is still on the air in those countries. And here in the United States at that. Even the supplemental video sub channels weren’t shut down in the U.S., by the way, and are still available on the platforms you could find them on previously.
But this post isn’t about MTV. Do not fill my comment section here by talking about how MTV hasn’t been the same since the 90s or whatever… or you are going to prove one of my larger points here.
The scary thing pointed out by this is the fact that so many people just up and took and ran with a slight bit of “news” without even checking to see if it was true.
Even with almost zero effort required TO fact check it. I saw a few of you post about this as recently as Sunday, January 4. The time it took you to post/share that could have been used to check your cable system or even your local cable system online lineup to see if it was true or not.
That’s the first frightening thing. In this case, it’s over some rather unimportant entertainment tidbit.
But how much is this happening with important news events? You want to find the true source for political divide in the U.S. right now? It’s not 100 percent on elected officials or the media.
A lot of it on you. And I’m sure me to a point, but I can say that I’m very deliberate in reacting to things. I’m going to at least reserve any public reaction until I have more confirmation than a Facebook post and more information than will ever come out while a story is developing.
I feel like an outlier, though. We, as a society, have become reactionary. TOO reactionary.
Watch this post prove itself. How many comments are going to bemoan how MTV hasn’t mattered since Pearl Jam was new when this post isn’t about MTV whatsoever and is instead using this MTV “News” as an example of a larger problem?
I think we can all agree these days that society is easily manipulated by media and this barrage of online fodder that feeds us more information per second than we used to receive per day.
But sooooo many people who recognize that STILL shared and talked about this MTV trope, even though the correct and accurate information was sooo easily found and literally right in front of you.
It’s food for thought. Be deliberate on what you share and react to. Otherwise you become just another lemming… and potentially the carrier of misinformation placed by bad faith actors aiming to make someone or something look bad via agenda.
This example topic was not important. But I promise you I could find other similar examples that are.
So shame on you!
WTF are you on about? I just quoted an article to correct a date that someone got wrong because of typo and I didn’t make a single snarky comment and what exactly the fuck is the “problem”?
How about this completely wrong sentence? “MTV first launched in the United States on Aug. 1, 1981. The first video it aired was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles — which was also [the final clip that MTV Music played on Dec. 31.”
What about it? It’s not snark. I was quoting an article that seemed credible.
I didn’t say it was snark. It is just incredibly wrong.
Yes and you corrected it minutes later. I was responding to @NDP literally shaming me and accusing me of snarking about it. Which I didn’t do.
As others noted, I did miss the whole bit, but got better, even changing the title, to be more accurate, it was most of the overseas video only channels, like MTV used to be.
I’m not accusing you of it, and I apologize if I came across that way. The “Shame on you!” was a facetiously scolding comment that matched the tone of the linked Esquire article and Patterson’s post. Apparently, we’re in an ancillary stage of the whole supposed “end” of MTV story, where the topic has shifted from the scaling-back of a once-prominent cable network’s operations to how the internet–and social media in particular–failed to make some simple spot checks and let an inaccurate report spiral out of control. In any case, this story and this thread (like MTV itself) now have a little more life left in them.
Ah ok. Thanks
Why oh why couldn’t they show an influencer singing a TikTok dance to ‘Internet killed the Video Star’ at the end.
Never mind, I’ll just go watch it on a service that provides music videos.
I came by to remind everyone that this is Cafe society, and to chill out. But it seems you already have. 
Carry on.
Some people think the misinformation irresponsibly spread around the World Wide Web about the alleged “death” of MTV is a serious matter but I think they’re overreacting. Granted, if viewers and advertisers believe the reports to be real and bail out of the two or three programs on MTV that aren’t reruns resulting in their cancelation and the loss of several hundred jobs, they might have a point.
This thread has two distinct parts: first, about the demise (or not) of MTV; next, responses to the post below.
The details about the first subject aren’t that interesting (to me); the big picture is obvious. The second subject has been fun and informative, and maybe would have worked better as its own thread.
If you need to see it, someone compiled a list of all the songs played on 120 Minutes. The list was compiled in 2022 so I am not sure if it still has all of the videos or if some are unavailable.
I didn’t have cable as a kid so I felt really “out of it” when MTV debuted and then became popular. I watched quite a bit while I was in college in the 90s while grunge was programmed prominently. After college, MTV started spinning towards boy bands and pop stars like Brittany Spears.
Is anyone else wondering if another video music provider, like VIVO, is partially responsible for spreading all those false stories?
