🏴☠️But I'm Still Big Pimpin', Spendin' Cheese💳
So MTV is finally, officially, completely done. And if your reaction is, "Wait, MTV is still on?" congratulations—you're exactly who this eulogy is for.
For most of us, MTV died somewhere around 2010, the moment we canceled cable and discovered that YouTube would show us music videos for free, without commercial breaks, and without making us sit through three hours of Teen Mom first. But apparently, the network has been stumbling around like a zombie for another decade and a half, and now it's finally lying down for good.
Let's be honest: MTV was already irrelevant by 2000. The channel that defined a generation in the '80s and stayed cool through the '90s had become a parody of itself by the turn of the millennium. Remember when MTV actually stood for Music Television? When the M meant something besides, "Maybe We'll Show Music at 3 AM"?
The '80s were MTV's glory days. The network took these absolutely hideous rock dudes—and I mean ugly—and made them stars. Guys who had no business being on television were suddenly heartthrobs because they could shred on a guitar. MTV created a visual language for music that hadn't existed before. It was revolutionary, essential, appointment viewing.
The '90s kept the magic alive. Grunge, hip-hop, alternative rock—MTV was still the cultural nexus where music happened. Unplugged actually mattered. TRL was somehow a thing people cared about. Kurt Loder delivering news updates felt important.
But here's what MTV inadvertently exposed: the sheer absurdity of rock's dominance. Before MTV, you could hear these bands and imagine they were cool. MTV forced you to watch them, and suddenly you couldn't unsee it. There they were, sweaty dudes with questionable hair thrashing around, and the camera didn't lie.
MTV democratized music in ways it never intended. By putting everyone on screen, it revealed how much of rock's mystique relied on not actually looking at the performers. And as hip-hop's visual creativity exploded on the network, the contrast became impossible to ignore.
By 2000, MTV had figured out that reality TV was cheaper than music videos and that The Real World got better ratings than another Limp Bizkit video. Fair enough—capitalism works. But somewhere between Jackass and My Super Sweet 16, the M became meaningless.
The real death blow came from the internet. Why wait for MTV to maybe play the video you wanted when YouTube would serve it up instantly? Why pay for cable when your laptop was free?
So here we are. MTV lasted almost 45 years, which is about 25 years longer than most of us thought. It gave us moonmen, made veejays a thing, and accidentally killed the very genre it was created to celebrate.
Rest in peace, MTV. You were essential, then cool, then a punchline. But at least you were never boring.
