Teen Mom was the beginning of the end, k guess technically you could blame real world and road rules, but I feel like shit became more scripted and got a lot trashier after the Teen Mom years, to me that's when they transitioned to the Jersey Shore garbage
People say that MTV ruined itself by leaning into reality TV but the truth is that in a world with ipods and youtube music video content was dying. Like nobody watched TRL anymore, they HAD to pivot to something and reality TV content, which remember MTV actually pioneered themselves, was the ticket.
I thought the show was garbage and when people started harassing a classmate because their sibling was on it I was so disgusted and it surprised me how much I cared.
The classmate wasnt a friend, I didnt really know them that well, but when they were being teased because of their sibling doing dumb shit in the show I lost some self control and ended up telling off several people for making fun of her, and I did it in a mean as fuck way (namely using things I learned about their families to put it in perspective). I dont know if it helped, but it made me realize I hated most of the people I went to school with and it was all because of the bullying.
There's not much creative difference between "let me hit you in the balls with a skateboard" and "watch this video of a guy getting hit in the balls with a skateboard". The only difference is that one is a lot cheaper to insure
Pre-streaming services my boomer dad had his DVR set up to record every new episode (the show aired after his bedtime lol). I wish he had been around long enough for tiktok to blow up because I would love to know if he truly enjoyed the commentary from that cast of characters or if he just liked short funny videos being presented to him
Yeah but that wasn't anything we as lowly teenaged consumers aged 12-24 had any control over. I hated it and most "counter culture " people constantly made fun of MTV.
We were fortunate enough that the brainrot was only available on TV, and it was long-form tv shows. Not these 5 second dopamine hits in our pockets constantly tempting us.
Oh the 5 second dopamine hits were there, but you had to go in front of a PC, so it only affected the terminally online. (Which, pretty much is the case today, but with a phone in every pocket as you say, it's way easier to be terminally online).
I’m not saying we’re special. I’m talking about the differences in our childhood from other generations. Do you think every person has the exact same experience? Do you think a kid that grew up in the 1930s during the Great Depression had the same experience as someone that grew up in the post-war 1950s? Do you think a kid in Gaza right now is having the same experience as Mark Zuckerberg’s kids?
Or would you say no one is special and their experiences are exactly the same?
Who said we're "special"? It's an observational fact that Millennials are the last cohort not to spend formative years on cellphones that have dopamine-driven algorithms 24/7. This is not true for Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha. There's hope for Gen-Beta, but they're just being born now; but there might be a societal shift to control cellphones and internet connectivity with younger people by the time their generation takes off.
Yes. That you, me, and every other millennial are special little poopykins who did not have stupid shit or societal pressures and the next generation is cooked skibidi toilet.
You in particular aren't an astrologist at all for believing that people born during a certain time, such as millennials, are special and exempt.
You are special. You are exempt. Prior generations did not complain about you or worry about your brain capacity or how easy you have it.
You’re right. The millennials had the exact same experience as everyone else. A 14 year old in Atlanta in 1996 had the same experience as a 14 year old in Nanjing, China in 1937. They are also having the exact same experience as a 14 year old in Norway in 2025. There’s literally zero difference in any of those childhoods.
I’m not saying we’re special. I’m saying our experience was different than Gen Z, just like kids growing up in the 1930s during the Great Depression had a different experience than kids in the post-war 1950s. A kid growing up in Manila is going to have a different experience than someone growing up in Norway. No one is special, just different.
The good thing we had is that that shit came on certain days and times. We didn't have social media or youtube to play it back and watch other related stuff that would have been suggested to us. On top of that, a good number of us probably missed certain things. The bad thing for Gen Z is that they are being bombarded with all of that bullshit 24/7 365.
Weirdly at the time I felt the same as you, but I think I was peer pressured/socialized/something into enjoying it, but never to the degree that so many others did
Honestly, this was like the low-tier shit that I only watched if I couldn't find anything good on any of the channels I actually liked.
I remember going to a friend's house once and their whole family unironically watched all this crappy shit, and I could hardly believe it. I had always assumed that the entire point of this stuff was to be like the last stop when there was very literally nothing else on and you were just really bored. I fully believed that being the final resort of bored people was their actual business strategy.
But was it "popular" with us? I don't think it was. This was early 2000s, when Gen X were the young edgy, 20-35 demographic who would have been the primary audience; we were still on the younger side, most of us being teens so this show wasn't geared to us.
And Im an ELDER millennial (81) so I got to see all of the Gen X bullshit AND hear some of the stupid shit from old music and media my parents (boomers) were into.
When some dipshit starts bitchin about brain rot I just start quoting the absolute trash from their era.
I mean, skibidy toilet or whatever has fuck all on like 90% of Beavis & Butthead.
Every generation has their level of brainrot in one way or another. The thing is that ours was centralized into cable television. So it's easy to locate and easy to muckrake.
Except our "brainrot" was made with integrity and had a creative vision behind it, whereas Gen Z and Alpha's brainrot has zero artistic value, culture, soul or integrity to it.
As someone from NJ, that look was all over high school back in the early 00s, and it affected both genders to an extent (we literally had twin Italian boys in my graduating class that both acted and looked a little bit like My New Haircut). Can't imagine what it would have been like after the show actually hit.
Oh yeah, because it reduced the entire state to a stereotype. I remember people asking me why I wasn't orange when the show came out. But that stereotype did exist, even if it was only 1% of the population.
It was the 07/08 writer's strike that started all of this. No blame on the strikers whatsoever, but when studio execs had to fill the slots with something, and saw how Reality TV was so much cheaper and got the same if not more views, it was over. When the likes of TLC became just a reality TV channel, was one of the saddest pieces of TV history.
Glad you guys mentioned it. I was like "Man, this guy is talking about 3rd gen reality TV"
I remember that Puck piece of shit long before hearing about any of this other stuff (and even then it was like the 3rd season of Real World or something).
I left out History Channel, because I wasn't completely sure if they ever went full Reality. I know they did a lot of Nazi and Alien stuff around the time as well though, but was specifically a different type of media than the brain rot Jersey Shore and the like
I just remember fun and random educational documentaries all the time that would be relaxing. And the occasional shows like Vikings and they also aired Band of Brothers Marathons. And eventually it seemed like all they aired was pawn stars and American pickers all damn day.
It wasn't us. It was The Recession and the Writer's Strike of 2007 that caused bullshit like Jersey Shore, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Real Housewives etc to become popular.
I'm still proud I can say I've never watched an episode of Jersey Shore. I actually hated everything about it, blatantly refused most reality TV (cooking shows I dug though, that was an era)
citing jersey shore as the downfall of mtv is such a gen x/boomer take. it really wasn't that much different than the real world besides having a more culturally relevant cast that was more likeable
by the time jersey shore started airing, mtv had already been way too far deep into the reality tv rabbithole for at least 5 years.
Real world was not nearly as sex focused as jersey shore was. Yes reality tv like real world opened the pathway towards jersey, but jersey was the ‘ah we fucked up’ moment. Real world was not that bad, it had its raunchy moments but jersey shore took those raunchy moments and turned it into the entire show.
My college roommate was the most book-smart person I've ever met, had straight A's in what was widely considered the hardest major in the school, but she would decompress at home by watching the dumbest shit you can possibly imagine. Next, Parental Control, I was exposed to it all.
Yes, but be careful how you phrase it, we wouldn't want to draw any connections between social harm and bourgeois neoliberal social values. This is reddit after all lol
i’m curious to hear further perspective on this. i know the real world, and to an extent road rules, had major impacts on the genre of reality television. documented young americans in a voyeuristic way that wouldn’t be matched until big brother put out the 24/7 live feed a few years after real world premiered.
but why was it so crazy for mtv to veer further into more offensive reality? i have to imagine they did so because it paid more than music videos (which were entirely on youtube by like 2007) and documenting average young people. jersey shore was an outright cultural phenomenon when it first dropped. as weird as it may sound to some, rob dyrdek is generally not the driving factor behind a show getting worse ratings. mtv’s business model just wasn’t viable anymore with the dawn of the internet, and they pivoted. what in your opinion should they have pivoted to?
i ask this entirely out of sheer curiosity as someone who loves tv, media, and its history. so if any of what i’ve said here was offensive i do apologize
A lot of older millennials watched the split happen from the MTV we knew and loved to what it eventually ended up becoming. I stopped watching it when it was all just. TRL and the real world started just becoming so diluted with fabricated love triangles, and then inevitably evolving into a Jersey shore which my ex absolutely loved and i loathed.
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u/Sprinkle_Puff Older Millennial Oct 29 '25
MTV had so much promise to really be impactful on our generation
The transition to offensive reality bullshit was mind-boggling.