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TikTok Is Gen Z’s MTV — but Better
There’s beauty in the social network’s randomness, which fosters creativity in a way the music video channel never could
A significant portion of my brain is MTV.
It’s not by choice. If I could evict Crowded House, tell Neneh Cherry to take her “Buffalo Stance” elsewhere, create an exit on the ceiling of my amygdala for Lionel Richie to dance his ass through, I’d do it.
But I am a Gen Xer, born in 1975, raised in the 1980s, weaned on neon-bright clothing and cheesy synth riffs. My grandmother, who took care of me most days after school, had cable. And while the cuss-word-filled comedy specials on HBO and Nickelodeon’s all-day buffet of kid programming (‘sup, Pinwheel!) caught my attention, MTV was the channel that shaped me, for better or for worse.
When MTV was very little else but music videos all the time and I was at my most impressionable age (Six? Nine? 11? When is a child most a sponge?), the world opened up to me in music videos, three or four minutes at a time.
This was a world where women slid around on the hoods of cars without injury. Where crudely computer-animated blue-collar workers had problematic hot takes on popular music:
Where the word “Goonies” wasn’t just about a group of kids looking for pirate treasure, it was a state of mind. A Cyndi Lauper state of mind:
I know how to spell “Cyndi Lauper” because of MTV. I know to avoid strange men with wrenches should I ever end up in an animatic alt dimension because of MTV. I know when I gotta cut loose, Footloose, because of MTV, although at my age I have to do some hamstring stretches first.
