MTV was supposed to finally shut down for good. So, why didn’t it? |
The news that MTV is shutting down spread like wildfire, yet it was never shutting down. Just why were we so quick to believe this false story, wonders Derek McArthur.
The nostalgic forces of Gen X and millennials are in full effect.
Nowhere was this more obvious than with the purported news last week that MTV was finally shutting down for good on New Year's Eve.
But despite the melancholic send-offs, the millions of rose-tinted nostalgia think pieces, the shared memories of basking in a CRT glow of simpler times, and the endless social media engagement bait, MTV was not actually shutting down for good. It was never shutting down, even.
Just how did the idea that one of the most culturally significant touchstones of the late twentieth-century closing shop manage to take on its narrative so rapidly, and without the slightest fact-checking in the fervour that this was indeed the end of it all? Anyone changing the channel to MTV in the new year would notice that it is still broadcasting with no issue, at the very least.
We’re stuck in an infinite nostalgia loop… where is the culture of tomorrow?
All of this was extrapolated from a report that MTV would be closing its supplementary music channels, specifically in the........