I don’t watch a lot of TV. When I have had the TV on this summer, it’s usually been on a channel I just recently found out existed: MTVU, a version of the dreaded channel supposedly more oriented towards college-aged viewers. Like the original MTV of olde, it almost exclusively plays videos, with filler shit at a minimum and awful reality shows nowhere to be seen. It also plays bands I like, such as Say Anything, Manchester Orchestra, Coheed and Cambria, and others. All in all, a decent channel to use as background noise.
After watching it for a while, a question arose: do the MTV marketers and executives responsible for the programming have an accurate vision of the college experience? The bumps and advertising spots feature gangly kids in dirty clothes languishing by quads, pithy quotes by Buddha and Oscar Wilde, and godawful viewer-submitted poetry. Is this what represents college to them? Are they hopelessly out of touch with non-media generated college lifestyles, or am I just missing out on the common experience?
I’ve never hung out, studied or played frisbee on the quad. I don’t lie around thinking about compassion and ambition all day. I don’t express my feelings through bad poetry that I try to play off as simply unconventional. Furthermore, I’m not sure if anyone I know does this stuff regularly. My college experience has mostly involved getting inebriated and shooting the shit with friends, but this channel doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the existence of alcohol (it does at least mention marijuana occasionally), and most of the bumps show people who are desperately alone.
I guess MTV’s portrayal does capture the essence of a subset of my campus, one that would probably consider my own lifestyle incredibly shallow. But that’s their problem, not mine; I don’t need to follow some cultural standard of how a student or intellectual should validate his identity. How many people on the Stetson quad think otherwise? I don’t know, but it’s nice to see one situation where all of my actions aren’t verified and pandered to by the media.
