Here’s a confession I’m not really proud of: I used to watch MTV’s ‘Total Request Live’ every single day. Between the years of 1998 and 2001 (roughly my time in middle school), I rushed home after school to lust after Britney Spears, examine all of the latest trends, and hope to God that “Steal My Sunshine” by Len had made the top 10. I know this all sounds like a pathetic, slightly unfunny joke, but it’s completely true. I even went through a phase where I asked my parents to go to New York so I could be in the studio audience. They said “No.” I fled to my room, sulking about their callous nature.
By the time I entered high school, I was slowly weaning off my previous obsession. Golf and tennis practice occupied my after school time, and Carson Daly and Dave Holmes were both appearing less and less frequently, replaced by some douche whose name started with a Q. (That’s just bad parenting.) Every once in a while, I would check in with my old Music Television friends, but it just wasn’t the same. I had a strange feeling that I was no longer the intended audience.
Still, I sojourned on. After all, it wasn’t that bad. Some of the music was hot and it still was the coolest program on television. Unfortunately, as the months went on and my freshman year oozed into my sophomore summer, the feelings of distance and discontent kept expanding like a tumor that was engulfing the rational thought section of my brain. ‘Total Request Live’ was still talking to me like I was in middle school. They made the same low-brow jokes, peddled the same bullshit cliques, and featured almost congruent brain-dead audience members making the same intellectually void shout-outs to Nick Carter.
The start of sophomore year saw the total end of my ‘TRL’ viewing career. I went completely cold turkey, though unlike heroine abusers, my withdrawal symptoms primarily involved a boom in independent thinking and a new low in the number of idiotic trends I bought into. Over the next few months, all of my friends followed suit, and any mention of ‘TRL’ was soon accompanied with a verbal harangue about sheep and vapid, shallow existences.
A short while ago, I was flipping through channels and ended on up ‘Total Request Live.’ The set was a little different, the host unfamiliar, but it had largely stayed the same. The audience was still packed with wide-eyed fashionistas, making the same intellectually void shout-outs to the next generation of Nick Carters. I smiled, slowly shook my head, and said a little prayer for my unfortunate, fellow twenty-year olds who are still buying in to the same shit I did in middle school.
