Happy 25th Birthday MTV!!!!

Happy Birthday MTV !!!
You pretty much changed my life…. I never used to listen to music .. then you bought all those cool videos that came along with basic cable .. and effectively bought me somewhat up to speed, (even though I got into the bandwagon a little late )….. you were more music then ,and wow I totally loved those MTV ad’s …they were really cool ….. there wasn’t too much reality TV or cartoons and the VJ’s didn’t hog up the entire show, of course this was MTV Asia , VJ’s have changed , channel names have changed … … you’ve transformed in to one long Hindi movie-trailer show back home in India …. And there’s no way I would know what’s popular out west if I watch you now ……as for right now…I hardly ever watch MTV or MTV 2 , Laguna beach and My Super Sweet Sixteen bore me … I prefer your sister channel VH1…it seems you’re aren’t celebrating your 25th birthday …you’re older than your target audience …but you kind off did define a generation…My generation … Here are some excerpts the wiki for the MTV generation

Global factors defining the MTV Generation

Most notable factors relevant to the MTV Generation is the overall nihilistic attitude of the teenagers growing up through the 1990s having been brought up in the 1980s and recently becoming adults of the 3rd millennium, as well as
• The launch of MTV in its early period before its mid-1990s makeover for predominantly pop music, rhythm and blues, hip hop culture and reality television. Also included in the early period of MTV is the creation of Beavis and Butt-Head cartoon. The popular tagline: "I want my MTV"--uttered by Veejays and performers on the network's advertisements and later included in the Dire Straits' Money for Nothing track--reflected the era's fascination with the new medium.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall.
• The First Gulf War.
• The Waco Siege.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, with its' vague associations with Bushido, white rap, and surf slang. Interest in some of the Asian martial arts (including, of course, Ninjutsu) temporarily spiked among teenagers in some areas due to the franchise's influence.
• Madonna and Michael Jackson (The Like A Prayer & Dangerous years), as well as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
• The introduction of the Nintendo and Atari gaming systems.
• The premierships of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and the presidency of Ronald Reagan succeeded later by George H. W. Bush.
• The worldwide popularity of The Simpsons.
• The second generation to mostly be influenced through Television (especially Music Television) as the primary medium for information and entertainment (the first being the baby boom generation crossing over to the early Generation X - when TV came into becoming an item in every household during the 1950s) especially from children growing up in the 1980s to their teens in the 1990s.
• The end of the Cold War and break up of the Soviet Union.
• The re-invented Dream Date Barbie doll, G.I. Joe: Action Force and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures.
• Transformers, M.A.S.K., Masters of the Universe and other toyline (franchises) centered around the primary theme of alien/high tech/supernatural combat occurring at large in a disguised form, but also containing strong modernist/morally absolutist themes which have been more recently removed in revised versions of these fictional scenarios.
• The Cabbage Patch Kids and Garbage Pail Kids craze of the late 80s.
• The Neverending Story franchise.
• The acting careers of Macaulay Culkin and Michael J. Fox.
• The release of Nelson Mandela and end of Apartheid in South Africa.
• The launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.
• The last generation to appreciate its significance in a changing culture, as most of them can still readily recall now-obsolete items of the pre-digital era such as VHS tapes and audio cassette tapes.


Culture (political and social)

This generation was also the first to experience:
• June 18, 1981, the official date for the beginning of the AIDS epidemic and the 1985 World Health Organization AIDS surveillance case definition.
• 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion and Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster.
• The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
• The fall of the Berlin Wall November 9, 1989 and German reunification on October 3, 1990. - One of the two major moments to define the MTV Generation.
The distinct end of Generation X.
• In 1989, Czechoslovakia became a democratic country again through the Velvet revolution. In 1992, the federal parliament decided to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as of January 1, 1993.
• Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster prison, near Cape Town, South Africa February 11, 1990.
• The Gulf War in 1991. - The war that truly defined the MTV Generation, just as the Vietnam War defined Generation X and the Iraq War define Generation Y.
• The fall of the Soviet Union, and beginning of "New World Order" July 1991 marking the end of the Cold War since 1941 between the United States and Soviet Union. - The second of the two most important moments in defining Generation XY.
• November 22, 1992, at just after 9.30 am, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher announced to her cabinet that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot of the vote to determine the leader of the British Conservative Party, thereby bringing her term of office as Prime Minister to an end.
• The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia ceases to exist. Slovenia and Croatia gain independence January 15, 1992
• Signing of the Maastricht treaty, which founded the European Union February 7, 1992.
• Bill Clinton defeats George H. W. Bush and Ross Perot in the U.S. presidential election, 1992, November 3.
• 1993 confrontation between U.S. federal agents and the Branch Davidians - Siege of Waco.
• Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found dead April 8, 1994, in Seattle, Washington. He had apparently committed suicide three days earlier. - A death that marked the MTV Generation as opposed to Jim Morrison for Generation X and Elvis Presley for the baby boomers.
• May 1, 1994, Formula One driver Ayrton Senna is killed during the San Marino Grand Prix.
• The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir on November 4, 1995, after attending a rally promoting the Oslo process at Tel Aviv's Kings of Israel Square (which was renamed to Yitzhak Rabin Square after his death).
• The Dunblane massacre occurring at a primary school in the small town of Dunblane in central Scotland on Wednesday, 13 March 1996.
• September 7, 1996 Tupac Shakur was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting. This was later followed by the murder of Christopher Wallace aka The Notorious B.I.G. who was shot and killed in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997 - resulting in the end of the Hip hop rivalries between East Coast's Bad Boy Records and the West Coast's Death Row Records.
• The end of British sovereignty over Hong Kong July 1, 1997.


Crossover with beginning of "true" Generation Y:• The international one hit wonder song, Macarena by Los Del Rio became a worldwide summer hit in 1996 until the end of 1997.
• The Yugoslav wars, a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia that took place between (1991-2001) - including the Bosnian War.
• Thirty-nine bodies found in Heaven's Gate cult suicide March 26, 1997 - coinciding with the comet Hale-Bopp.
• Diana, Princess of Wales is taken to a hospital after a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, August 31, 1997. She is pronounced dead at 4:00 the next morning followed on September 3 by the death of Mother Teresa.
• The Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998, followed by Bill Clinton's impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives.
• The Matrix, a science-fiction / action film with wide cultural influence that was released on March 31st, 1999.
• The premonition of the Y2K problem occurring in 2000 12:00 AM, January 1, New Year's Eve, and resulting fears about the coming 'Millennium'
Technology/Media experienced by the generation

This generation used or witnessed the following technology from their teenage years (born during the 70s) and preteen years (born early 80s):

• Launch of CNN allowing access to world news (1980), and MTV entering a new era with the Music Video culture (1981).
• The development from the 8-bit era with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System and Atari 7800, into a new 16-bit era: SNES, Sega Mega Drive/Sega Genesis and Neo-Geo.
• The Internet from its process into a prolific and developed form (1990s).
• PCs and the Power Macintosh with modern operating systems and GUIs (1990s onwards).
• Sophisticated computer graphics in many video games, animated movies and television shows (mid to late 1990s).
• Cellular phones (1980s and beyond).
• MP3s, file-sharing and Napster before it was shut-down (late 1990s).
• ICQ and other Instant messaging applications that would later follow (early 1990s and onwards).
• VHS tapes, Audio cassettes which would later be replaced by CDs (mid 80s), the Minidisc (mid 1990s), and the CD-R (1994).

The MTV Generation unlike the core Generation Y and core Generation X were caught in the middle of a surge in media and technological advances which would later prevail towards the end of the millennium for Generation Y. Partakers of this generation will recall libraries still using index cards for looking up books, how writing letters and corresponding with pen pals and mail-by-order books/comics were fashionable, as well as communication via telephone landlines, prior to the mobile phone phenomenon of the mid 90s. Also most people partaking within the MTV Generation will remember having personal computers as a child without an internet connection, along with the rise of hip hop musical styles within pop music and fall of rock and roll and metal.

I love nostaligia …….*sigh*