973: MTV Generation

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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MTV Generation
If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.
Title text: If you identified with the kids from The Breakfast Club when it came out, you're now much closer to the age of Principal Vernon.

Explanation

People often call today's kids “The MTV generation”, like White Hat does in the strip, because the MTV Generation were accused of bad attention spans and concentration (caused by MTV). The thing is that the term really originated about 25 years ago, so today's kids are actually one generation newer.

MTV is Music Television, it is a TV channel is the US and elsewhere that, when it started in the 1980s, used to show music videos. Now it only shows crappy reality TV.

The Breakfast Club is an iconic movie from 1985 in which 5 very different teenagers spend a Saturday detention together at the school. Principal Vernon was obviously, the principal in the movie and was the overseer of the detention.

This comic is one of the rare appearances of the White Hat character, who is seen much less than the Black Hat character. Randall has covered making people feel old many times.

Transcript

[One of them damn kids that won't get OFF MY LAWN plays with some gadget-a-mabob while ignoring every damn thing around him off in the background. Person 1 with a white hat, along with another person with long hair is in the foreground]

Person 1: See, that's the problem with the MTV generation—no attention span.


Person 2: You know, that phrase referred to the 12–19 demographic that formed the core MTV audience in the mid–1980s.


Person 1: Uh huh. So?

Person 2: That generation's now in their 40s.


[Person 1 scratches their head]

Person 1: That can't be right.

Person 2: Face it: your problem with the MTV generation is their KIDS.


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Discussion

Yeah, so it made them bad parents. Still a valid complaint. On a side note, how old must White Hat be to be dismissive of the MTV generation himself? Davidy²²[talk] 08:19, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's worse. The MTV generation is nearly 50. Some are grandparents. -74.213.186.41 15:52, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

Especially those who watched MTV in the late 1980s, when the style of videos changed from abstract art to soft porn.Seebert (talk) 15:25, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

After 4 years of living in fear Roy Batty apparently died a dreadful death without a whimper. A very brave and "manly" creature. We should act now. There may still be time! I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 17:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, Seebert, this comic was published in 2011. Back then, the MTV generation was in their late thirties and early forties.

Hello from 10 years later! That generation is now in their 50's. --mezimm 172.69.71.32 20:33, 5 November 2021 (UTC)