Were you raised on Ritilin and MTV?

MTV is a paradox, its only genuine successful period was signified by the birth and death of Nirvana, which unfortunately is probably why Kurt Cobain committed suicide. He was trapped in the contradiction of massively popular alternative music. It can't work, especially from an artists point of view such as Cobain. As soon as the masses are listening to your music to be different, it inherently negates that musci. Kurt didn't want to be selling millions of grunge records, epitomising the genre and making it the mainstream, his subversive style had become the majority music choice. Even In Utero (the album that followed Nevermind) which was very experimental and obviously meant to be inaccessible, made it to the number 1 spot in the album charts.

MTV televised music, which in 1981 was a brilliant idea, but the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. And MTV soon became a self-obsessed brand for the gluttonous consumer, and now it has very little credibility in Music, broadcasting, programming or anything - Kerry Katona has her own reality show on it - enough said.

When i think of MTV im reminded of Bret Easton Ellis's debut novel "Less than Zero" which follows a group of rich 17-20 year olds in the suburban dystopia of Los Angeles, who live lives of leisure and excess, day and night recreational drug use of all classification, and relaxed indifferent attitudes to sex and thier ambiguous sexualities. It is set in the mid-to-late 80's and they are certainly the disaffected youth of their day, they are the kids raised on Ritilin and MTV.

Bret Easton Ellis was in fact one of those kids and is one of the 1980's literary Brat Pack, along with his friend Jay McInerney (who wrote Bright Lights Big City) and Tama Janowitz. You can sense a lot of personal input into his characters, who are empty people, normally well aware of their superficiality and enjoy fulfilling thier vacuous role and take pride and pleasure in their easy life of born into money.

On a different note, an interesting link on the nature of advertising in our information age.