The conversation goes like this.\nSuspiciously attractive Valley girl: Do you wanna be with me?\nMush-mouth SoCal pop-collar: (long pause) Yeah and no.\nSAVG: Well which one?\nMMSCPC: Yeah, but no, too.\nSAVG: Ok. You can always call me, yeah?
Envy, Sloth\nThus ends another late afternoon in the lives of the cast of MTV's blatantly banal "Laguna Beach," a show which purports itself to be "The REAL Orange County" while the rest of us wonder if there really is such a thing. "Talent"-scouted from an actual California high school, the cast, which features vamp-tramp Kristin Cavallari (doing her best Paris Hilton ad-infinitum) and a seemingly IQ-less bevy of male hangers-on, bumble around their ritzy Cali digs with a haughty assurance unbecoming of a group of people with so little of importance. Worse still is that while the "Laguna" kids' semi-scripted conversations are meandering and pointless to begin with, half the time you can't even understand what it is they're talking about; a reminder to viewers that what they're saying doesn't matter, it's how they look while they're saying it.\nThe danger of "Laguna" being so popular among teens is not limited simply to envy of the cast's wastrel lifestyle, but to the furthering of the idea that to achieve your 15 minutes in this country all one must do is simply exist, as long as they can recite middle-school dialogue and conform to the obvious physical and wardrobe standards in front of MTV's cameras.
Lust, Wrath\n"Laguna" is not MTV's only harbinger of the impending cultural apocalypse. Have you ever turned down a potential date based on the lack of sports trophies in their room? Ever written off an opposite sex peer as a sicko because a blacklight revealed stains on their bed sheets? Then maybe you should be on "Room Raiders," a program that proves, for today's young adults, any miniscule imperfection is reason enough to dismiss anyone else on theoretical principle. In the end, the girl almost always winds up with the guy with the Corvette in the driveway who owns weightlifting equipment and a bedside drawer full of Trojan Magnums. Not surprising, since the entire concept of choosing a date based on the contents of their bedroom is the basic definition of shallowness. Whether or not the eventual couplings made by the end of each episode ever make it to date number two is up for debate. All I can tell you is, if someone had to evaluate me based on the contents of my bedroom, the outcome wouldn't be pretty.
Pride, Greed, Gluttony\nPerhaps most distressing among the current triumvirate of MTV programs centered on alarmingly dense youth is "My Super Sweet 16," in which monetarily privileged (and generally snobbish) teens are shown preparing for, and ultimately celebrating, their all-important sixteenth birthdays. Remember that time you threw a mega-fit when your parents hinted that you might not get that BMW M5 for your birthday? Me neither. How about when you and 200 of your closest high school pals packed downtown's hottest private dance club and ground the night away to the live sounds of today's most negligible rap artists? I sure don't. Then again, my parents were never multi-millionaires caving to my every whim. Unlike "Laguna" and "Room Raiders," which at least make moderate efforts to mask the insignificance of those involved, "Sweet 16" makes no bones about its stars being hedonistic narcissistic brats, and in doing so paints an entire sub-generation as such. The days when the most depraved thing on MTV was drug-addled Spring Breakers covered in whipped cream are clearly at an end. The teen marketing machine that took over MTV's music programming five years ago has totally overhauled their original entertainment programming at this point. \nMaybe I'm just bitter because now I'm older than most of the housemates on "The Real World: Austin," but I'm also old enough to remember past seasons when the housemates used to have a toehold on current culture and, through their diversity and interactions, grew as human beings, instead of just moping around in bed, getting crush-drunk, publicly sparring with intoxicated strangers outside of trendy nightclubs and ending up handcuffed and teary-eyed in the back of a squad car.\nThere may be no hope left for today's teens, especially when their network of choice portrays them as such vapid little mongrels. I wonder if each past generation has seen the subsequent generation in such frightening terms. Regardless, and despite the fact that I may be showing my age, I can't bear to watch any of these shows without longing for the days before Blackberry texting was the new IM and before the cast of "Laguna Beach" were surreal role models for teens nationwide.
