I spent part of Friday night watching MTV. Seriously. This post is not an admission of guilt (or another celebration of guilty pleasures). Actually, I wanted to take a moment of your internet-browsing time to talk about how MTV is changing the world of youth culture.

Brief Personal Background Information
There are two things about me that will relate to my connection to MTV’s culture today:
1. I watched MTV as a teenager and have occasionally perused select current shows as I have written about before. America’s Best Dance Crew is rather entertaining. I warmly recall the days of actual music videos regularly played for most of the time on the channel.
2. When it comes to social networking, I’ve only begrudgingly taken obligatory steps toward participation. Out of pedagogical duty, I created a MySpace account. Out of pedagogical experimentation, I created a twitter account. Out of a necessity to not lose anything else, I created a del.icio.us account. Out of the interest of offering occasional pictures to a rather text heavy blog (ahem), I created a flickr account. YouTube, ditto. Of these accounts, the amount of actual social networking I do is practically nil. I only respond to MySpace comments from my students and everything else is pretty much used as informational depositories.

Okay, Now That That’s Out Of The Way
Friday night, I was privy to see the latest MTV debut: FNMTV. From my non-scientific investigation, the show’s title is short for Friday Night MTV. And, unlike other shows, this one is about music. There are music videos, musical performances, and even a musician as host.

The show is another ho-hum live audience production. A bunch of bands play, a few celebrities introduce new videos and other celebrities show snippets of classic videos from yesteryear. The format’s not all that exciting.

What is exciting is the way the show engages its audience. Taking the standard format of a music show, MTV has integrated youth participation at every step of the way. A trio of commentators looks at various live polls and comments on the FNMTV site and reports trends and noteworthy suggestions being made. Do you have something important to say about that new Snoop video? Your comment just might be scrolling across the screen while the video is playing. And what about that new Ting Tings video? If you liked that dance, go ahead and record your own version and in all likelihood MTV will play that too. You like the lyrics to another song? Sing along and you can karaoke for the world.

If you aren’t prepared (or if you’re under the age of 18), you’ll probably be overwhelmed by the show. The screen is filled with the kinds of information that only a hyperactive multitasker hopped up on Red Bull could follow: live audience shots, a music video, scrolling text, and webcam shots all fill the screen simultaneously. Every faucet of the show demands not only for audience members to watch but to plug in and participate. Currently, the site for FNMTV offers four different ways for visitors to participate. I expect this number to, at the least, remain consistent, and in all likelihood increase.

And Why Should I Care?
This is a huge, huge shift in how our culture interacts with media. Unlike the lazy bums of my generation, these aren’t your average couch potatoes today. Today’s kids are looking for ways to be a part of the media they are interested in. And no, I’m not at all the only person talking about this. In particular, I point you to a rather excellent lecture by Lawrence Lessig, if you have the time to watch it. He points out the Soulja Boy phenomenon (short story being that rapper Soulja Boy created a YouTube video explaining the steps to a dance he created, millions of people watched the video and, subsequently, millions of people created their own versions of the Soulja Boy dance).

I don’t bring up this FNMTV phenomenon to nod along with a bunch of scholars that flood my RSS reader. Instead, I do this because this isn’t a trend being discussed within the educational community that I am a part of. My students are a part of this FNMTV audience. They are engaging in these practices. As educators, we are not talking about them. And what about that whole participation gap thing I’ve been terrified of? Yeah, that’s only widening.

With an insurmountably growing schedule, I don’t feasibly see myself expanding my social networking practices. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t study my students’ usages of these skills. And it doesn’t mean that you can’t either.