Jesus Christ, there's a lot of Ridiculousness happening on MTV

Let’s be clear upfront: It’s not new to notice that MTV runs a lot of Ridiculousness. Since the network began front, back, and side-loading the ultra-cheap reality show—in which network mascot Rob Dyrdek and friends Sterling Brim and Chanel West Coast yell while watching upsetting internet videos, for 616 episodes now and counting—onto its schedule over the last few years, there have been a number of pieces about it hitting a sort of saturation tipping point. Variety pointed out the trend back in May of 2020; The Ringer and MediaPost did deeper dives in the fall. And to be clear, this isn’t just “Why doesn’t MTV run videos anymore?!” hysterics; this is people trying to figure out why a network would regularly give over more than half its programming time to a single show—and usually coming away with the same answer, i.e., that it’s cheap, they’ve got a lot of it, and it appeals to the same lizard brain parts of everybody, regardless of age or other demographics.