High School Experience

Lets be blunt -- MTV writers want entrants to talk about this topic because a large part of their viewing demographic is in high school.

Of course, MTV also wants people to talk about being rich when a large part of their viewing demographic is poor and middle class, so they can't be accused of taking too many cues from the actual life circumstances of their viewership.

The basic problem with being in high school is that you're in this artificial bubble -- where society says that you are too dumb to work and too dumb to vote, but you're old enough to be charged as an adult if you commit heinous crimes. Why can't society make up its mind?

It is difficult for this situation not to suck. I don't have anything positive to say about my high-school experience or being high-school age.

There's a popular-culture myth, one that MTV has helped perpetuate over the years, that high-school is supposed to be a honeymoon. It's supposed to be a paradise of wardrobe experimentation, dating, proms, and relationship drama. This gets wrongly represented as the "normal" high school experience. In truth, it is only the experience of a few people whose parents have money and whose success is predetermined.

For most people, high school sucks. Being young sucks. They have zits. They don't look like a supermodel. Their single parent can't pay the mortgage or the rent. They grew up in five different neighborhoods. They have to plan carefully to be able to attend Community College. There isn't any honeymoon or fantasy to these years.

This is the life-reality that parties like MTV and Paris Hilton need to confront in planning the television business into the future. Because when people realize that posters on Youtube are more like themselves, they stop watching TV.

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