When I randomly checked in on the station one weekend in August, the show ran for more than 36 hours uninterrupted from Saturday morning through 3 a.
Ridiculousness first premiered in and has shot 17 seasons to date, and Dyrdek has been a fixture on MTV for 14 years and counting. Despite being a near-omnipresent fixture on TV, Dyrdek is surprisingly elusive; several attempts to contact him—through his agent, his production company, his website, ViacomCBS, and personal intermediaries—were unsuccessful.
So why has this particular time in TV history—both for the content-consuming nation and the network—brought about this latest programming metamorphosis at MTV? The mutually beneficial union between the network, the show, and the former current? Have you seen Ridiculousness? I had not seen Ridiculousness. Everyone knows that. Then I immediately and frantically took to Google to learn about this thing I thought I was supposed to know about. This is how I operate roughly half the time, not knowing about the thing that everyone else at our company knows about, because I work at The Ringer with a bunch of very lovely but young humans who are only slightly older than zygotes and who are plugged into every possible part of modern pop culture before anyone else even knows it exists.
Thus, I resolved to binge the show and throw myself headlong into one of the many marathons forever running on MTV these days. I would strap myself to the couch and not get up until all the Ridiculousness had been consumed. But it did quickly feel familiar and formulaic. Video submissions of any kind are not accepted by MTV or the producers. For laughs. The show pretty faithfully sticks to a script: Rob—joined by friends Chanel last name: West Coast and Sterling—reviews various video clips and laughs along at the expense of others.
In the episodes I screened, there were trust falls gone wrong, soap box derby collisions, a toddler smacking a slightly bigger child in the face, and endless face-plants into walls, rocks, and the side of a pool. There was also no shortage of deeply questionable material. In one segment, Rob and the gang make fun of a man with a mustache and thick black eyebrows who gets assaulted by a camel. In another, they guess whether the videos came from Florida or Georgia after rolling clips of a woman shooting a gauge shotgun in the woods and a man sharing a dip with his girlfriend, which gives Rob the opportunity to try out his Southern accent.
It needs polishing. I kept watching. For journalism. What followed was more of the same: diving board mishaps, double Dutch disasters, and gnarly bicycle crashes. Kelly in New Netflix Special. How To Watch on Peacock. Yes, low-budget clip show Ridiculousness has continued to gradually swallow up the channel since premiering in the month of its thirtieth anniversary.
You have to take your hat off to Dyrdek, whose Superjacket Productions company has transformed a one-note concept into the kind of ever-expanding universe that Marvel would be proud of. Deliciousness , a clip show based on disasters in the kitchen hosted by Tiffani Thiessen, debuted three years later. But when you think about it, very little goes into filming Ridiculousness.
Ridiculousness essentially markets itself, too. The content is easily shareable, making it instantly more relatable. In a world where YouTube and TikTok reign supreme , the bite-size content featured on Ridiculousness will only continue to maintain mass appeal. Apparently, consumers are willing to watch repeat programming with their memories fully intact. Now, reader, I know what you may be thinking -- who are these people that are sitting in front of their television, enjoying Dyrdek and co-hosts Steelo Brim and Chanel West Coast laugh at people doing dumb things on the internet for days on end?
While it is possible that Giles' earlier assertions of universal appeal are true, prior reports have illustrated the show's popularity amid a pretty niche audience. Don't get me wrong -- everyone deserves to have television programs that resonate with them, making them smile and laugh in these particularly trying times.
However, MTV aspires to be "the world's premier youth entertainment brand, the cultural home of the millennial generation and a pioneer in creating innovative content for young people," according to their page on ViacomCBS's website , and airing a show that primarily appeals to individuals living in rural areas, without broader engagement, may not be the smartest way to achieve that.
Hell, rebooting 16 and Pregnant , or relying on Catfish may not be the way forward, but let's face it, at this point, almost any of those options sound significantly more enticing than watching Dyrdek enact his best Daniel Tosh impression on a seemingly endless loop. So ViacomCBS execs, if you're reading this, the people have spoken. Dennis Ritchie might not be a famous name, but he is responsible for major technological innovations.
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