Why does one feel bad about the shutting down of a TV channel you haven’t seen in years? Yet, that is exactly the sentiment many people, especially those of a certain vintage, felt, when it was announced that Music Television, better known for its acronym MTV, would be shutting down its music channels at the stroke of the midnight hour on New Year’s Eve 2026.
It’s another matter altogether that MTV made the pivot to reality shows a long time ago, faced with the relentless onslaught of internet entertainment in general, and music videos switching to YouTube, in particular. But, for many, especially those who grew up in the 1980s, 90s and even the 2000s, MTV was so much more than a go-to to catch the latest videos. It was a cultural lodestar to the scintillating pop culture glory days of the period, right from the eighties down to the new millennium. As a wry social media reel put it, MTV veejays were the original influencers, holding forth on anything from music to clothes to trends to even ‘cool mannerisms’. And the channel itself was an intrinsic part of growing up for any of those Gen X to Millennials.
Science tells us that nostalgia hits hard because they appeal to the two feel-good hormones in our body — dopamine as well as oxytocin. If that is the case, growing up is also a steady stream of ‘nostu’ kicks, as many of the fond recollections from a younger age get consumed by the onslaught of time.
The eve of 2026, as we know it, is already consuming quite a few of the steady presence of our younger days. For example, Denmark has announced that it will put to pasture its postal service on New Year’s eve, and retune the government postal department into a parcel and courier service. In India, it may still take time since inland letters and post cards still survive as a vestige of the welfare state, though their usage has come down dramatically in the age of cheap data and video calls. Of course, registered post was discontinued three months ago, while telegram itself went extinct way back in 2013.
Often, the sense of loss is very much the perception of our lives the way they were, or as they often say about nostalgia, the way we look at our past self and past days with rose-tinted lenses. There is a certain sense of comfort and reassurance in harking back to the glory days, even if the reality may just have been a wee bit more hard-hitting.
Science today has an explanation for this: nostalgia triggers good feelings, activating the hippocampus and amygdala part of the brain. More importantly, in an era of constant stress, uncertainty and anxiety, it can be the right form of escape to a time, or at least a feeling of, ‘when life was so much better!’
If you, like most of us, are given to bouts of nostalgia, then there is a lot to induce that bittersweet ache for: MTV is gone, at least in the form you remember it (MTV India, which pivoted to reality shows several years ago, has been at pains to declare that it is not shutting down and it is only its music channels in the west that are facing the axe), and the post is surely winding down, even if the bells are tolling in faraway Denmark. Then there is Windows 10 operating system, whoever’s used it, which Microsoft has said it will stop software updates for it), as well as 3G networks (UK is shutting down the last of it).
Tech, by virtue of its very nature, has a whole lot of things which is going out, or on the way out: LCD TVs, for example, except as hand-me-downs, while some say it is a matter of time before physical credit cards and even passwords will be obsolete.
But hey, not all that is bygone remain bygone forever — vinyl records, the way music was enjoyed for much of the 20th century, and even cassettes, have made a comeback recent years, while hit shows like ‘Stranger Things’ have brought back to vogue, and to the top of the charts, half-forgotten pop hits from four decades ago. Dhurandhar has turned into an internet dance challenge, a Pakistani hit song from the mid-eighties, Hawa Hawa, thanks to the vagaries of online virality. So, who knows, your favourite piece of memory might still have another moment in the sun!
