Thousands Duped by Corporate Whore
by 
Ted Bridges

     Thousands of suckers shivered in the freezing rain all night on April 15
because they wrongly believed they stood a chance of becoming MTV VJs. They
gathered to take part in a contest that consisted of MTV traveling across
the country and supposedly holding VJ auditions in three locations--San
Francisco, St. Louis, and (weirdly) at a railroad museum in the backwater
mining town of Spencer, NC (about 45 minutes northeast of Davidson). I was
only at the auditions to support my girlfriend who was lured into
auditioning.
     MTV, a money-hungry subsidiary of the Viacom Corporation, was not hosting
 a real "cattle call." Any third-rate con artist could see that the whole thing
was an advertising stunt in which MTV used the gullible hopefuls as free
extras in yet another MTV game show, which serves as little more than an
hour long MTV commercial anyway. MTV also got some free press coverage out
of the deal.
     MTV's advertising stunt produced the worst example of human misery since 
the Bosnian War. The auditions were supposed to start at 7 a.m. I got there at
3:30 a.m thinking there would be no one at the audition location. To my
shock and horror, there were already well over a thousand MTV VJ wannabees
waiting for their big break. It looked like freaking Lollapalooza. To make a
long story short, the next 12 hours of life sucked. To start with, this
wonderful event just happened to coincide with the most freakish cold blast
NC had ever seen. It was freezing. It even snowed at one point. The rest of
the time it was raining. When I found my girlfriend, she was exhibiting the
early signs of hypothermia. She had been there since 11 p.m. She was # 400
something on line. I said anything I could to try to get her to leave. I
told her it was rigged. I told her MTV sucked. But she was determined. I
tried to dull my senses by drinking a six pack, but it was so cold that I
couldn't maintain my buzz. At one point a riot broke out. Everybody in the
last half of the line suddenly freaked out and bum rushed the front in one
huge mob. Fights broke out. The police arrived with drug sniffing dogs. By
the time the unruly mob had been reformed into something resembling a line,
my girlfriend found herself in the 700s. Finally at about 7 a.m. MTV started
letting the line move. It took forever. My girlfriend didn't get to audition
until noon. At a certain point in the line MTV only let those people
actually auditioning go on, so I went back to the car, cranked up the heat,
and began the hard work of drinking heavily. Unfortunately, even that fun
was impeded upon when two roving cops noticed my swigs off the 40-ounce and
proceeded to frisk me, search the vehicle, empty the car of its used liquor
containers, pour my beer in the grass, and say things like "do you realize
you could go to jail for this?"
     Instead of trying to arrest me, the cops should have arrested MTV for being
a corporate greed machine that peddles crap music like Backstreet Boys to
viewers who don't know any better. Once their viewers are under their
control, MTV puts them through physical torture so that they can soak up a
couple of extra advertising bucks from companies that sell zit cream