Riff relevance, a demographic question.

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Hey guys, one of the things that makes me love MST3K aside from the bad movies I adore, is that in listening to the riffs, I feel I could've grown up with these guys. Now, I'm 53, so outside of the obscure Minnesota/Wisconsin riffs, I get about 90 percent of the references.

So I'm wondering, do younger fans still get full enjoyment out of the shows not knowing what the riffs mean? Do they look up what certain riffs mean? Does MST3k still attract new younger fans? Any thoughts?

[Afgncaap5]

I think that's part of the appeal. MST3K included small town quirks that they knew, political trends, religious stories, Mario Bros. games, Aristophanes "The Frogs", lousy TV networks, Three Stooges shorts, and fart jokes. The jokes also came at a pretty constant and reliable speed (outside of Season K and some of Season 1). There are so many references to things, that I think it still has the potential to attract younger viewers, and will retain that for a while yet.

As for me, though, I also live in the Midwest (Northwest Indiana), and am not quite thirty, so I may be biased. ;-)

[Torgo]

I get none of it. Why are those rude people talking through the movie?

[Triple_sSs]

I'm in my mid-20s so I guess I could count as a younger viewer?

Sure I admit there's quite a bit of riffs that tend to go over my head, but for every one I don't get there's another one I usually do. And sometimes I might not know exactly what they could be referencing in a riff, but I'll somewhat understand the joke behind it.

[RedTom]

I'm on the wrong side of 20 now, and I get a bunch of them, a lot of that having to do with my Dad and his shows, movies, and music that he enjoyed. Of course there are still a bunch that I don't really understand, but the show is still my very favorite of all time.

[milospinstripe]

That is one of the things that I love about MST, I can watch an episode that I've already seen years prior, and laugh at all the jokes I've either forgotten about or just didn't understand/get the reference the first time around. 

For instance, I started watching Dragnet (the B&W one, not the 1970s one) on netflix, and literally a couple days later I saw an MST episode with a man banging a hammer on something and Crow kept saying, "Mark VII productions, Mark VII productions." 

Another selling point is the length of episodes and the long run the show had in general. I can watch part of an episode and not finish it, and go back and finish it later, possibly much later on. This is the only show that I watched as a young child that I still watch today. The only other show I watched as a kid and can still watch today is Seinfeld, but I've seen every episodes many times over so its not the same. 


There are still fresh MST episodes that I've never seen and I have been watching since 93/94.