The genius of BuzzFeed was its intuition that millennials don’t particularly want to consume nostalgic content as much as we want to link it, share it and pin it. It’s the shareability of the old material that manages to mine a sense of community (Only ’90s Kids Will Remember _______) and identity (What ’90s ________ Are You?).

MTV Classic is all consumption, no participation. Its Facebook page is dominated by VH1 Classic loyalists complaining about the new lineup or that music released in the aughts isn’t “classic.” The videos — Biggie sipping Champagne on a speedboat, Britney gyrating in front of the lockers — may be reliable adolescent triggers for the under-35 set, but airing them on television is totally out of sync with how we want to rewind and revisit our pasts.

Image The cast of “Laguna Beach.” From left, in the back row: Stephen Colletti, Kristin Cavallari, Trey Phillips, Morgan Olsen, Christina Schuller and Lauren Conrad. In front, Lo Bosworth. Credit... Embry Rucker/MTV

Die-hard fans might opt to DVR “Wonder Showzen” and “Daria” instead of paying to watch them on iTunes or Hulu, but for the most part, the channel’s ’90s ear worms and throwback fashions are best packaged as linkable conversation starters, not cable video blocks. Post-YouTube, the experience of even watching an entire music video all the way through — much less 30 in a row, cut up by commercials — feels interminable. I kept wanting to X out the Nelly video and call up a Missy Elliott track. I did it on YouTube instead.

Meanwhile, plenty of pop culture embedded in early MTV has not aged so well. While many of the music videos called up from the ’90s and aughts feature artists of color, the channel’s nonmusical programming is not so diverse. MTV Classic is a reminder that the MTV of my childhood starred white people: Carson Daly, Mr. Kutcher, Johnny Knoxville, Butt-Head, Beavis, the cast of “Laguna Beach.” Notable exceptions include MTV Classic’s resurrection of the Run-DMC reality series “Run’s House,” and “Pimp My Ride,” hosted by Xzibit.