Can MTV interest you in a cruise of sorts? It would like to take you on the chaotic, excessive waters of vaporwave-seapunk for its VMA extravaganza. Climb aboard? Oh, it won’t require any attention span at all. All you need is a love of gifs and pizza.

MTV’s first VMAs (arguably its most relevant cultural product) since it announced a rebrand a few months ago is this Sunday. Its new look was described at the time as seapunk, a microculture of nostalgia for Tumblr-curated web 1.0 glitchiness. Its seapunk/vaporwave relaunch came with an updated war cry: “I am my MTV," reminiscent of the classic “I want my MTV," with a little DGAF typo. It’s funny to imagine a world where WANTING isn’t HAVING. But BEING…sure! That's a valid aspiration now.

In keeping with this, MTV has empowered its viewers with its VMAs promos. The enticements are online, and the ones on television look distinctly Internet-y. Each VMA ad foregrounds host and human emoji Miley Cyrus. In the clips, Miley is steadily spinning or strutting or tongue-dancing in front of a green screen for the length of an average gif. MTV invited its viewers to fill in the background. All creations are welcomed onto MTV's special VMA website; the URL slug is /vma/2015/create. Cyrus is the pirate captain on this journey, but the viewer chooses the condition of the seas.

It’s like MTV threw up its arms and said, Who knows what the fuck microculture you’re going to be into. You guys already make what you like and put it on the Internet. MTV will just add Miley’s pre-approval. MTV has handed over creative control in a way that seems both brave and relaxed. It knows it's not the arbiter anymore. Here, we set up a playground for you; do whatever you want to. You guys know what you like best!

Miley’s the perfect leader for this movement. She’s even wearing green-screen pasties! If a green-screen pasty isn’t the most generous gesture to other people’s creative impulses, what is?

In one green-screen scene, she’s dressed in a space suit as our intrepid traveler into the unknown (cosmos; meme culture). In another setup, she’s riding a kitten, cheering with her hands above her head. For what? Oh, just for living! Just exuberance about existing. The next installation is her riding this kitten over a field of rainbows exploding with fireworks. The whole thing is gilding the lily. But gilding to the user’s specifications.

And what have viewers and MTV embedded her with? Rainbow sprinkles! Rainbows! Neon avocados! Thousands of Miley heads! A crop of hamburgers and dolphins spitting other dolphins from their mouths and alien faces as far as the eye can see.

This look is all horror vacui in gif loop. It's the old fear of blank space, now doubled by the modern fear of stillness. After all, the complete and true blankness of the green screen is the contemporary definition of emptiness, emptiness of a whole aesthetic. This duality is the most crucial: The green screen is everything and nothing and also whatever you want it to be. I am my MTV!