Knopfler described the song’s composition process in
a 1985 interview with Bill Flanagan, author of the book
Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock’s Great Songwriters (1986):
The lead character in ‘Money for Nothing’ is a guy who works in the hardware department in a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store.
I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real. It just went better with the song, it was more muscular. I actually used ‘little faggot,’ but there are a couple of good ‘motherfuckers’ in there. I wanted to do a second version that way but I never had time. I’d still love to be able to do it. Even if just the band had it, because it would be the real version. I mean that is the way people speak. I think people still get the general idea. You can use other words that will suggest the general feel.
It also has to do with the context in which a song’s received. If we walk into a hardware store and hear someone say, ‘look at that motherfucker’ it means nothing to us, but if you hear it in a pop song…
If you hear it in New York it means nothing. If you’re living in Tallahassee then maybe it’s a different thing. There is no way that I would expect people to receive all that in the spirit in which it was intended. They’d probably think I was just being vulgar.
https://genius.com/Dire-straits-money-for-nothing-lyrics