by liberal japonicus
I often see videos with titles like 'Why young people can't communicate', which I usually find to be someone from my generation making pronouncements about younger people and explaining why everything has gone to shit. I normally don't click on the titles but when this Ezra Klein interview titled How The Attention Economy is Devouring Gen Z, and I didn't have anything else to listen to on the treadmill, I went for it. And I have to say, this one seems different, not only from all of those clickbaity videos, but also from Klein's usual interviews.
All of the other Klein pieces I have seen have Klein talking to people who are, for lack of a better word, of his 'tribe'. They share a common set of referents, their communication flows back and forth, they discuss things and I follow like I'm listening to two people I know talk about our circle of friends. This interview, with Kyla Scanlon, about attention and Gen-Z is different. As a comparison, if you haven't listened to Klein, and you want to compare, first listen to this either these two Klein interviews of Chris Hayes, Democrats are Losing the War for Attention. Badly. or Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics (as an aside, it is interesting that videos actually have different 'titles' on the screen, which are Inside Trump's Attentional Vortex and Attention beats Money)
If you've not listened to Klein, the format is Klein giving an earnest lead in with a voice that has gotten lower and added more vocal fry over the time I have listened to him, followed by him and his guest going back and forth. I feel like he's simultaneously channelling and extending the whole Walter Cronkite model, understanding that you can't have a newscaster who accepted to be completely transparent, but not going too far out on a limb to flood the zone with his own opinions.
This interview seems completely different to me. This is not to say it is bad, but the way the two interact is unlike any of Klein's other interviews. I don't know if I can make a comparison but Klein's standard interview is like a tennis match at Wimbledon. Shots are hit, volleys are returned, the rhythm is totally understandable. For this one, it is as if they are playing a game that is similar to tennis, but the ball doesn't bounce, and it goes plop in the middle of the court. Yet somehow, the point is still going.
Scanlon has a lot of interesting ideas and insights, and Klein has done his homework, and there are tons of things that are worth following up on, so I'm not knocking the utility of the interview, it was just that the pair's interactions were very different from what I was used to, which seemed to indicate something to me.
Useful as a comparison is this Hasan Minhaj video interview where he is talking to General Stanley McChrystal. Minhaj could be described as Klein on crystal meth, the culture referents fly fast and thick, so him talking to McChrystal can be thought of as similar generational gap to Klein talking to Scanlon, but I know how both generations communicate.
Minhaj's format is obviously different (after McChrystal says he was unaware of prison conditions, it cuts Minhaj speaking to camera reviewing why that claim is misleading/false before cutting back to the interview) so the comparison is rough but there are two things that I draw attention to. At the opening of the video, the hook that is pulled out of the video to encourage people to keep watching is Minhaj introducing an Onion piece to McChrystal and if you watch to the end, at 35:55, there is a post interview chat, where McChrystal is talking to Minhaj and it starts off with McChrystal saying 'I know you aren't a young man, but you are younger...' and then gives a spiel about not being too 'binary' in thinking about the division between war and diplomacy. It would be after this spiel that someone in Minhaj's place might reply 'ok, boomer', but that sort of riposte is something that Minhaj reserves for people who are in on the joke. This is how I understand that people on opposite canyonsides communicate. Klein-Scanlon seems different.
At the end of every Klein interview, he asks the guest to recommend 3 books and Scanlon's three, well, I'll let you check them out, though I hope you won't skip to the end and then assume you know what the interview was about. You (and any discussion) wouldn't be well served by that.
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