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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Jay Caspian Kang is back with us, staff writer for The New Yorker, an Emmy-nominated documentary film director, and author of the book, The Loneliest Americans, his book about Asian American politics, identity, and culture. In his New Yorker column last week, Jay picked up on a classic book of media criticism from the 1980s called Amusing Ourselves to Death, to say that now we're in an era of Arguing Ourselves to Death as a point of media criticism. We're going to play an old clip of the Amusing Ourselves to Death, author, Neil Postman, to set this up. It's really interesting, I think, but first, let's say hello to Jay. Thanks for coming on for this and welcome back to WNYC.

Jay Caspian Kang: All right, thank you. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Would you like to get people who don't know the late Neil Postman's work, a little prelude? What was the premise of Amusing Ourselves to Death, his book that came out in the 80s that was on your mind here in 2024?

Jay Caspian Kang: Right. In 1984, I guess, to celebrate or discuss the book by George Orwell, Postman and a bunch of other academics and thinkers were invited to reflect on what had happened, and what totalitarianism or whatever would look like. What Postman argued was that Orwell, in fact, had not been correct. Orwell had envisioned this idea of Big Brother reaching out and controlling everything, and that censorship would be the big problem.

What Postman thought was that actually Aldous Huxley, who was a contemporary of Orwell, was the one that was right. What he had argued was that we are not really going to be censored and controlled, but what's going to happen is that dissent and ideas and creativity, all of that, is going to be stifled because we're going to be inundated with trivia and trivialities, and I guess things drivel for lack of a better word.

That was Postman's main argument. The way in which he processed that is through looking at television in 1985 and arguing that, basically, television had stripped America of its ability to think, to process things, and to think about things in terms of anything other than what appealed to television's mandates or television's dictates.

Brian Lehrer: What was on Huxley's mind in his heyday? I don't think this is in your article. I don't know if you can go this deep, but Aldous Huxley wrote before the heyday of television, so I'm curious, and I don't actually know the answer. What kind of trivialization of discourse did he have in mind back when we wrote if you know?

Jay Caspian Kang: I think that basically, one of the things that we learned about this is that it's a recurring complaint. I think that when I was writing this piece there were a few times where I could hear younger people saying, "Okay, boomer."

[chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: You're not even a boomer.

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes, exactly. Well, you're barely Gen X. For example, one of the things that Postman lays out in the book is that when the telegraph was created, that newspapers suddenly became much more interested in trivia and specifically in murders and lead crimes because they could get information from, for example, Dallas, Texas if they're a newspaper in Chicago, they could get it almost instantly, they could get updates on it, and that this led to a trivialization of what had come before and that people were panicked about that, because they felt like, "Oh, the world is once again at a wash and trivia."

I think that this is something that happens over and over again, as mediums and as information technology changes, that there's always a panic about whether or not the new thing is making us all dumber. The question that I had and which I think Postman had about television is, "Okay, but what if this time it's different?"

Brian Lehrer: Right. Here's an excerpt folks from a speech that Neil Postman, NYU professor at the time, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death gave in 1997 at the College of DuPage in Illinois, on the premise of television degrading our national political conversation in pursuit of entertainment or amusement. This runs two minutes.

Neil Postman: Think of how television has changed the meaning of the phrase "political debate." Would Abraham Lincoln or Stephen Douglas recognize such a televised event as a debate? When Lincoln and Douglas were going through Illinois, in their debates, they had more than seven, by the way. Typically, Lincoln would speak for three hours. Douglas would speak for three hours, and then Lincoln would have one hour for rebuttal.

Then when they went to Ottawa, or Springfield, or the next town, then Douglas would speak for three hours, Lincoln for three hours, and then Douglas would have an hour for rebuttal. Here's a debate in America today. Barbara Walters, or some mistress of ceremony says, "The question is, this is for you, President Bush. What is the problem in the Middle East, and how can it be solved? You will have two minutes to answer-

[laughter]

Neil Postman: -after which Governor Clinton will have one minute to reply." Actually, I think it's a form of mental illness because-

[laughter]

Neil Postman: -one would expect, wouldn't one, that President Bush or Governor Clinton would object and say, "How dare you, is such a question, and give one of us two minutes to answer and the other one minute to rebut. We're running for the most serious political office perhaps in the world. What is wrong with you?"

Brian Lehrer: The late Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, speaking in 1997. Jay Caspian Kang from The New Yorker who wrote an article called Arguing Ourselves to Death is our guest. Jay, did that particular anecdote or comparison?

Jay Caspian Kang: No, I hadn't heard it before, but yes, [chuckles] it was quite illuminating. I think he himself was quite a good speaker.

Brian Lehrer: One thing we learned is that, Oh, my God, we're still talking about the Middle East as a central issue that we have yet to solve. That's the one he cited in that 1997 speech as an example, and here we still are. I also had a reaction to that, like, who really went to debates that were seven hours long? A three-hour speech, a three-hour rebuttal, and a one-hour rebuttal? Was it popular?

I don't expect you to know the answer, but I don't know the answer. Was it some kind of mass entertainment in its own way event at that time, before there was any electronic media? Men who want to hear themselves talk for three hours, maybe that's a problem. The contrast is interesting. Maybe somewhere between this and that, but seriously, that made his point, right?

Jay Caspian Kang: Right. I cannot imagine that there is a time in human history where six, seven hours, three, three, and one would be all that great to listen to, for anybody. I will say that, I think that one of the criticisms of Postman and I don't want to ascribe it to anybody, I'll just describe it to myself. This was my criticism of Postman, which is that he does seem nostalgic in a way that sometimes feels untethered to an actual reason to be nostalgic about.

What he doesn't provide in that clip, and I'm talking to somebody who generally agrees with what he says is, why would the seven-hour version of this be better than the five-minute version within-- re there some virtues to being succinct? Aren't there some ways in which we should be communicating things in a clear way? He feels that way, because I think the thesis of this book is basically Amusing Ourselves to Death is that print and the written word was superior to what's happening on television.

It allowed people to distill things into ideas, and to have some sort of thought process that showed up on the page, whereas television is much more about how you work. The warmth with which he speak, or the talent that you have for being on camera. Postman felt like that was a degradation in terms of the ideas and the actual spirit, ethics, morality of the politics that were put forward. I don't know if I necessarily agreed with that in all times, because there's certainly ways in which journalists can configure things and make them more salacious than they are, and that those things might do better. Each medium has its own inputs and its own ways of entertaining the public, and generally, the more entertaining thing wins out regardless of the medium. I don't know if it means that the seven-hour thing is necessarily always going to be better than the version that he had.

Brian Lehrer: Nevertheless, he made his point, but let's move on from Neil Postman, and Amusing Ourselves to Death in what we might call the television era or pre-internet television era, to your new article in The New Yorker, Arguing Ourselves to Death, want to lay it out?

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes. Basically, I'm agreeing with Postman that the medium itself really needs to be thought of. I think that we have this illusion, especially those of us in the media that there are ways in which we can control social media, that we can control the internet. You find that in a lot of the campaigns against misinformation, disinformation, for example. We seem to believe that, "Look, if we could just put in good things into the world, if we could just have Twitter always be the right information, if we could use Facebook and Instagram and only put out images that the world would be better informed."

Now, I think that that is true to some extent, but I think it ignores the fact and the structure of the internet and the history of the internet and the history of social media, in which these things almost inevitably are going to point to or put out some sort of argument between two people over and over and over again, that that argument is inherently going to polarize the people who are witnessing it, because they're going to have to take a side.

You see that the structure of the internet from the very beginning, the days of Usenet groups and bulletin boards, I'm talking about like 1970s, 1980s, the defining characteristic of them was always these flame wars, people getting into these huge arguments and performative arguments, and then people watching it and being titillated by it, and then typing in their own contributions to that argument. I don't think that we have had any deviation from that type of structure of the internet ever since.

That's why the most popular social media platforms are the ones that do promote these types of arguments, that they do incentivize a type of engagement through argument. I think that, at this point, we can look at the history of the internet and say, "Well, this is baked into what the internet is, and that we should think about the internet and polarization through that lens."

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take a few phone calls for Jay Caspian Kang. Are we arguing ourselves to death, is that the story of our social media age, or even the internet age, writ more or large, or anything you want to ask him? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text.

Part of what you're seeing as the so-called ideology of the internet, is the decline of the mods, meaning the moderators, which you acknowledge would include you and your employer, The New Yorker, and I guess I would say that would have to include me, my job is pretty much literally moderator. Is that part of the overall decline of trust in institutions that Trump exploited to get elected? Would you put it in their context?

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes, for sure. If you look at any internet forum, and I run as well and it's basically what happens. I will say the one I run actually has been quite absent of this, thankfully, but if you look at Reddit, if you look at any of these other older groups, what happens inevitably is that people start fighting, and then when they fight, they start to look for who is to blame for all the discord and all the rancor within that community.

Eventually, they say, "Okay, it's the person who is moderating this community. That is the problem." Then everybody gangs up and says, "We have to depose the moderator, and if we get rid of the moderator, then everything will be better." I think that that is basically the spirit of politics right now. That is why there's so much focus, for example, on what the media does, specifically a place like The New York Times.

If you think about the way in which a lot of politics are processed these days, if you watch somebody like Tucker Carlson, if you watch his show on Twitter, half of it is just him talking about New York Times headlines. It's him talking about whatever agenda he believes The New York Times has. I think that The New York Times and other mainstream media and also mainstream politicians have taken up this place where it feels like they're constantly trying to subvert the will of the people, but what is interesting to me always is that whatever the will of the people is, is never really clearly stated or is very rarely clearly stated.

What you have instead is the same thing that you have in almost every single online community, every online message board, which is that people are just banding together to yell at the moderators because that's what you do. If you think about that, in terms of the modern politics, I think you see a lot of it. You see Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign, for example, which was a lot of like, "We must go after the elites, or we have to go against the people who control our thoughts or the people who control the flow of information."

What's always interesting is that these people can always exclude themselves from that. In fact, Ramaswamy, who went to Harvard and Yale Law School can see himself as being outside of the great elite structures. You just have to say you're not and then you're not.

Brian Lehrer: Trump too.

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes, and Donald Trump is one example of that.

Brian Lehrer: There is an upside to current media discourse or interaction as you lay it out. I don't know how much we can get into the opening anecdote that you tell, but listeners may be surprised to know, it's about a place where you go surfing, that you think got ruined, the vibe there got ruined by the culture of arguing on the internet, but it also got improved a little bit.

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes. I think that one of the things that the internet always promises is democratization, that different types of people can participate in something. Generally, that ends up being true, but not always true. I will say that within the surf world, the explosion of surf content, specifically for women, has really made it so that a lot more women surf. Now, the explosion of surf content of all the other types has basically made surfing terrible and more argumentative and nasty than it's ever been.

I guess the thing that you say is that maybe the democratization is why a lot of us are fighting, but the democratization is still a democratization. It still happens. The one nice thing about it in Northern California surfing, where I live is that there's just a lot more different types of people in the water than there were before. Before it was a lot of almost survivalist types, [chuckles] now it's a lot of different types of people. That part is good.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, I never expected to be sitting here in March of 2024 fact-checking Neil Postman, but a few people wrote in and we just looked it up and confirmed it that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were not seven hours, they were three hours. That, of course, is much more palatable. I could imagine masses of people flocking to a three-hour debate. The format was, as we're seeing it, 60 minutes for the first person, followed by 90 minutes for the second person, followed by a final 30 minutes for the first speaker coming back.

Since we took his story, in that clip, unquestioningly, I'm glad some listeners were out there to correct it for our eyes, and I guess we have to correct it for the audience since we put it out there. Unquestioned, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were three hours as opposed to presidential debates on television being two minutes to solve the Middle East, followed by a one-minute response. That's a little more palatable, right Jay?

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes, that's like a Joe Rogan podcast, someone who works three hours long. At least there's a population that can still sit through that.

Brian Lehrer: Jay Caspian Kang's article in The New Yorker, Arguing Ourselves to Death. Naseel in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Naseel.

Naseel: Hello. I'm calling to see if there's a distinction in the speaker's mind about debates versus arguments. I think that if you're going to have any type of helpful exchange between candidates for any office, you have to have a debate. You can't have a situation where people yell at each other, shame each other, lie, and they get away with it. How can we have an actual debate based on real issues, facts, and people's proposed ideas on how to make things in the country better?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Jay, solve it.

Jay Caspian Kang: I think that there's some movement toward that. I was glib about the idea of the three-hour podcast, but there are a lot of podcasts right now in places in the digital space where people really do talk respectfully to one another for long periods of time. Some of these are bad and some of them are good, but I think that there is finally, I think, that basically, one of the good things about the internet is that at some point, if there's a demand for some content, it's very easy to make it. I think that there's some movement towards that. Now, is that how our politicians right now are engaging with things? I don't think so. I think that Postman is right about the move that politicians are making.

I actually think it's been accelerated. During the last election cycle, I noticed that the debates were basically just platformed so that the candidates could say things that could get clipped and put on social media. I found that to be so fascinating. It was almost like that social media content generation machine that the debates. I think that's actually for the Republican primaries that we saw, that was even more accelerated.

There are certain candidates that were clearly just trying to get a 42nd clip on Instagram or something like that, that would go viral. I think our politicians don't have the appetite for it, but I do think that the population at large has an appetite for it and that they're starting to create content that reflects that.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Backing up your point about long-form listener writes, "Legacy News Media is on its way out. Long-form discussions are extremely popular and replacing the old-school format." I think that's actually good for me.

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes. I was going to say, I was like, "Where do you fit in there?" I think you're on the long-form side there.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Jay Caspian Kang: I just think that's true, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener writes, "Can you, please, distinguish between the internet versus social media? They're not the same thing, but many people are wrongly using the terms interchangeably. Social media platforms are much more the source of this kind of arguing problem."

Jay Caspian Kang: I don't think that that's necessarily true, because I think that it just depends on how you define social media. I am just old enough to have been around for bulletin boards and for muds and for the start of what was the networked internet where people would talk to each other. When I was in high school, when I was in early days of college, every single bulletin board would devolve into this type of-- the same exact behavior.

That was before social media. I think social media has its own incentives and it has a different version of the same problem, but in the end, it's the same problem. I think it is created by hyper-connectivity and basically, the structure of the way these arguments are laid out one after the other.

Brian Lehrer: William in White Plains, you're on WNYC with Jay Caspian Kang. Hi, William.

William: Yes. I actually do think that social media and internet, they correlate with each other. As I was telling [unintelligible 00:23:10] the reason, I guess back in the day, Lincoln and the other gentleman does this throughout the debate, because there was no attention deficit disorder as it is now due to the social media and the internet, and people wanted to hear. There were great orders. Imagine if they sat there for an hour, and people would just lose interest because we're so accustomed to quick news and move on to the next thing.

I find this interesting. I will check your article, but I want to ask the guest, what is one of the main reasons of this? Does he agree if it has to do with just wanting to be right and wanting to be better than the other? Therefore, the argument becomes more like a chauvinistic male dominating factor in life, I think. What do you think about that?

Brian Lehrer: Jay, do you understand the question?

Jay Caspian Kang: Yes, I do. I think that the caller is correct. It's a thing that is hard to describe and it's one that's hard to explain. I do think that the way in which the internet structures our arguments in which our name is put out there, or some version of our name, if we're anonymized and we have a little picture next to it, and that we believe that this is some version of us that is an avatar of us. That it incentivizes other people when they disagree with us, that we feel a sense of competition because of that.

We feel a sort of primal sense, "Oh no, this person has wronged me," when it could just be a conversation. If the conversation happened not in full sight of everybody if you're just talking to somebody, then it would be a conversation, but the fact that it is public and that everyone can see it, makes it seem like, that this is a fight now, and that there is a narcissism that comes because of that, that you can get very easily sucked into. I'll just say as a journalist who has been on every social media platform since the beginning, and it's quite active, I am not exempt from this.

It just happens. Then you're in the middle of an argument and you've looked up and an hour and a half has passed, and you're just like, "What am I doing with my life? What is happening?" I do think that it is-- I'm not sure if it's male chauvinism. I think it is a form of narcissism that is born almost entirely out of the way in which social media is structured. I don't think that it's avoidable in any way.

Brian Lehrer: If the worst outcome of this, and we just have a minute left, is a serious fraying of society where nobody trusts anybody who disagrees with them, and nobody trusts any institution, maybe from the left or the right or whatever other camps we want to ascribe. Do you propose a solution? I see you downplay the usefulness of media literacy education for kids, but what can we do?

Jay Caspian Kang: I think that we need to have a real movement away from social media and online spaces. I think that we should do things like garden or go surfing or talk to our friends. I just think that that is the only solution. I don't think that there is a way to reform social media, or social media addiction. I don't think that there is a way to make it good. I don't think there's a way to turn it into a tool for good, so I don't know. The kids, the way they say it is go touch grass. I think that the people who say that are right. I think we should all go touch grass a little bit more.

Brian Lehrer: Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker staff writer. His article, Arguing Ourselves to Death. Thanks, Jay.

Jay Caspian Kang: Thank you.

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