Today's edition of the Federalist Radio Hour deals with ideas and language that may not
be suitable for parents listening with young children. Listener discretion is advised. Thanks
so much for tuning in. We're back with another edition of the Federalist Radio
Hour. I'm Emily Kashinsky, culture editor here at the Federalist. As always,
you can email the show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow
us on X at FDR l s T, make sure to subscribe wherever you
download your podcasts, and of course to the premium version of our website,
The Federalist dot com as well. Today we're joined by Alex Kasemi. Alex
is the author of New Millennium Boys, fascinating novel. You can find more
on Alex at his website Alex Kasemi ka Z E m I dot com.
Alex, Welcome to the show. Hey, Emily, how are you doing
today? Great? You have such an interesting background. This isn't your first
book you've written before. Can you just tell us a little bit for people
who might not be familiar with your background about what led you to writing New
Millennium Boys. Yeah, I kind of you know, started in the infantile
days of the cultural or where you know, brad eyston Ellis would be reading
out my opinions on social justice, culture and just things on his podcast,
which led me to kind of dabbling with the cultural commentary in that time and
around the twenty sixteen era that we all kind of remember of the birth of,
you know, an aversion to the left, social justice and extremity and
things like that, and so my kind of criticisms around the world were kind
of really around male culture and masculinity and sort of looking at the way that
young men are socialized through liberal media and the capitalist MTV German society, especially
my generation, so New Millennium Boys was sort of my critique on the post
Columbine era and how it connects to boyhood today. It's funny that you mentioned
your perspective as a male, because that's one of the things I wanted to
actually ask you about, because the book is I think, very specifically resonant.
Well, probably I shouldn't say I'm not a man, so I can't
say it's residant, But I imagine, Alex that you found it to be
especially resonant with men because you're the perspective of the protagonist and you're writing as
a perspective. Yeah, for sure, it's so salient to the story you
tell. Yeah, because I've been in those spaces. I grew up accessing
those conversations, and so I wanted to look to have people look at the
reality of how men act with each other and how young men are with each
other, to sort of not expose it in a negative way, but to
just make us kind of think and critique it in a way that isn't usually
done, because you know, there's always we were always talking about, you
know, girlhood and feminist teenage girls, and you know there's movies like Mean
Girls and things like that, but we don't ever really take a look at
what young men are going through. And it's just almost as dark, you
know, of an adolescence and the cruelty of young We were always looking at
the cruelty of teenage girls, but we don't ever really look at the cruelty
of young men as well. I want to read an excerpt from the book
that I like, disturbing behavior is trash. I say ten things I hate
about you is trash. I can't stop, I screamed. Dawson's Greek is
trash. I know what you did Last Summer is Trash Shane Tagson, Lisa
phraises his voice. Dawson's Screams is the worst fucking show and I swear the
worst people watch it. Anytime I'm at Tower and see someone buying that soundtrack,
all I think about is how the world could really do better without their
bad taste. We're is so familiar to people who grew up in the night,
like a very real yeah, aiation. How did you go back to
that moment in time to make it so specific? Oh God, like so
much research. I mean, it was like a ten year research project,
but I'm so happy that you could feel that visceral feeling of you know,
maybe older kids and you're called the sack or something talking that way, or
an older cousin or our teenager. You know that we know that there was
that time of one be the monoculture dominated pop culture, and you know,
we didn't live in this time period where today, you know, there's so
many fragmented different sectors of the internet, and you know, with with the
kind of monoculture that existed back then, we were able to sort of publicly
have a group collective think about what we didn't like. So you know,
to be able to talk like that was. I really researched, like message
boards, forums, watched home vide everything I tried to Like, you know,
that's why when people are very critical of it being historical fiction, I'm
like, no, you don't understand. I looked up every word, every
piece of slaning to make sure that it existed back then. That's actually so
interesting because probably never before in human history. This is something that I think
the book captures really well. Never before in human history except for literally right
now, but before today, no generation had so much of a recorded record.
And when you're thinking about the monoculture, you're going to capture the monoculture.
In the nineties, what we started to see was the splintering, but
it hadn't quite happened yet, so you probably could still pick up on so
much from the monoculture itself. Yeah, no, no, for sure.
Like I think, what's so strange about this world today? Like you could
be a gen z or could a Zumer could be on their phone and be
listening to some musician on Spotify that has maybe five million listens or ten million
listens, and then down the street and say, hey, do you know
this person? And nobody will be able to answer it. Whereas back then,
you know, Britney Spears was a household name. Blank Wanted to Do
was a household band. Like there was arena where we were all plugged in
into the same news, which I guess is a part of the nostalgia that
zuomers feel like they missed out on and millennials missed that there was a level
of camaraderie when we were all connected to one arena and for men. I
know, one of the things that's that's grabbed headlines about your book is the
Columbine stuff, and I think it actually even has an epigraph for Eric Harris.
Yeah, there's something about that where they were reacting against and I think
in a lot of cases if we kind of try to put ourselves back then
too. I mean, this was not new. This happened sixties, seventies,
eighties. There was this reaction against the NASSA at that time, monoculture
of mass media. Yes, that really seemed to be animating for young men.
Is that a than that you were capturing too? Yeah, I mean
it was so funny. I didn't watch them with Stuck ninety nine documentaries until
I had finished the book, But then I watched them, and I was
like, yes, this confirms everything about every theory that I tried to make,
because you know that what happened at was Stock ninety nine was the exact
response that anger to the boomer capitalist culture, all these illusions of MTV that
are being innudated, and obviously Eric and Dan Lynn were very disaffected and angry
about that. But I think it's so interesting because now in retrospect, because
of you know, what liberal new liberal beauty standards and social justice culture did
to aesthetics and things like that, people are nostalgic for that time period of
like Abercrombie beauty and you know, pop stars who are gorgeous and things like
that, versus what we see today, which is all about real beauty and
diversification people that fantasy. Again. Yeah, it's funny. It's almost like
the mass media of the nineties is now the hipster fashion Yeah yeah, yeah,
exactly, Yeah, no, no exactly, because well I think like
also if we look at you know, like the dirt bag left and red
scare culture and all that type of stuff, they're all just kind of doing
like an offshoot of Mileian andopolis drag, you know, like they're like,
you know, because they were all in Brooklyn, so in social justice a
part of that movement, you know, being friends with people like Harry Enough
and all this type of stuff. They were they were all in that world.
But as soon as it became, you know, to mainstream, they
wanted to go to the right. And it's just sort of like a way
to it's like a fashion statement, like you said, it's like a it's
like an esthetic statement versus anything of value. Right now, it's sort of
like we're all gonna be non ironically Tipper Gore. Yes, yes, yes,
yes, because we're so angry about what the social justice era did to
art and culture and fashion. And but it will be interesting to see if
Hollywood is going to move into the direction of being anti PC. A lot
of people are predicting that, but a lot of people also feel like there's
a lot of fear. So I'm glad you brought up the kind of red
square, dimes square, red scared dimes square. We could just call them
red square. I love that Red Square. Probably love it too. But
it's funny because there was just pg Keenan wrote a newsletter about Lomas, who
is an anonymous Twitter account for people who are blessed enough not to be quite
as online. That was docks by The Guardian as we're taping this this week.
And one of the interesting things from the PG Keenan newsletter is that Elena
Velez, who's an extremely hot designer fashion Circles, used the Longhouse article that
Lomas wrote for First Things to inspire a line that actually Taylor Swift ended up
wearing a dress from in her while music video like this is a suit.
I think this was just sent today, but all the layers there just unpacking
that to the line. Yes, that's what. Do you have thoughts on
sort of how this is starting to creep into monoculture again? Well, I
think you know it exists. Yeah, I mean I don't know if it
would be a monocle, but like maybe I think the reason that if there
would be any reason for any desire for it to creep in, it would
be because people always like to do things that are contrarian and they connect that
with what is cool. You know, if in the nineties, hating God
and the Bible, like Marilyn Manson was goth and edgy and extreme than now
in the twenty twenties, loving God, being Catholic, living at the quote
unquote trad life is more appealing, right, So it just really is about
where the pendulum is shifting. But I don't know if there's a level of
true authenticity in those decisions. But all of that kind of thing that you
just mentioned, of the kind of domino effect, it almost it almost already
feels old, if that makes sense. Yeah, I see what you're saying
well, and almost in a literal sense too, And that the Elena of
Les line was like Victorian dresses. Okay, here you have Taylor Swift wearing
this Victorian dress. We saw it after the Little Women movie came out,
the Greta Gerwig version, there were rift stores selling out of these Victorian frocks.
Basically, Oh yeah, no, no, no, I get what
you mean. And doesn't she have like a lyric on the album like I
wish it was like the nineteen thirties, unless without all the racists or something.
Yeah, she does have something like that, which just again it's pretty
interesting. Yeah, no, no, for sure, and it would be
kind of interesting to see. I mean, I guess I think like a
mainstream pop start using that ideology in as a subculture to influence their record.
I mean, I don't know if Taylor is doing that, particularly because of
the correlation with Maddie and the cometwn thing on all of that, but I
think that definitely it would be interesting to see if. I think Jack Antonov
said it best in a magazine. He was like, well, what is
the creative offshoot of Dimes Square? Like it can't just be a podcast?
Like is there any art? Is there any creativity? Is there any responsive
work to the world from it? Oh, that's really interesting, Antonov?
Healey, Taylor, Red Square will just go with that. It's yeah,
the convergence of I guess different minds on that point. He kind of reminds
me of that What's suck ninety nine thing you were saying, and how the
actual would suck felt to boomers, like the end of something really good as
they look back on it now. Yes, one of the things I wanted
to ask you about in the book. In a sense, you know,
there's there's angst and anguish, but the nostalgia, I mean, maybe for
there's evolutionary explanations for this. I know that science has tried to capture why
we feel nostalgic, but there's something that also feels almost like a peak,
And I wonder if that's you know, millennial delusion, the sort of millennial
rose colored mir view. Yes, yes, I think I think about that,
Alex. I think it's I think it's because, like what you just
said, so nostalgia has never been historically on our TikTok feed one hundred times
a day, our Instagram feed, on our on magazine articles. I mean,
I mean, don't you remember the BuzzFeed list era of like not things
nineties teenagers? Did you know? Like it's it's constantly inundated with us because
I think that people idealize it as this perfect time in humanity where okay,
there was a little bit technology, there was just enough internet, there was
still a mono culture. We were not chronically online, yet the screen technology
wasn't you know, brainwashing in the way where you know, it was required
to be pinged on our phones all day or things like that. So there's
this feeling around, oh, Okay, this is the peak of American civilization,
and that's why people look back at it, especially zoomers, with this
level of I really truly missed out on something big and real. But what
I exposed through the book is all of the flaws of that era, or
the irony that these kind of super leftists social justice people who are are still
that way in the twenty twenties couldn't last a day back then without you know,
being experiencing virtualistic hate or you know, handling the real kind of violence
of that era. Were you a fan of the film Thirteen? No,
not particularly. I'm a big Dawson's Creek fan, though. Did you see
thirteen? I've seen. I don't have a you know, great like recall.
Okay, okay, Yeah, it was with Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki
Reid and they have the tongue rings on the cover, and it was like
really big in the two thousands. It was sort of like, yeah,
it was a it was very edgy. Yeah, it was like a critique
on girl culture at the time, right, and yeah, I feel like
New Millennium Boys is sort of a critique on adolescent male culture but also exposing
the internet and millennials fetishization of Y two K culture and sort of the dangers
of it, but also trying to empathize with well, why did you feel
the world was a better place when you a looreal kids? Commercial was on
in between the real world or things like that. What is that? Like
you said, like, what is this warmth that everyone is associating with it?
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com, zapmidebt dot com. Yeah, it's funny because I always gravitate towards
the Dustin's Creek, and that's why I brought it up again in the sense
that and I mentioned Tipper Gore. But it reminds find me thirteen. And
now we look back on some of these things and we're like, you know,
this is pretty pretty mild. It's quaint, it's almost laughable. But
there were moral panics in the nineteen nineties over things that now, when teenagers
are being exposed to porn by the age of like twelve on average, this
stuff is really nothing. But at the time it was boundary breaking, no
for sure, And I think that's also why, you know, maybe the
dirtpeg left disaffected. Mfa art kids are angry too, because they feel like
they have no boundaries to push, or no or no buttons to push.
So the idea of making an online persona out of being Catholic or are Christian,
or being right wing ironically is a way for them to sort of like
cope with the fact that, you know, they can't really do anything provocative,
which in my situation, I was so shocked when my publisher demanded a
content warning and a trigger warning for my novel. When I, like you
said, don't we live in a post internet world where there's all of this
content out there at the click of a button. Why would a book have
to deal with that censorship? Can you tell us a little bit more about
that experience, because you've talked about it a little bit elsewhere, but just
you know, the entire saga. Yeah, it was really like, I'll
tell you the full on, real experience. I was totally strange. So
I guess during my copy edits, these sensitive gen Z girls at the publisher
were feeling very uncomfortable and offended by the work that they had to be doing
by you know, their job is copy editing, by the way. They're
not content or creatives or anything. They're just copy editing. And they felt
alarmed by the content in the book before it was released, and particularly when
I used the name of a Columbine victim during a fight with lew and Brad,
because I was just trying to historically show that, you know, even
back then, you know, when this liberal culture say her name or you
know what I mean all these type of things, or no, the victim's
name. Back then, they still knew the victim's names of the comby victims,
so I put that in there. She was so offended that I used
the girl's real name, and they got it. They got it taken out.
And then after that the publisher read the book and they said, you
know, we can't stalk this without a content warning because we're afraid that teenagers
or young people will fetishize the content in this, which is insane because it's
very much an evisceration, satire, critique of the culture, and it's in
such a hyperbolic, extreme way that anyone could read it with that way,
even teenagers, I would hope. So, but yeah, so that they
demanded a content warning, and they censored certain words but left certain words as
well. So it was pretty interesting because all I was really trying to do
was mirror the reality of the dialect of teenage boys in that era, and
anyone who lived through that aaron reads the book or like, yeah, we
talked like this totally totally, and that's just a testament to the writing too.
But it also broaches this challenge, this sort of what's the way to
put it, the sort of anti establishment to mass media has always done,
which is the commercialization of art, and it's like going back to win radio
and then TV and art became quite literally technologically mass media. Can you talk
about what that meant to people like your characters in the nineteen nineties, You
mentioned MTV earlier, v H one, all of that a lot, because
you're doing it right now too. Yeah, yeah, came up a lot
in my research. You know, even if you look back at the Woodstock
footage there, the kids in the audience were like spitting on the MTV their
news crew because they were like stop playing Backstreet boys, Like I don't like
seeing that. I want to see more corn like for them they really see
isn't that insane? Like imagine those imagine those are your issues, like seeing
and SNK on MTV and like you want to see more new metal or metal?
I mean, yeah, I definitely there was this zill gen X millennial
cus thing of gatekeeping and coolness and hey, we don't want that to go
mainstream and we want to preserve this. And you're a tryhard and you're a
bully and in like a lot of Marilyn Manson concert footage. There's a lot
of kids just like eating up other kids for calling them posers, you know,
which you don't really see in gen Z at all. Like I don't
even think gen Z has the dialect of a tryhard or a poser, because
I don't think they've seen a society where there are sects of people who are
in separation culturally in real life. And that's why at the Mall was such
a breeding ground for clicks and high schools or you know, all the nineties
movies have clicks and things like that, whereas now it's this hodgepodge thing of
homogenize identity, which is so shocking for older people. Yeah, I mean,
really it is so shocking. And can you tell us more about so
the we were just talking about the Columbine and mentioned and what it inspired at
the Publisher and all that ridiculousness, which is in and of itself interesting about
commercializing art, and how you know now the new gatekeepers, the neo tipper
gores, who aren't you know, who are doing it in the name of
social justice, are still trying to gatekeep and all of that. Why was
it important to you to deal with Columbine in the book. I think because
of the amount of like, you know, school shootings that has happened in
America, but also I feel like Columbine to me represented this juxtaposition of the
pop culture of that era that people associate with their nostalgia. You know,
like Brittany is in a high school in the Baby One More Time video on
the cover of Time magazine, Eric and Eric Harrison, Dylan Cleveland are on
the cover of Time magazine with machine guns, you know, on a surveillance
being clamorized. You know, a high school culture was having this weird juxtaposition
and how we would perceive it as well. But also because I thought that
because when I studied their documents and all the crime documents for so many years,
I could see that, you know, they felt truly living as victims
of the culture that they were living in. And also you know, they
I think like they would have had just been happy if they had woken up
as six two gorgeous chad jock players who could get cheerleaders. You know.
So it's like it's like sort of exploring that and then seeing that that darkness
that existed with them matched with darker music and darker movies and you know,
nine inch nail snuff tapes and like this kind of macabre attitude towards the world.
And then that started to happen on the Internet as well and become a
space for that. But the biggest juxtaposition I found is that which I used
in my book with the letters between Brown and Aurora. That was really inspired
by Eric Harris's AOL transcripts talking to girls at night talking about his feelings,
and I thought that was so interesting. Well for people who haven't read those,
because yeah, we really try not to talk about Columbine, it's kind
of interesting. But for people who haven't read those, can you tell us
a little bit about what he says and how Yeah, he's like do you
ever? Yeah, he's like do you ever look at the sky? And
like, you know, I'm so lonely and like, you know, like
kind of upset, like andset, dealing had an obsession with love. He
would always draw hearts in his journal, and you know, he took a
BMW prom I think, you know, there was this weird sense of disaffection
that, like you kind of said, is that they were kind of creating
it or producing it because of the filter bubble or let's say algorithm that they
were plugged into in the monoculture, and that was their response to it.
You know, so I guess it would be kind of interesting to think of,
you know. I mean, I guess the kids today, the young
men today, would maybe respond through four chun memes or Pepe the Frog or
Inceel Dumb or things like that that responds to their monoculture of maybe beautiful Instagram
girls and rappers and things like that. Yeah. No, that's I find
that so fascinating and the way you deal with Columbine and so fascinating because in
a sense, there they felt, or there's an argument, they felt the
way they felt because of this new technology that mass media created archetypes, and
people felt trapped by archetypes, by the trophy they hadn't before. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, for no, for sure,
And if you kind of look at it, they were kind of stuck
in the belief of it all, the matrix of it, all the illusions
of it. All they were they were believing it because they were kids.
But I mean, it's it's so strange because they also were obsessed with fame
too, and they would write about how, you know, we're this Tarantino
was going to make a movie out of this, like they were, they
were. They also they also saw the opportunity to be influencers in a fucked
up way because they knew that the camera crews and they knew the media it
would come and it would be a media orgy because they could they could do
that in that time, you know, where they could have that dent on
the world, which is pretty freaky. And then if we think of you
know, artists being blamed for Columbine and things like that and these sort of
discourses, I think that people romanticize those type of discourses back then because today
it is so much inudation every day of a new problem, a new discourse
that they're like, oh, remember the Columbine era where we could just blame
Merlyn Manson and you know, watch Fox News debates, you know, like
there's a romanticization of the simplicity of how messed up it was back then as
well. About ten years ago, there was a moral panic over whether we
would have any great millennial authors. And I know that's going to happen again
with gen Z And you know, it's probably always been a question on people's
mind because again, new technoic. I remember that. Yeah, yeah,
you will. How is it possible? I was reading a piece about the
new on our Levy book today, which which sounds really interesting. I haven't
read it yet, but yeah. The things that I wanted to ask you
about your book is just the act of writing it, especially because in order
to write it you had to be immersed in the technologies of the time,
which were short form chats. Wasn't quite you know, snapchat or Instagram.
No, it's still aol. Just even like putting yourself in the mindset to
write a novel. What was that like? And I think you did this
over the course of what the last decade? What was that? Yeah?
It was very You don't realize how dark it was until you get out of
it, because I didn't realize that empathizing and looking at these dark themes every
day in a way that I would hope maybe someone like Peggy Ornstein or Roslind
Wiseman or you know, I was trying to think of it from a sociological
way, and then also having to build the sets, build the world,
build the music, build the characters. It was very immersive in retrospect.
I enjoyed. I mean it was a very difficult process, but I enjoyed
the immersion and discipline of the process. But being able to do it,
I really thought of one day being able to be on a place like this
having these bigger discourse and conversations. Whereas you know, I'm on oor Levy's
book may create more conversations around the state of you know, chronically online our
internet art or autlet or are things like that, but I'm I'm trying to
get somewhere where deeper with people to sort of think bigger and past aesthetics and
you know, vanity. Don't let these people think you're a moron. The
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what was it? I guess. I know this book took a long
time. Could you maybe just tell us actually a little bit more about the
process what it was like to Yeah, yeah, because things change so quickly
now, so you spent so many years as the nostalgia was just being ratcheted
up month after month. That's so true. Yeah, No, it was
very frustrating, like because everything would always make me feel like I was falling
behind, you know, because another you know, nineties period piece thing was
announce so you know, like or a nostalgia thing or you're right, like
the world was sort of constantly informing the writing process in the narrative because that
you couldn't escape it, you know, like I'd be like working on the
book and then I'd go eat somewhere and then like Third Eye Blind would be
playing, and I'm like, fuck, you know, like I can't,
I can't, I can't get out of I can't get out of there,
you know, and I think that, but yeah, no, definitely,
it was definitely a process that was informed by the real time world, and
it was frustrating trying to keep up with it, but having an editor where
I had to cap it and finish, and you know, like obviously Bryce
and Alice finishing Glamorama was a huge influence for me as well because that was
also a big tier task for him, and getting to see that he had
done that not close to my age but a bit older than me, and
things like that, so I had I had inspirations to keep going. But
like, the book started out as a viral manuscript right when I was eighteen
on Tumblr, so MTV Books bought it then, and we're waiting ten years
for me to finish, and the publisher switched around. But yeah, I
actually really wanted to ask you about Tumblr. I think it's probably one of
the least appreciated, but like most influential pieces of our culture, I just
people don't understand our young artists for sure, oh my gosh. And we
just don't talk about what Tumblr did, especially to people roughly our age,
as much as we should. But can you tell us a little bit about
how it evolved from a Tumblr project and maybe why Tumblr was so important?
Yeah? Yeah, I think I think I think Tumblr was our you know,
aspect of this generation's like bedroom Wall, you know, it was our
mood board, our vision, our are a this is this is my soul
or whatever kids used to say about their Tumblr blogs. But you know,
because I also noticed a lot of darkness and juxtapositions on Tumblr where there were
self harm pictures than Lana del Rey, black and white gifts and then porn,
and it created this kind of concoction and dopamine hit for teenagers that was
so intense that I also wanted to try to mirror in my book of this
kind of fragmented, fast paced, I guess, almost like jump cut MTV
way of how we were consuming media. And also especially it was the time
of those very wordy quotes, right, like deep quotes and things like that.
So that's why the book has all these like kind of deeper teens speak,
kind of heart to heart language because that was also mirrored on Tumblr.
But yeah, Tumblr was definitely an essential to be a portal for a lot
of teenagers to learn about quote unquote art or film or music, and it
was a way to kind of create a community around it. But it was
also weird because it kind of created that performativeness that we would see later on
TikTok and Instagram stories of oh like me, posting this video is also an
aspect of performance. Me posting this music video from the nineties is also it's
currency for my esthetic. Yeah, it's one thing I've always grappled with,
to the extent that Judith Butler is legible, she does have her sort of
theory of performativity. Yeah, and how we perform gender basically into existence,
which I think obviously overlooks some other aspects of gender in this case, mass
media really, I do think performs things into existence and performs you know,
generational differences into existence. And I was wondering if you could tell us a
little bit more even about the the style of Tumblr. There was sort of
it's not a monoculture because it was for people on the niche platform of Tumblr.
But yes, I feel like I can tell when artists were Tumblr people
just from like all like you know, It's Halls was on Tumblr. You
know, Taylor Swift's a big Tumbler person. Yeah, I think so too.
I think, like especially during nineteen eighty nine posts nineteen eighty nine,
and I think the way like you're right, Tumblr kind of created a visual
fluency of visual language for how people would curate and the experience of being on
Tumblr with the dozens of images, but also like I guess we remember like
the American apparel tennis skirt and the black shirt and the smoking cigarettes and listening
to the nineteen seventy five thing. And it's so interesting because gen z who
didn't some gen Zers who didn't live through that, are nostalgic for that time
period in the way millennials were inspired were nostalgic for grunge in nineteen ninety four.
So it's so strange how that works because member Tumblr was all about soft
grunch, right, and so it just shows this cycle of like niche Internet
subcultures. But yeah, I don't Tumblr was definitely not a monoculture, but
there was a thing where, you know, you could see a quote on
your dashboard from a novel that someone in the UK posted, and then you
could repost it, and then someone in you know, Australia could repost it.
So it did create this like global sims online have a hotel thing for
artsy disaffected kids. And I feel like maybe the people who, for example,
protested at your publisher, but they don't realize that, you know,
the people who were they're all lowercase bell hooks quotes on Tumblr, you know,
fifteen years ago. Uh really laid the groundwork for what was coming.
Well, that's that's exactly it. And that's like that, that's what I
mean. Like, I watched Assassination Nation for the first time yesterday, and
I avoided it when it came out because I had been working in my novel.
I was like, Oh, I don't want to I don't want to
get into Sam Levinson's head or I don't want you know, I don't want
things to mirror my ideas. I just want to do my own thing.
But I'm happy I waited to watch it because that is such a mirror and
a satire of what you just said, is that this online fluency that we
were living in with the Tumblr girl feminism and liberalism and I read Belle Hook's
good books and I'm more righteous than you, and I take nudes as empowerment
and that kind of stuff. Like they don't realize that this was a this
was an evolution, right right, No, that's such a good point.
I also wanted to ask you about a Camille Paulia essay. It may have
been two thousand and one or somewhere around there. It was like okayenderally two
thousands in oh she used to ever come for salon and I actually use it
with my journalism students because she writes about at the sort of dawn of the
new media, when news was going online, how you'd be reading a very
serious story or a column or whatever it is, and then you would be
bombarded with these esthetically ugly ads that were just you. You'd have the pop
ups. But she compared it to Vegas, and reading your book, you
get the kind of mass media vegues, all of the with all of the
references left and right. Is that a good thing or a bad thing or
is it just a thing? I think I think that that gaudiness of capitalism,
like you said, was at the peak in the nineteen nine nine,
two thousand and I think, you know, Douglas Rushkov said in his documentary
Merchants are cool about how exact like how many ads teenagers saw and it was
a huge amount a day. But the kind of Vegas is actually a great
metaphor for the simulation of the capitalism culture of Okay, you know, Loreal
Kids, Smarty's Britney Spears all this type of stuff. You're walking through it
and a lot of I don't know. It all depends. Like some people
find those aesthetics to be very beautiful from a warholy and pop art perspective.
Other people think it's really soulless, evil, capitalist and empty. But yeah,
no, that's interesting that Paulia said that. I mean, if you
think of what she said. Now, let's think about like YouTube ads as
well. Yeah, YouTube ads, or what's even more interesting to think about
is like influencer culture. I guess where something that's supposed to be you know,
one form of content is disguising commercialization basically, Oh yeah, no,
no for sure. And I mean a lot of people would argue that the
influencers don't have the power that they had in maybe twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen
to make people buy things, or because we were because so many people aspire
to be those tropes and archetypes that everyone can kind of see through it,
even the people who are trying, you know, so it's not like such
a bait and switch anymore. But I think you're right, like a lot
of pop stars, even who are global pop stars who don't need to talk,
will still be promoting products and disguise advertisements, whereas you're right back then,
it was so much more transparent, right, it was so gaudy and
being like like you know, labels all over and just being so transparent about
it. But now it's about being mysterious about it and like inserting it and
just mentioning it and things like that. Was it better? And that's a
tough question, but again, you've been immersed in this, You've been swimming
in this, and hard to disentangle nostalgia from well, I think like a
question i'd have for you is, do you think that we would have been
able to make as much social evolutionary whatever human progress without the acceleration of technology.
I would say, yes, maybe it wouldn't have been at the exact
same pace, but I do think that like strides would move forward without social
media culture. What do you think? Yeah, And you know, it's
funny you say that because I think I've mentioned on the show a couple times
the last couple of weeks that I've been watching Malcolm in the Middle for the
first time. Oh my gosh, And yeah, I mean, speaking of
like commercialized content from that time period. It's amazing how much better of a
job that show did. And this sounds crazy. I understand, but how
much better of a job that show did than pop culture now dealing with things
like race and gender, yeah, and sex and marriage and all of that.
It's just it actually is blowing my mind. I didn't even as a
cynic, I didn't expect it. And so I think there's when you look
at these like gallop charts, how Americans perceive race relations over time, Black
Americans, wider Americans. Most people think it's gone backwards. You know that
we have race relations have gotten worse since about like twenty twelve. So I
actually wonder if the there's a real argument that after a certain point, maybe
it was nineteen ninety nine, maybe it was two thousand and nine, things
started to devolve. Well, I think like what you're kind of, you
know, talking about, is that on a show like Malcolm in the Middle
or nine or two one O that won't that tried to deal with these issues,
it was kind of like, oh okay, like you know, I
can see this presented in an artistic, valuable way that makes me think and
empathize, but you know, okay, now that's it, And that rather
than the inundation and the hysteria around these issues, whereas things were presented in
maybe a more nuanced way, and I think maybe that's probably what you're perceiving
from the Malcolm in the Middle. But also we have to remember that this
is that time time period where like, you know, I think like legally
Blonde is actually one of the greatest like depictions of like a like a feminist
from the two thousands, Like that girl that is sitting down with L when
she's getting to Harvard and she's like kind of you know, you know,
like more masculine, morel yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah, like that right, And back then that's just what that was,
and and not everyone had the jargon of liberal academia that bled into our culture,
which probably was not ever meant to happen, Like there was a reason
that these things were fringe and academic. Whereas we when we got into this
weird cultural war thing in the twenty tens and early twenty Yeah, the twenty
tens, I feel like all that type of energy that was coming from the
fringes that was around we just didn't see it started to come into our quote
unquote mainstream dialect. And I think that's when everything got really bizarre. One
last question for that, you go is basically like you could tell us what
you've learned from the reaction of the book, And everything I've seen has been
really positive. But as you've been there's a lot of ability. So you've
seen this, you've seen this closer than I have, So tell us just
a little bit about what the reaction has been and maybe what you've learned from
it. It's extremely a divisive book. There's a lot of people who think
that the novel is supposed to be some shock literature book, whereas I'm making
a commentary on and critiquing why we consume that genre and looking at at adolescent
culture and and you know the Postpon Combine era, and there are people who
can feel that and see that, and then there are people who just are
so upset about me writing basically a screenplay disguised as literary fiction because people want
a kind of hardcore voice. But I felt like for these issues, the
best thing that we could do is watch and look rather than having too much
character narration. But the book has been extremely divisive. There has been you
know, extreme liberal feminists on Instagram and Twitter who have said that the book
is misogynistic and hateful and all this type of stuff, But how are we
able to discuss or look at these issues. And then also, you know,
then there was a backlash of course with the the kind of kind of
got banned in a way when it got added to a list, a book
ban list, and there were moms calling the library trying to get it dropped.
And that was wild as well, but a weird way. I wish
people would understand that I'm on their side, you know, like I'm trying
to look at all this stuff too in a critical way. I'm not saying
this is good. I'm not celebrating the themes in the book. I'm trying
to understand why do teenagers watch shows like American Horror Story, Why do they
watch shows like Euphoria? Why why do we historically have the fetishization of the
teen exploitation genre, And why do they also watch these viral YouTube videos that
are literally just a day at high school in nineteen ninety seven. I mean,
it's the craziest trend. The massive views. Oh yeah, it's like
millions millions of views and there and in the comments section are all kids being
like, this would have been perfect. I wish I had this, And
ironically, like you know if you were queer, black, or Spanish or
anything that they you know, look at the things that they're passionate about,
these these zoomers. It's like you would not have a fun time in a
public possibly, you know, there were there was public racial tax hate,
all these things. And that's what I found to be the biggest irony when
I was working on the book, is that this generation that fetishizes this culture
couldn't last a day in that culture when they fetishized the culture that they created
too, or that they wanted to create. And there's somewhat miserable in it.
Yeah, no, no, exactly exactly. I mean that's what I
hate it here by Taylor's about right that any any decade we will find a
reason to suffer. Yeah, exactly, Yes, Alex, Becauseman is the
author of The New Millennium Boys with a Z. Alex, thank you so
much for joining us. This is fascinating congratulation on some of the book.
Thank you so much, Emily. It was a beautiful conversation. I really
appreciate it. Of course, you have been listening to another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. Emily Tishenski, culture editor here at the Federalist will be
back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of freedom and thank you
just for the fray