SNARK & AWE | The Kids Aren't Alright: What Is Wrong With Gen Z?!
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Why are we asking 'What Is Wrong With Gen Z' and who’s hosting this special episode?
Hi, everyone. We have something very special for you this evening. Now, let me ask you a question, okay? Were you shocked by the inroads that Donald Trump made with young people this past election? I was a little bit, right? Remember, I went out on the campaign trail. Are you surprised by just how MAGA-curious Gen Z appears to be? I was until I went out on the campaign trail. I do want to know why that's happening. So check out this conversation between two faces that all of you Lemonheads will recognize. I'll see you soon.
Howdy, folks. Welcome to a special edition of The Don Lemon Show. Obviously, I am not Don Lemon. I'm Peter Rothplatz. Some of you know me as the head writer here on the show and occasionally Don's sidekick. We're doing something new on the channel. From time to time, I'm going to be having conversations with younger people to figure out what exactly is going on with Gen Z. Because believe me, the kids are not all right. Joining me on this inaugural edition of the show is my good pal and the host of the Bulwark's FY pod, Cam Caskey.
What's up, everybody? This is the first episode? This is the first episode, Cam. Oh, my God. Well, here we are, and our generation is doing great, and everybody's so excited about us.
We're killing it. We're doing so well. How are you doing?
I'm okay. I am balancing my career as a theater programming director with political punditry and some other stuff. And it's very complicated and kind of all over the place, but you know, what's more Gen Z than that?
Love it. Love it. Well, Cameron, as two paragons of masculinity, um, I thought there was no one better to talk about masculinity and the manosphere and all things dude bro than you and I. Can we do that today?
Yeah, of course we can. Let's go like fire off.
So there was some Yale polling that came out last week that I found really interesting. So for those of you listening on Spotify, this tweet reads, a sharp age divide is emerging within Gen Z in the latest Yale polling data. Between the ages of 18 and 21, They lean Republican plus 12. Between the ages of 22 and 29, they lean Democrat plus six. The youngest voters are breaking sharply from their Gen Z peers. And what's even more interesting is that there is a masculine spin on this divide. In another part of the poll, young Gen Z men are driving this redshift. In the 2024 polling, the men are leaning Republican by 19 points, whereas Gen Z women are only leaning by four points. Cam, what do you make of this?
I do this really toxic and anti-intellectual thing that I think a lot of commentators do where we will either say, look, it's as simple as this. And then we'll also go, it's too nuanced to distill into one thing. So I'm going to do the former and say, here's two things I would say. Number one. A lot of these younger Gen Zs who, I mean, culturally might as well be a different generation. You know, that's why I always think that the way we section off generations is always a little silly. Because if you look at the first and second halves of Gen Z, the only thing we really have in common is the fact that we're addicted to our phones and we're not going to own houses. But... I think with this younger half of Gen Z, you see two major things.
Number one, when they were getting old enough to look into and understand what was going on in politics, Trump had already gone in and completely dismantled our understanding of how people are supposed to behave in the public world. Trump had gone in and made it the norm for somebody to be so brazen, so unprofessional, so bigoted, all these different things. When you and I were growing up and when you and I were watching politics unfold and starting to understand, oh, the president does this. There's this thing called a bicameral legislature. What is that about? We had Obama to look up to. And Barack Obama was a complicated president, great, and very much in his behavior as a human being, a paragon of American moral values as we were supposed to see them, right?
You know, the American president
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why are we asking 'What Is Wrong With Gen Z' and who’s hosting this special episode?
0:13–9:26
2
What does the Yale polling reveal about a Gen Z split between ages 18–21 and 22–29?
9:26–27:51
3
How does TikTok, COVID isolation, and algorithmic content push young men to the right?
27:51–33:40
4
What is the Gen Z 1.0 vs Gen Z 2.0 distinction and why does it matter politically?
33:40–33:52
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Don Lemon Show
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