RCP has the clip I'm seeing at TikTok plus the full interview, and we can see that it is from a BBC interview in 2017. But Paglia has made this point since the early 90s.
It's a good idea to talk about the Cornell case in light of the strong challenge presented by Paglia, and she deserves to be cited by name. There's a lot of material from 35 years ago, from various authors, that could enrich the present-day discussion. For example: "Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus."
This is a very old topic! Let's not act as though people are just noticing this problem.
"... with a practiced, self-deprecating laugh to her camera, propped against the wall as a portable LED light bathes her in a warm glow. 'It is 10:15 a.m., and my first delivery just arrived, and it is my Starbucks coffee.' The coffee, an almond-milk iced latte with cold foam, two pumps of vanilla, and a pinch of cinnamon, costs $25.18. 'When I really want to rage-bait, I’ll order coffee. People get so mad at me,' she tells me. The Starbucks, after all, is only three blocks from her apartment, and most of the time she grabs it while walking her dog, an English cream miniature dachshund named Linguine...."
"Once upon a time, influencers could post beautiful photos of their lives — their outfits, their coffee, their vacations, their children — and, with enough consistency, amass an audience of followers who looked to them for inspiration or escape.... Now... [t]he only reliable way to reach mainstream or even moderate recognition against all the noise is to either carpet-bomb social media with clips or to enrage wide swaths of the public...."
Why would a composer of symphonies know how to write a 2-minute pop song? People love the visual equivalent of a pop song and, as with pop songs, they'll listen to a lot of them in a row. It's not as though they don't want to spend the time with the material they like. They just like snazzy little works of art that begin and end quickly.
But Greenfeld takes the position that the "attention span is shattered," even if people are spending hours looking at short video.
"It received more than 211,000 views and 20,000 likes. 'A really large flood of people said they were in the same position … and that it was refreshing to see someone be so open because they thought they were alone,' she said. 'The biggest comment that I got was that I gave them a new lease of life, like they were really contemplating things, they felt really, really, really poorly about themselves.' Drunyte explained that after school she gave into being 'a wee bit of a recluse,' feeling that her efforts to socialise were futile. After university, she moved home and worked hybrid jobs. She posts 'day in the life' videos of her doing errands, hikes or solo trips to lochside lodges...."
"Within 23 days of posting, the video surpassed a million views.... Whatever machine learning was needed to push this onto the FYP of so many people, it seems to have worked as designed. Everyone I showed the video to in my real life couldn’t understand the controversy. But everyone leaving comments seemed willing to ignore any reasonable context to insist I must be a horrible person. 'You must be fun at parties,' commented LucyInTheSky. Lucy, I am fun at parties.... Some friends, understandably, suggested I just delete it. While that might seem like a quick escape from nuisance behavior, it doesn’t change the threat of this happening again. In order to speak freely on the internet, you have to take the haters for granted...."
"... showing his campaign's tens of billions of views on the now-threatened app. A chart... on the first page jumped out at Trump, who had backed a TikTok ban in his first term. 'I'm more popular than Taylor Swift,' he crowed. Many in Trumpworld heard he quickly called Barron, his youngest son, to savor the stat...."
"... there’s a chance that this is a 'very Chinese' time in your life. If you’re under 30, you won’t be the only one. One of the more unusual cultural trends to sweep Gen Z recently has been among TikTok users who share wellness tips typically associated with China.... Chinamaxxing, as the social media trend is known, is all the rage in the US...."
"... The difference is, back in those songs’ eras, people across demographics still seemed to know and enjoy them. Whether from performances on Johnny Carson’s 'Tonight Show,' spins on Casey Kasem’s 'American Top 40' or others, that was a time of cultural commonalities regardless of personal taste or ideology.... When I perform older songs such as 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' everyone sings the chorus.... Yet for their modern-day equivalents, that’s far less likely. By not singing communally, we lose the emotional experience to feel bonded with those from other groups or ideologies. This lack of kinship plays out across multiple domains throughout our society with more serious impact. Studies and surveys find Americans in the 2010s and 2020s are increasingly unlikely to have cross-ideology friendships, to live near neighbors who disagree politically, or to date across party lines."
One thing Rifkin seems blind to is TikTok. At least for "Take Me Home Country Roads," one reason the old song is known today is through extreme repetition on TikTok.
"... though she is sworn to secrecy on the specifics. 'My sorority will text me all the time saying, you need to take this down [from social media], if something might be shining the wrong light,' she said. 'They really do protect my image and I’m very grateful for that. They’re like a PR agency. They keep a close eye.' Though she loves the group enormously, she has taught herself to resist its monolithic culture. 'When I was a freshman [first year], I lost my individuality and everything I talked about was sorority-sorority-sorority,' she said. 'I talked the way I thought people wanted me to and felt the pressure to be perfect and to always say the perfect thing. I didn’t voice my opinion, didn’t want to seem like I was "too much." I’ve got an outgoing, outspoken, goofy personality and I felt like I lost that.' She has since 'found myself,' wanting to be a sports reporter when she graduates next year...."
Here's Darnell's TikTok feed if you want to see what's so popular in this sorority-girl category.
I went to college in 1969 and everyone I knew believed sororities were about to go extinct. As if hippiedom would reign forever. Anyway... what's interesting here? Lots of things. The intersection of college and TikTok. The endless fascination with makeup and fashion.
But I'll just cherry-pick one thing: "They keep a close eye." Is that the expression? Did she conflate 2 expressions — "close watch" and "keep an eye on" — possibly influenced by the opening lines of "I Walk the Line" — "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine / I keep my eyes wide open all the time"? I think "close eye" is idiomatic. More important, is that what young women want — a close eye?
CORRECTION: I had originally named the wrong Johnny Cash song. I mix up "I Walk the Line" with "Ring of Fire." Honestly, I've disliked both songs for a long time. They both have a line drawn, and he's either inside the line or outside of it. He's fixated on that line. It's all about control and loss of control.
... who criticizes something for being off or weird when it’s actually a thing. I want to get out in front of it, recognize it as a thing, and criticize it from a savvy position, or at least know to shut up about it.
I don't know how good my skill is, because this one might be too dumb and obvious to be tricky....
"... not because it’s a sign of a corporation bending the knee to a would-be dictator, but because it’s a sign of the unbundling of the American public. Ensconced in our homes, watching our custom-tailored streaming feeds, we simply have fewer and fewer things in common.... And America needs a shared national story, a common understanding of something, to hold together as a nation.... [A] lot of what we are doing is consuming tailored content, curated for us by a personal algorithm. In some ways, the Colbert show was a symptom of that shift. The sharp leftward lurch that consumed American media companies was driven by social media algorithms that rewarded left-wing political hot takes with high engagement. Media companies followed those rewards precisely because they were no longer catering to a truly mass audience but to niche fandoms. Having come of age in the long shadow of truly mass media, many of the people in those institutions might have thought they were moving public opinion into the progressive future, but in fact it was fan service for a narrow demographic. Now the algorithms have changed, and so have young people, who rarely turn on their televisions today.... [W]e have no obvious successor to the unifying force that late-night shows used to be. America might no longer want the 'Late Show.' But it needs some way to hear the same stories, laugh at the same jokes and gather around the collective water cooler to talk about what they mean."
Everybody laughed at the same joke that was that kiss cam couple. That was "a common understanding of something," holding us "together as a nation."
TV has died, but the stories get out, through TikTok and other media. More things have an opportunity to go big, and the dispersion is fast. What was television, really, by contrast?
"... Ms. Francis reached out beyond her teenage audience, recording material that made her a natural in Las Vegas as well as in nightclubs like the Copacabana in New York. She was also a sought-after entertainer on television variety shows. She briefly tried performing before teenage audiences, but she found that she did not care for the experience. 'I always remember receiving much more applause from teenagers when I was introduced than at any other time during the show — especially after my closing number,' she wrote in her memoir. 'After my name was announced and the squeals of delight subsided, it was downhill all the way.'"
"... to her friends, but sees it as a more curated option — the sort of place where someone might earnestly post a photo of the night sky, like her older cousin did recently. 'It’s just really cute, because she’s a millennial,' she said."
"I literally built my entire career around that. Was everything a lie? Was I secretly insecure this whole time, and just using body positivity to make money so I could finally afford a boob job? No."
Dao got the implants for “fun,” she explained. After six years and more than 900 videos of “flat-chest content,” she “got bored.”... Dao’s followers are flooding her comments with anger and disappointment, but all the analytics show is that the engagement is through the roof....
I don't understand the choice of the word "but." The "flooding" of comments is engagement. It's a bad use of the human capacity for emotion to get angry at someone like this and to reward her with the attention she sought by doing the thing that made you angry. When will we ever learn?
"'Does anybody follow Alix Earle?' The students said yes, amid several chuckles, because asking a college student that question in 2025 is like asking if a millennial has ever heard of Beyoncé. How much money, she continued, did they think that Ms. Earle, a TikTok megastar who rose to fame with confessional-style videos about beauty and college life, makes for promoting a brand across several posts on Instagram Stories? '$100,000?' one student guessed. '$70,000,' another tossed out. Ms. Segar, whose firm has worked with Ms. Earle on brand deals, paused. She drew out her response: '$450,000 per Instagram Story.' For a moment, there was just the hum of the pool and a single exclamation from one student: 'Oh. My. God.' Ms. Segar smiled and explained, 'Our job is to help you guys bring in some of that money.'"
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