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=== Kyla Scanlon’s argument ===
=== Kyla Scanlon’s argument ===
[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart twenty-something “content creator” who has built an impressive cross-platform following posting short-form videos about finance. Scanlon’s style is well-informed — she is plainly  someone who paid attention in college — but also funny, off-beat, wry and a lot wearier with the world than a twenty-five year-old influencer really has any call to be.  
[https://kylascanlon.com/ Kyla Scanlon] is a whip-smart twenty-something “content creator” who has built an impressive cross-platform following posting short-form videos about finance. Scanlon’s style is well-informed — plainly, she paid attention in college — but also funny, off-beat, wry and a lot wearier with the world than a twenty-five year-old influencer really has any call to be.  


There are not many twenty-five year olds who make a living as self-employed finance commentators, so whatever you make of Scanlon’s material, she’s not greatly representative of her cohort.
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Her video shorts are never earnest: she saturates them with state-of-the-art memery and ''velocity'': everything gallops between with frenetic jump cuts, Burroughs like cut-ups and frame shifts that speak to the easily-distracted multi-channel, hyperlinked, always-on dot-dot-dash attention spans of the digital native but don’t necessarily make sense. Well, not to me, at any rate: they are often far too quick for this old codger to make out, let alone follow, and they’re gone before you get a chance to mull over or analyse for content.  
Her video shorts are never earnest: she saturates them with state-of-the-art memery and ''velocity'': everything gallops between with frenetic jump cuts, Burroughs like cut-ups and frame shifts that speak to the easily-distracted multi-channel, hyperlinked, always-on dot-dot-dash attention spans of the digital native but don’t necessarily make sense. Well, not to me, at any rate: they are often far too quick for this old codger to make out, let alone follow, and they’re gone before you get a chance to mull over or analyse for content.  


You come away impressed but never quite sure if you’ve watched some next-level, tenth-Dan free-form improvisational genius, or something totally hip that just looks like it. Have a look at [https://x.com/kylascan/status/1704626243402895435? her most recent one] — “Federal Reserve Recap with Jerome Powell” — and judge for yourself. It is well-executed for sure. I’m just not quite sure what “it” is.
You come away impressed but never quite sure if you’ve watched some next-level, uber-hip, tenth-Dan free-form improvisational genius, or something that just looks like it. Have a look at [https://x.com/kylascan/status/1704626243402895435? her most recent one] — “Federal Reserve Recap with Jerome Powell” — and judge for yourself.  
 
In any case you can’t help but admire, and maybe be sucked in by, the energy and brio of the delivery. You wonder what it would be like if you got to slow it down and treat it like an old-fashioned, boomer thought piece.
In any case you can’t help but admire, and maybe be sucked in by, the energy and brio of the delivery. You wonder what it would be like if you got to slow it down and treat it like an old-fashioned, boomer thought piece.


Well, Scanlon lets you do that, too. Her Substack is almost as popular as her TikTok, and definitely a lot more popular than this one!   
Well, Scanlon lets you do that, too. Her Substack is almost as popular as her TikTok, and definitely a lot more popular than this one!   


So Scanlon is unrepresentative of her generation. She is unrepresentative in another way too. That same lazy, boomer categorisation of millennials as “attention-depleted dilettantes who conduct their self-absorbed lives through social media” isn't generally true even of the metropolitian liberal cohort we have in mind, let alone the rest of the world's twenty-two year olds, of whom the “digital native” stereotype is starkly atypical.  
Scanlon is unrepresentative of her generation in other ways, too. Her expectation for someThat same lazy, boomer categorisation of millennials as “attention-depleted dilettantes who conduct their self-absorbed lives through social media” isn't generally true even of the metropolitian liberal cohort we have in mind, let alone the rest of the world's twenty-two year olds, of whom the “digital native” stereotype is starkly atypical.  
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Ambitious kids work like tyros, wherever they are. And are the progeny of the professionally qualified upper middle classes of London, New York and California necessarily as driven and (figuratively) hungry as poor kind in Nairobi, Damascus or Kyiv? The JC has no data, but he doubts it. Who is more likely to complain about burnout after a nine to five?


Ambitious kids work like tyros, wherever they are. And are the progeny of the professionally qualified upper middle classes of London, New York and California necessarily as driven and (figuratively) hungry as poor kind in Nairobi, Damascus or Kyiv? The JC has no data, but he doubts it. Who is more likely to complain about burnout after a nine to five?
Being of Generation Zer — just — it is not surprising scanlon sides with her cohort , particularly seeing as her own career seems to have prescribed the idealised millennial life experience.
 
I'm not sure it does, beyond a narrow demographic of offspring of affluent, educated, Metropolitan  professionals. She is no better placed to speak for her wider generation then are the boomers and gen Xers she implies are the problem — especially since those boomers and generation Xers are parents of this stymied generation, and not naturally disposed to wreck their life experiences. Quite the opposite, in fact, and that might be part of the problem.
 
In any case scanlon starts with some potted anthropology — in agrarian societies people worked during daylight hours and only gave up their circadian rhythms when forced to, by the industrial revolution when the prerogatives of  mechanisation pushed  them into 16-hour days on a production line, which were only whittled  back down to the modern eight through various labour reforms, and it took Henry Ford — not ''usually'' a Gen Z pin-up, but still — to recognise you got more out of your workers if you paid them more and asked of them less.


Being of Generation Zer — just — it is not surprising scanlon sides with her cohort , particularly seeing as her own career today is more or less the millennial experience. Scanlon earns a good crust making fun videos and doing podcasts. She is no better placed to speak for her generation then the boomers — less, in fact, because boomers and generation Xers are their parents.
We have, arbitrarily, stuck with the eight hour day ever since, and it is past time yo revisit that. The new world — post COVID, networked, digital — means [[this time it's different]].


Let’s take that as read and park the open questions that it begs such as how TikTok girl would have enjoyed a hard day in the fields in that idealised circadian society , and whether we really have stuck with the eight-hour day ever since: professional work has never been monotonous<ref>Quite monotonous, I grant you</ref>or physically tiring as work in the fields or on a production line, and I can't think of an elite professional occupation that has paid that limit the blindest bit of attention to 5pm as a knock-off time. The European Union was so concerned about it that they legislated a “Working Time Directive” in 1999, limiting work hours to 42 hours a week, and professional workers have opted out of it ever since.lets be clear: an eight hour day is no trial. In an office environment it's easy. It might be ''dull'' sure, but that is nothing to do with the time.


agrarian societies people worked during daylight hours. Great!
Are there better reasons to think things have changed?


with industrial revolution, things were mechanised and it went to 16 hours a day. That got whittled down to 8 through various labour reforms> then H Ford - not usually a Gen Z pin up, but still - reognised you got more work if paid more for people to do less.
Well, industries have changed from production of goods to delivery of services (“B2B SaaS”)
Unlike production line jobs, services can be delivered remotely. This is presented, without evidence as a self-evident fact.  


Now things have changed again: Break work down to
{{Quote|
*Job
I eat my peas with honey<br>
*Commute
I’ve done it all my life<br>
*Community
It makes the peas taste funny<br>
This can feel like a hamster wheel. (The insight, honestly!)
But it keeps them on the knife}}


But now industries have changed from production of goods to delivery of services (“B2B SaaS”)
In a sense it is true: in times of necessity, services ''can'' be delivered remotely. This is like saying peas ''can'' be eaten with a knife. But is this the ''best''way of delivering them?
Unlike production line jobs services can be delivered remotely. Scanlon had six months of this before the pandemic intervened. As far as we can tell, she never went back.


Gen Z are special: “ Unlike previous generations, they face unprecedented challenges: climate change, an uncertain economy, ballooning student loans, and the struggles of identity and purpose in a digitized world.”
Gen Z are special: “ Unlike previous generations, they face unprecedented challenges: climate change, an uncertain economy, ballooning student loans, and the struggles of identity and purpose in a digitized world.”
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