Klosterman

Humorous what Chuck Klosterman says now that he's older. But I give him credit.  He is well aware that he thought differently when he was younger, and finds it amusing now.

Ethan: But this one right here, this one right here, Chuck. This is about the topic, but about a whole lot else, and something that I've thought about a lot, though not necessarily from your perspective. 

quoting Chuck, (from his new book Football): The enlightened opinion one is supposed to hold about the young is that their provocative ideas are inevitably correct, and that history unfailingly proves that the views of outspoken 20-somethings eventually become the views of everyone else.

This take is particularly common among hipster olds who believe aligning themselves with young people keeps them young. They see a college protest, or they read a novel from a precocious author, or they hear a teenager voicing radical politics, and they say, the kids know the truth. What's hilarious about this claim is that it only works in the aggregate.

Ask any 50-year-old if he or she, on a personal level, was more intelligent and more ethically sophisticated at the age of 25. They'll always, always, always say no. Somehow, it's possible to imagine that young people are smarter as an amorphous group, even when the individual experience of every midlife adult suggests the opposite. (Podcast interview with Ethan Strauss)